A Vietnamese-American cross cultural study of giving comments on contestants’ performance by judges in Vietnam Idol and American Idol

A Vietnamese-American cross cultural study of
giving comments on contestants’ performance
by judges in Vietnam Idol and American Idol

Trần Thị Hoàng Ngân

Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ
Luận văn ThS. Chuyên ngành: English Linguistics; Mã số: 60 22 15
Người hướng dẫn: Nguyễn Thị Thơm Thơm
Năm bảo vệ: 2011


Abstract: This thesis focuses on cross-cultural similarities and differences in giving
comments on contestants’ performance by judges in Vietnam Idol and American Idol.
Politeness strategies realized for giving comments are analyzed with data taken from the
video clips of the two shows. The thesis falls into two major chapters: Chapter I:
“Theoretical preliminaries” deals with the notion of culture, cross-culture, speech acts,
classifications of speech acts, politeness, and politeness strategies. Chapter II: “Data
analysis and findings”: Video clips are used to collect data for the study. Giving
comments which resorts to various strategies of politeness is a flexibly and effectively
communicative act in both Vietnamese and American cultures.

Keywords: Tiếng Anh; Giao văn hóa; Tiếng Việt



Content
PART A: INTRODUCTION
I. RATIONALE
It is of little doubt that language plays a very important role in human’s life. Then, English,
nowadays, has become an international means of communication in our modern life.

However, almost all of people learning English find very difficult to understand or to
convey English native speakers’ ideas or thinking, maybe, because of the cultural
difference between Vietnam and English speaking countries. Besides, the lack of the
learners’ awareness of the target language culture and the cultural differences is also the
source of culture shock in every aspect of cross-cultural communication. It is the reason
why those days, the study of communication and cross-cultural communication has
become an urgent need thanks to the popularity of mass media and the increasing demand
of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). Doing research on communicative acts has,
therefore, been of great significance.
With the development of society, the need of entertainment has been increasing more
rapidly. People seek many ways to relax their mind such as go for holiday, go camping and
so on. However, the simplest way of entertainment is music. Many music shows and
games have been broadcasted on TV attracting the interest of most of people. Vietnam Idol
and American Idol are very famous shows of music nowadays. Besides selecting an
excellent contestant to become the idol of music, the audience also concern the manner the
judges give comments on the performance of contestants. Thus, Vietnamese – American
cross-cultural studies appear useful and vital in this way.
Commenting is common in many languages and cultures. It is realized by comforting,
showing concern or expressing likes or dislike or reaction, etc. with the hearer. Cross-
cultural study on judges’ commenting on contestants’ performance has not received much
concern form linguistics and researchers. Then, how do Vietnamese and American judges
give comments on contestants’ performance? How are the two manners different? Which
manner is a positive way? This leads the author to the decision to conduct a research into
“A Vietnamese-American cross-cultural study of giving comments on contestants’
performance by judges in Vietnam and American Idol” to find out the similarities and
differences in the manner of giving comments of Vietnamese and American judges on
contestants’ performance. The findings from the study hopefully would be a source of
assistance in understanding between the two cultures American and Vietnamese.
II. AIMS OF THE STUDY
The aims of the study are:

- To convey ways which judges give verbal comments on contestants’ performance
in Vietnam Idol 2010 and American Idol 2011.
- To point out the similarities and differences in the manner American and
Vietnamese judges commenting in their target language and culture.
- To answer the two research questions:
+ Which politeness strategies are used by Vietnamese judges and which ones are chosen by
American judges?
+ Who employs more politeness strategies in verbal communication: Vietnamese judges
and American ones?
- To contribute to raise cross-cultural awareness in using verbal cues for foreign
language teachers and learners as well as other potential interactants of international
communication.
III. SCOPE OF THE STUDY
The study is focused on the verbal aspect of the act of giving comments by judges on
contestants’ performance after live show in the two latest shows: Vietnam Idol 2010 and
American Idol 2011 basing on the politeness theory by Brown and Levinson and other
linguistics researchers. Because of some limitations, the author only focuses on the final
round: top 4 and top 3 perform.
IV. METHODOLOGY
This part is focused on a detailed depiction of the methodology applied in the research
paper. More specially, the size and characteristics of the research subject altogether with
research instruments, data collection procedure as well as data analysis procedure are put
into description and justification.
IV.1. Selection of subjects
In order to conduct this study, the researcher has employed top 4 and top 3 performs of
Vietnam Idol 2010 and also two ones of American Idol 2011. the research subjects in this
study have been chosen under the procedure of information-oriented sampling, as opposed
to random sampling. In these two performs of American Idol 2011, the researcher has
obtained 51 utterances of commenting; meanwhile, she has got 36 commenting utterances
of Vietnam version, which makes a total of 87 utterances. This size of the samples could

somehow be considered eligible enough for the researcher to carry out a reliable study.
IV.2. Research methods
To conduct the study, the researcher has employed two methods namely quantitative and
qualitative ones. The combination of these two methods has offered the researcher valid
data for later analysis.
Regarding the aim of the study, the researcher has found that quantitative is the most
feasible method to deal with the research problems. It is because in the social sciences,
quantitative research refers to the systematic empirical investigation of quantitative
properties and phenomena and their relationships. The objective of quantitative research is
to develop and employ mathematical models, theories and/ or hypotheses pertaining to
phenomena. The process of measurement is central to quantitative research because it
provides the fundamental connection between empirical observation and mathematical
expression of quantitative relationships.
Besides, qualitative research is a method of inquiry employed in many different academic
disciplines, traditionally in the social sciences, but also in market research and further
contexts. Qualitative researcher aims to gather an in-depth understanding of human
behavior and the reasons that govern such behavior. The qualitative method investigates
the why and how of decision-making, not just what, where, when. Hence, smaller but
focused samples are more often needed, rather than large samples.
IV.3. Data collection procedures
The data collection procedure has been divided into two successive phases.
Phase 1:
This phase has concentrated mainly on collecting 4 shows of American Idol and another 4
shows of Vietnam Idol. To be more specific, the researcher has spent a lot of time finding
then watching 12 Vietnamese episodes and 12 American ones then collected 4 episodes of
each version.
Phase 2:
The researcher has watched then taken notes all the transcripts of the commenting parts of
totally 8 American and Vietnamese shows. Afterwards, she has identified the strategies of
politeness used in every commenting utterance transcripted. Simultaneously, prominent

examples of each strategy have been noted down to exemplify the researcher’s later
analysis.
IV.4. Data analysis procedures
First, the verbal data have been interpreted into subtypes of politeness strategies. As
observed, there are seven strategies that are most commonly used by both Vietnamese and
American judges.
After that, the researcher has calculated the frequency of commentators’ using the above
politeness strategies. This step has been followed by her converting the frequency into the
percentile forms for comparison.
Finally, the researcher has compared the frequencies of politeness strategies used by
Vietnamese judges and American ones.
V. COMMENTS ON THE INFORMANTS
In the two shows Vietnam Idol and American Idol, there are two groups of informants. The
Vietnamese group consists of 3 informants (one female and two males), but in the final
round, one informant is added. The second group was 3 judges (also one female and two
males).
Details of the informants’ parameters are:
- Vietnamese group:
+ Two females: singer (Siu Black) and editor (Diem Quynh)
+ Two males: director (Quang Dung) and composer (Quoc Trung)
- American group:
+ One female: singer/actress and record producer Jennifer Lopez
+ Two males: singer-songwriter Steven Tyler and music manager Randy Jackson.
VI. DESIGN OF THE STUDY
The thesis consists of three parts
Part A: INTRODUCTION
This part includes the rationale, aims, scope of the study, methodology and design of the
study.
Part B: DEVELOPMENT
This part is divided into two chapters:

Chapter I: THEORETICAL PRELIMINARIES
In this chapter, theories of culture, cross-culture, culture–shock, language-culture
interrelationship, speech act, and classifications of speech acts, politeness, politeness
principles and politeness strategies, definition of the two shows are critically discussed.
Chapter II: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS
In this chapter, the author focuses on analyzing the manner of giving comments of judges
through the two shows with the illustration of video clips (if necessary). The similarities
and differences in the way of giving comments by Vietnamese and American judges are
drawn from detailed and critical analysis of data.
Part C: CONCLUSION
Summary of the major findings and suggestions for further research are mentioned in this
part.


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