A cross-cultural study on differences in expressing annoyance between English and Vietnamese

A cross-cultural study on differences in expressing
annoyance between English and Vietnamese



Nguyễn Thị Minh Thương


Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ
Luận văn Thạc sĩ ngành: English Linguistics; Mã số: 60 22 15
Người hướng dẫn: M.A. Đỗ Thị Mai Thanh
Năm bảo vệ: 2009


Abstract. Based on the solid theoretical background of pragmatics and cross-cultural
pragmatics, this thesis is conducted with an attempt to investigate the act of expressing annoyance in
Vietnamese and English language and culture. Cross-culturally compared and contrasted, the data has
uncovered some major similarities and differences in choosing politeness strategies to express
annoyance. It is the similarities and differences recognized that hopefully contribute to the avoidance
of cultural conflicts leading to communication breakdown. .
Keywords. Giao tiếp; Giao văn hóa; Tiếng Anh

Content
I. RATIONALE
Cross-cultural Communication describes the ability to successfully form, foster, and improve
relationships with members of a culture different from one’s own. It is based on knowledge of many
factors, such as the other culture’s values, perceptions, manners, social structure, and decision-making
practices, and an understanding of how members of the group communicate- both verbally and non-
verbally, in person, in writing or in any other kind of communication.
Miscommunication is today’s greatest workplace hazard. And with the world becoming smaller and
more diverse, miscommunication seems to be happening more and more. People from different

cultures encode and decode messages differently, increasing the chances of misunderstanding. In other
words, when miscommunication happens, it means that the speaker fails to achieve his utterance
purposes. Miscommunication even sometimes leaves the hearer a negative impression on the speaker
as he/she misunderstands what the speaker wants to convey or express.
With its importance, Cross-cultural Communication has been the topic of a large number of Masters
dissertations within Vietnam National University. A number of aspects of Cross-cultural
Communication has been tried to reveal such as greetings, requesting, prohibiting, thanking and so on.
However, another kind of emotion that is not easy to express, but can’t helping expressing in some
situations is the expression of annoyance. It is not like the expression of thanking or any other positive
emotion that are encouraged to express, annoyance is a negative expression that requires the addresser
have to second-think about how to express his/her feeling without deteriorating the relationship with
others.
With such above-mentioned reasons, the author would like to spend time and effort to carry out a
research on the same topic but focuses on other aspects in order to provide a more comprehensive
picture of the speech act of expressing annoyance.
The subject receives much attention of my colleagues, including both English and Vietnamese as all of
them are trying to further understand about others’ culture to seek for a harmonization. Due to the
limited time, only verbal expressions are considered.
II. AIMS OF THE STUDY
The research is intended to investigate major similarities and differences in expressing annoyance in
English and Vietnamese, particularly the communicative strategies used to express the negative
emotion. It aims to provide a better insight into cross-cultural similarities and differences between the
two languages and cultures, thus helping to avoid any communication breakdown.
To achieve this overall purpose, the study aims to:
 Provide a general picture of the theory of speech acts and politeness.
 Find out major similarities and differences in expressing annoyance in English and Vietnamese
 Compare and contrast the communicative strategies used by Vietnamese and English when
they want to show their annoyance in verbal communication.
 Contribute to raise cross-cultural awareness among foreign language users.
To achieve the objectives, following two questions are raised to be addressed:

(1) What are different strategies of expressing annoyance verbally in English and in Vietnamese?
(2) What are similarities and differences in the choice of strategies in verbal expressions of
annoyance in English and Vietnamese culture?
III. SCOPE OF THE STUDY
The study is limited to the data obtained from the survey questionnaire on ways of expressing
annoyance in English and Vietnamese. The answers from informants in the survey questionnaire and
direct interviews are used as linguistic inputs. Due to the limited time and the scope of a Minor Thesis,
only 50 English (out of 65) and 50 Vietnamese (out of 80) informants were chosen for data analysis.
The study is also restrained to verbal aspects of the act of expressing annoyance only. No matter how
important non-verbal aspects such as paralanguage and extra-language are, they are excluded within
the study.
Only Vietnamese Northern dialect and English native speakers are chosen for contrastive analysis. By
English native speakers, the author means those who speak English as their mother-tongue.
The study just focuses on social relationship and ignores the kinship between the informants
(Speakers) and the communicative partners (Hearers) as it is pre-supposed that in family relationship,
annoyance is seemed to be expressed more directly and frequently.
The informants were asked to express their annoyance to a certain person only, not a thing or object.

IV. METHODOLOGY
The survey is carried out with the following tools:
(i) Relevant publications
(ii) Survey questionnaire
(iii) Statistics, description and analysis of the collected data
(iv) Consultation with supervisor
(v) Interview friends and colleagues
(vi) Personal observation
V. COMMENTS ON THE DATA
The survey questionnaire is designed to collect information for data analysis in the form of hand-outs
and direct interviews. The questionnaire includes 2 main parts:
Part 1 was for getting general information on the informants, including nationality, age, gender,

occupation and acquisition of foreign languages.
Part 2 can be considered as the main part of the questionnaire which was designed for eliciting the
uses of linguistic elements and communicative strategies in expressing annoyance in the three
following situations:
Situation 1: How would you say to express your annoyance if someone comes to your house and rings
the doorbell continuously?
Situation 2: How would you say to express your annoyance if someone installs computer software into
your computer without your permission?
Situation 3: How would you say to express your annoyance if someone continuously sounds his/her
horn behind you when the traffic light is red?
The informants were asked to express their annoyance verbally with the following communicative
partners: close friend, acquaintance, colleague, boss and stranger
However, there are some important dimensions that the questionnaire does not cover such as
paralinguistic factors, body-language factors, communicative environment factors and mood factors. A
sample of the questionnaire in both English and Vietnamese is attached in the Appendix of the thesis.
VI. DESIGN OF THE STUDY
The study consists of 3 main parts:
PART I: Introduction. Rationale, aims of the study, scope of the study, methodology and data
collection are all provided in the part.
PART II: Development. The main part consists of 3 chapters.
Chapter 1: Literature review
Chapter 2: Communicative strategies used to express annoyance in English and Vietnamese
PART III: Conclusion. In the part, the author aims to review the research findings and suggests some
recommendations for Vietnamese users of English as well as for further studies.


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