Negative pragmatic transfer in complaining by Vietnamese efl learners

Negative pragmatic transfer in complaining by
Vietnamese efl learners


Vũ Thu Hà


Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ
Luận văn Thạc sĩ ngành: English teaching methodology; Mã số: 60 22 15
Người hướng dẫn: Dr. Hà Cẩm Tâm
Năm bảo vệ: 2013


Abstract. Although L2 pragmatic competence is essential in intercultural
communication, many studies show that most of language learners, even those with
advanced grammatical competence, lack necessary knowledge of performing speech
acts in the target language. Lack of L2 pragmatic knowledge has led to pragmatic
failure or error, which is considered to have more serious consequences than
grammatical errors because native speakers tend to see pragmatic errors as offensive
and rude rather than simply as demonstrating lack of knowledge. This can lead to
misjudgment or miscommunication between them and native speakers. Moreover, the
findings of many studies indicate that pragmatic failure or errors are to a large extent
caused by the interference of the learners’ pragmatic knowledge in their native language
with their performance in the target language, or in other words, the negative pragmatic
transfer. Many learners, in performing speech acts in the target language, translate
social norms of their native culture or linguistic expressions of their native language
into their L2 performance, which are, in most cases, not seen appropriate by native
speakers. This study investigates the negative pragmatic transfer in the performance of
the face-threatening act of complaining by Vietnamese EFL learners at both
pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic level. Pragmalinguistically, the study is aimed at
detecting the occurrences of negative transfer in learners’ choices of complaint

strategies, external modifications and internal modifications. Sociopragmatically, it
seeks to examine the impact of learners’ L1-based perceptions of two contextual factors,
including social power (P) and social distance (D), on learners’ realization of the speech
act of complaining in the target language. The data were collected via Discourse
Completion Test (DCT) questionnaires. The DCT questionnaire was comprised of 6
situations that were picked up based on the results of Metapragmatic Questionnaire
(MPQ) on 22 native speakers of English. DCT questionnaires were then administered to
20 native speakers of Vietnamese, 20 native speakers of English, and 20 Vietnamese
learners of English, whose English proficiency was assessed as intermediate. The
findings of the study have revealed the evidences of negative pragmatic transfer in
learners’ interlanguage complaints. At the pragmalinguistic level, negative transfer was
most strikingly evident when learners complained to people of lower and equal status.
While native speakers of English managed to keep their complaints at a certain level of
indirectness across power contexts, learners, just like native speakers of Vietnamese,
tended to be very direct and explicit in complaining in higher and equal power contexts.
They quite frequently opted for the most direct strategies on the scale and perhaps the
most avoided strategies by native speakers of English – Strategy 7 (Explicit Blame on
Behavior) and Strategy 8 (Explicit Blame on Person). Another occurrence of negative
pragmalinguistic transfer was seen in learners’ modest use of external modifiers in their
complaints. It seemed that both native speakers of Vietnamese and learners did not
support their complaints as well as native speakers of English. This might have made
their complaints sound straight, explicit and even confronting according to the English
speakers’ perceptions. At the sociopragmatic level, Vietnamese learners of English
appeared to negatively translate their L1 emphasis of power differences into their IL
performance. They may have been influenced by their L1-based belief that being polite
means highlighting the status differences where they actually exist, whereas native
speakers of English may think differently; being polite means denying the power
differences even when they actually exist. In highlighting the power differences like
that, learners might be judged as insincere, bossy or even rude by the other interlocutors
in intercultural communication. The main findings of the study, therefore, provided

language teachers, educators and learners with precious information about the possible
interferences of L1 with IL performance. This will surely raise their awareness of
developing learners’ L2 pragmatic knowledge and pragmatic competence in the English
language teaching and learning.

Keywords. Tiếng Anh; Ngữ dụng; Ngôn từ phàn nàn; Kỹ năng nói

Content
1. Rationale
The nonstop growing globalization trends have gradually turned the world into a so-
called ―Global Village‖, where people from different backgrounds live, study, work and
communicate together. Such a need for intercultural communication has led to the increasing
dominance of the English language, which has always been referred to as an international
language of business, commerce and education. The English language teaching and learning has
accordingly enjoyed more attention than ever before and undergone significant changes to meet
learners’ novel demands. It is now more important for a learner to become a competent user of
English in real communication than to be a master of English grammar rules and structures for
reading and translation as in the past. Correspondingly, there has been a steady shift of focus in
the English language teaching from building up learners’ grammatical competence to developing
their pragmatic competence. Pragmatic competence, as noted by Kasper (1997), is ―knowledge
of communicative action and how to carry it out, and the ability to use language appropriately
according to context‖. However, intercultural communication involves interlocutors with diverse
sociocultural norms and linguistic conventions, and thus, a clash of perceptions of
appropriateness in communication is very likely unavoidable, which also means that
miscommunication in intercultural contexts can occur. Intercultural miscommunication can be
attributed to many causes, among which are learners’ incomplete understandings of the other
interlocutors’ sociocultural values together with learners’ falling back on their L1 norms in
realizing speech acts in communication.
This assumption has interested linguistic researchers and educators a lot, and has drawn
more of their attention to a new SLA discipline that studies learners’ enactment of linguistic

action in the second language, namely interlanguage pragmatics (ILP). ILP is still a young
discipline, which as claimed by Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper (1989), is needed in order to
discover ―how learners do things with words in a second language‖ (p.9). ILP focuses on
linguistic actions, speech acts and the realization by learners to understand what might interfere
with a learner’s comprehension and production of pragmatic meaning. It is, thus, interested in
identifying the obstacles to or failures of learners’ appropriate production of pragmatics.
Pragmatic transfer, among some other concerns, can be seen as the major focus of ILP studies.
Studies on pragmatic transfer, especially negative pragmatic transfer, examine the influence of
learners’ L1-based perceptions of politeness and appropriateness and their L1 performance of a
speech act on their realization of the same speech act in L2, which might cause pragmatic failure.
Studies on pragmatic transfer, hence, will provide teachers and learners with precious knowledge
about the pragmatic errors learners might make in intercultural communication and help them
find ways to be more appropriate, polite and pragmatically competent in intercultural contexts.
Pragmatic transfer has received much interest worldwide with a wide range of studies on
the realization of such speech acts as apologies, requests, complaints, chastisement, or
compliments by Japanese, Turkish, German, Arabian, Danish, Thai EFL learners and so on.
However, the number of studies on pragmatic transfer by Vietnamese EFL is very modest.
Therefore, more studies on this issue are in need in order to promote Vietnamese teachers and
learners’ understanding of the possible influence of L1 on learners’ interlanguage performance.
As a response to the need to enrich the literature about the occurrences of pragmatic
transfer by Vietnamese learners, this study investigates the negative pragmatic transfer in the
performance of the face-threatening act of complaining by Vietnamese EFL learners and the
social factors that lead to the negative transfer. Negative pragmatic transfer is chosen for the
study because negative transfer, not positive transfer, deals with the inappropriate translation of
L1 norms into interlanguage performance and it is considered as one of the main causes of
learners’ pragmatic failures. Besides, complaining is picked up as the head act in investigation as
complaining is an act that can hardly be avoided in everyday communication but it is very likely
to put both the speaker and the hearer at risk of losing their faces unless the complaint is made
with caution.
2. Aims and scope of the study

The study aims to find out the evidence of negative pragmatic transfer in the performance
of complaints by Vietnamese EFL learners. In other words, it will examine the extent to which
learners’ L1 pragmatic knowledge of complaining interferes with their performance of the
speech act in English. The negative transfer will be investigated at two levels: pragmalinguistic
transfer and sociopragmatic transfer. At the pragmalinguistic level, the study seeks information
about the extent to which negative transfer occurs in the learners’ preferences for complaint
strategies, external modifications and internal modifications. At the sociopragmatic level, the
impact of learners’ L1 perceptions on their choices of complaint strategies, external and internal
modifications will be examined.
The study is then limited to the investigation of negative transfer seen in the performance
of complaining speech act only. Moreover, since the study focuses on the influence of social
factors, the Vietnamese learners who are to be chosen as informants will be at the same language
proficiency.
3. Research questions
The study seeks answer to the following questions:
(1) To what extent is negative pragmalinguistic transfer evident in the performance of
complaints by Vietnamese EFL learners in the context of the study?
(2) To what extent is negative sociopragmatic transfer evident in the performance of
complaints by Vietnamese EFL learners in the context of the study?
4. Method of the study
In this study data were collected via Metapragmatic Questionnaires (MPQ) and Discourse
Completion Task (DCT). The MPQ is a questionnaire in which informants, who were native
speakers of English and Vietnamese learners of English, were asked to assess the 15 given
situations based on 3 criteria, namely relative social power, relative social distance and ranking
of imposition on the hearer. Out of 15 given situations, 6 situations were selected for the DCT
questionnaires. These 6 situations must satisfy the constellation of contextual factors, including
social power and social distance. The DCT questionnaires were then administered to three
groups of participants: 20 native speakers of English, 20 native speakers of Vietnamese and 20
Vietnamese learners of English; all the learners are at intermediate proficiency level. The DCT
questionnaires were translated into Vietnamese for the group of Vietnamese speakers and an

online DCT questionnaire version was created for the group of English speakers. The data from
DCT were then analyzed by calculating frequency of groups’ use of complaint strategies,
external and internal modifications.
5. Organization of the study
This study is divided into five chapters as follows:
Chapter 1 presents an overview of the study in which the rationale for the research, the
aims and scope of the study, the research questions, and the methods of the study as well as the
organization of the study were briefly presented.
Chapter 2 reviews the theoretical issues relevant to the study including speech acts and
the speech act of complaining. Then, the notions of politeness and indirectness in complaining as
well as some previous studies on complaining are discussed.
Chapter 3 discusses issues of methodology and outlines the study design, data collection
instruments, procedure of data collection, and analytical framework.
Chapter 4 presents the data analysis and discusses the findings on the negative pragmatic
transfer on the choices of complaint strategies, external modifications and internal modifications
at the pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic level.
Chapter 5 provides an overview of major findings and interpretations, implications,
limitations of the study and suggestions for further research.


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