LV "Cross cultural aspects of conversational competence of Vietnamese learners of English: conversational routines

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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION
1.1 RATIONALE
Language is the most effective and practical means of communication
and it is really a master key in all fields of society. In line with the ceaseless
demand for English learning, our understanding of the nature of studying a
foreign language has greatly expanded in recent years as a result of research
into many dimensions of language and behavior that are still left unexplored.
Linguists have researched into the characteristics of language and turned it
into a means of the most wonderful communication between people.
People from different cultures are studying languages of other cultures.
They meet and talk to native speakers and gradually they realize that it is
easy to obtain the words but it is difficult to understand native speakers’
intention in communication. In many cases, non-native speakers and native
speakers fail to understand each other which causes unpleasant, offensive
problems although they have good wills. They cannot find a common
language that is beyond the language they are speaking.
Previously, learners of English barely neglect the importance of
conversational routines and language transfer, overlooking the fact that these
matters always exist in the language, reflect the culture and participate in
almost all community events. The ignorance, therefore, limits remarkably the
ability to use language and hinders the effectiveness of the learning process
as well.
In present situation, because different cultures often have different
conventions and competent learners are required to know not only the form


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of the language but also how to use it appropriately in real communicative
situations, so a contrastive analysis of cross-cultural aspects of
conversational routines in English and Vietnamese are useful for Vietnamese
learners of English. This thesis is designed as a study on the effects of
transfer

of

Vietnamese

conversational

conventions

to

the

target

conversational discourse. It is also done with a hope to provide learners of
English with a new way of access English conversational routines and the
transfer of Vietnamese conversational norms into English.
In addition, there haven’t been any contrastive studies carried out
thoroughly and particularly by linguistic researchers in this field. For these
reasons, I would like to choose this research topic "Cross-cultural aspects of
conversational

competence

of

Vietnamese

learners

of

English:

conversational routines and other problems" in the hope of making a
worthy contribution to the development of learners' speaking skills.
1.2 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
The study is designed to present a contrastive analysis of cross-cultural
differences of conversational routines in English and Vietnamese. The
research aims to help Vietnamese learners to acquire conversational
competence. It means the ability to use language appropriately and to
understand language in cross-cultural communication. On the other hand,
this study aims to raise Vietnamese learners’ awareness of the effects of
transfer of native language conversational routines to the target language in
order to help them to use correct routines in correct situations when using the
English language in everyday interaction.


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1.3 SCOPE OF THE STUDY
This investigation will focus on cross-cultural aspects of conversational
competence of Vietnamese learners of English. The research attempts to

study in a contrastive analysis of conversational routines in English and
Vietnamese conversations.
The data source for this study is the feedback from a survey
questionnaire completed by native speakers of English, native speakers
Vietnamese and Vietnamese learners of English studying at University of
Danang, Duy Tan University, Colleges of Transport and Communications
No2 and Foreign Language Centers in Danang.
Within the limit of the thesis, the study will only deal with routines
reflected in the speech acts of greeting, compliment-giving and responding,
thank-giving and responding, and apology-giving and responding in English
and Vietnamese conversations.
1.4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS
1. What are cross-cultural differences in conventional usage of
conversational routines in English and Vietnamese?
2. What are causes of cross-cultural errors of conversational routines
made by Vietnamese learners of English?
3. What are factors that affect conversational competence and language
transfer of Vietnamese learners of English?
4. How are the results of this research applied to teaching and learning
English conversational routines to Vietnamese students?


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1.5 DESIGN OF THE STUDY
The study is divided into five chapters as follows:
Chapter one, entitled “Introduction”, presents rationale, the general
purpose of the study, the scope of the study as well as the research question.
Chapter two, “Literature Review”, consists of two parts. The first one is
a review of previous studies related to the problem under investigation

accompanied with a statement of unsolved problems. The second one is
some theoretical knowledge. It is subdivided into smaller parts. It mentions
conversational analysis, conversational competence, conversational routines,
language transfer and interference, speech acts and social interaction, and
error analysis.
Chapter three, “Method and Procedure”, gives the aims and objectives
of the study. This chapter describes the research design, research
methodology. It gives us a description of process of data collection and data
analysis as well as instruments for carrying out the study.
Chapter four, “Results and Discussions”, discusses the results of the
investigation.
Chapter five, “Conclusion-Application-Limitations-Recommendations”,
summaries the development of the study, mentions limitations of the study,
implications for practical solutions, and gives some recommendations.


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CHAPTER TWO

LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter consists of two sections. The first one is a review of
previous studies related to the problem under investigation accompanied
with a statement of unsolved problems. The second one presents some
theoretical knowledge of the study.
2.1 PREVIEW OF PREVIOUS STUDIES
In the past, there were some valuable materials and writings which were
cross-cultural, looking at the realization of the same speech acts. The studies
provide a body of information which will be of interest to us who work in the
fields of discourse analysis and cross-cultural pragmatics. Here is a

description of what has been done in the past
Florian Coulmas (1981) gave a brief description of routines. He
discussed the definition, some function and some characteristic of routine
formulas. He was also concerned about the vital important role of routines in
our daily conversations. He suggested that it was important for foreigners to
master the use of routines in day-to-day interactions.
Based on London-Lund Corpus, Aijmer Karin (1996) provided a
discoursal and pragmatic account of the more common expressions found in
conversational routines, such as apologizing, thanking, requesting and
offering.
Richards, J.C. (1985) discussed the effects of transfer of native
language conversational conventions into target language conversational
discourse by examining several aspects of conversational competence and
how these may be affected by transfer of native language conversational


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norms. This is a contrastive analysis of English and Thai conversational
discourse.
Richards, J. C. (1983) argued that conversational competence was
essential for language learners since it referred to the speaker’s knowledge of
how speech acts were used in social situations. It considered the effects of
transfer of native language conversational conventions into target language
conversational discourse. The author also explored how conversational
competence was affected by transfer of native language conversational
norms.
Gabriele Kasper and Shoshana Blum-Kulka (1993) investigated how
gratitude, apology, complaint, request, and correction were expressed by
observing their use in natural contexts by native speakers and non-native

speakers of English (Japanese, Thai, Chinese, Russian…). They also
discussed the cross-cultural influence of native speakers’ norms on the
speech act of gratitude, apology, complaint, request, and correction.
In summary, although much of this field has been studied, there remains
a specific aspect which needs to be covered. The research on cross-cultural
aspects of conversational routines of Vietnamese learners of English is one
of important and necessary problems in communication. The study needs to
be investigated to help Vietnamese learners of English use language
correctly and effectively. Therefore, in this paper I would like to take a
further look at this topic.


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2.2 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
2.2.1 Conversation Analysis
According to Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied
Linguistic (1995), Conversation analysis is the analysis of natural
conversation in order to discover what the linguistics characteristics of
conversation and how conversation is used in ordinary life. Conversation
analysis includes the study of:
+ how speakers decide when to speak during the conversation
+ how the sentences of two or more speakers are related
+ the different functions of the conversation is used for
2.2.1.1 Turn-taking
In order to see how conversation is organized by turn-taking system, we
should first know what a turn is. A turn, according to Sacks et al [cited in
25], is seen as everything one person says before another speaker begins to
speak. In question-answer adjacency pair, the first speaker takes a turn to ask
a question and the second one takes his turn to make a response. A turn may

be very short and consists of only one or two words, for example:
(1)

A: Did you like the movie?
B: All right
A: Who was in it?
B: Shelly Long

[42, p.69]

A turn might sometimes be very long consisting of a series of
sentences. This is often required for a speaker to explain an opinion, describe
something or tell a joke or a story


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Since conversation is said to be based on the coordination of the
speakers and is recognized with the appearance of adjacency pairs, it is
preceded by a series of turn. The management of this process is turn-taking.
According to Schegloff, a conversation can have two turns, the usual
sequence is ababab where a and b are the parties of the conversation. The
observation of turn-taking system is that speaker-change always occurs, and
a person does not continue talking indefinitely; instead one person stops
talking and another begins [56, p.291].
2.2.1.2 Adjacency Pair
Pairs of utterances in conversation are often mutually dependent. An
utterance made by one speaker is responded to by another utterance from
anther speaker. It is possible to state the requirements, in a normal
conversation sequence, for many types of utterances, in term of what is

expected as a response and what certain responses presuppose. Some
examples might be:
Utterance Function

Expected Response

greeting

greeting

congratulation

thanks

apology

acceptance

inform

acknowledge

leave-taking

leave-taking

This kind of conversational organization is clearly captured by
Schegloff and Sacks’ (1973) concept of adjacency pair. The basic rule of this
operation is:

-9Given the recognizable production of a first pair part, on its first possible
completion its speaker should stop and a next speaker should start and
produce a second pair part from the pair type of which the first is

[44, p.296]

recognizably a member.

Hence, according to Schegloff and Sacks (1973), the mutual
dependence of such utterance is underlined by the fact that we can only be
absolutely sure of function of initiating utterance (the first pair part as it is
usually called) when it is conceptualized with the response it gets (the
second pair part), and vice versa. Some types of adjacency pairs are best
illustrated in question-answer sequence, a thanking-response, and a requestaccept.
(2)

First part

Second part

a. A: What time is it?

B: About eight-thirty

b. A: Thanks

B: You’re welcome

c. A: Could you help me with this?

B: Sure

[60, p.77]

Not all first parts receive their second part immediately, however. It
often happens that a question-answer sequence will be delayed while another
question-answer sequence intervenes. The sequence will then take the form
of Q1-Q2-A2-A1 with Q2-A2 being called an insertion sequence. This pattern
is illustrated as follow:
(3) Agent: Do you want the early flight?

(Q1)

Client: What time does it arrive?

(Q2)

Agent: Nine forty

(A2)

Client: Yeah- that’s great

(A1)
[60, p.78]


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An insertion sequence is one adjacency pair within another. It is one of
the strategies for delaying in response. Delay in response symbolically marks
potential unavailability of the immediate expected answer. Delay represents
distance between what is expected and what is provided. In order to see how
delay is locally interpreted, we need some analytic terms for what is
expected within certain types of adjacency pairs.
2.2.1.3 Conversational Maxim
Conversational maxim is an unwritten rule about conversation which
people know and which influences the form of conversational exchanges.
For example in the follow exchange:
(4) A: Let’s go to the movies?
B: I have an exam in the morning

[45, p.88]

B’s reply might appear not to be connected to A’s remark. However,
since A has made an invitation and since a reply to an invitation is usually
either an acceptance or a refusal, B’s reply is here understood as an excuse
for not accepting the invitation (i.e. refusal). B has used the “maxim” that
speakers normally give replies which are relevant to the question that has
been asked. The philosopher Grice (1975) has suggested that there are four
conversational maxims:
a. The maxim of quantity: give as much information as is needed
b. The maxim of quality: speak truthfully
c. The maxim of relevance: say things that are relevant
d. The maxim of manner: say things clearly and briefly


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The exploitation of the maxims is the basic mechanism by which
utterances are used to convey more than they literally denote and Grice gave
it the name implicature
Conversational implicature is a case in point what a speaker implicates
is distinct from what he says and from what his words imply. An example of
what Grice meant by conversational implicature is the sentence: “Do you
have any money on you?” meaning “I don’t have any money. Can I borrow
some from you?”
This simple example illustrates a general phenomenon: a speaker can
say one thing and manage to mean something else or something more by
exploiting the fact that he may be presumed to be cooperative, in particular,
to be speaking truthfully, informatively, relevantly and otherwise,
appropriately (Thomas, 1998). The listener relies on this presumption to
make a contextually driven inference from what the speaker says to what the
speaker means. In other words, the hearer has to work out from what is said
by appealing to the rules governing successful conversational interaction.
Consider the example from Thomas (1998):
The speaker has accidentally locked herself out of her house. It is
winter, the middle of the night and she is stark naked:
(5) A: Do you want a coat?
B: No, I really want to stand out here in the freezing cold with no
clothes.

[50, p.63]

As Thomas explains, on the face of it, B’s reply is untrue and
uncooperative but in fact this is the sort of sarcastic reply we encounter
everyday and have no problem at all in interpreting. How do we interpret it?

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There are two ways of inferring the meaning by the speaker. According to
Grice, they are observations and non-observations to maxims:
a. Observing the maxims:
The least interesting responses to the question is in the following
example that shows when a speaker observes all the maxims:
(6) Husband: Where are the car keys?
Wife: They’re on the table in the hall.

[50, p.64]

The wife answers clearly (Manner), truthfully (Quality), gives the right
amount of information (Quantity) and directly addresses her husband’s goal
in asking the question (Relation). She says precisely what she means no
more and no less, and generates no implicature (i.e. there no distinction to be
made here between what she says and what she means, there is no additional
level of meaning).
b. Non-observance of the maxims:
These maxims, however, are not always be followed in ordinary human
conversational interaction. There are very many occasions, as Grice was well
aware, when people fail to observe the maxims. There are five ways of
failing to observe a maxim: Flouting a maxim, Violating a maxim, Infringing
a maxim, Opting out of a maxim, Suspending a maxim.
The situations which chiefly interested Grice were those in which a
speaker blatantly fails to observe a maxim , not with any intention of
deceiving or misleading, but because the speaker wishes to prompt the hearer
to look for a meaning which is different from, or in addition to, the expressed
meaning (Thomas, 1998). The following example shows the speaker fails to

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observe the Quantity maxim by giving less information than the situation
demands: A is asking B about a mutual friend’s new boyfriend
(7)

A: Is he nice?
B: She seems to like him.

[50, p.66]

B could simply have replied “No” - this would give the maxim amount
of information possible in the situation. Instead, B gives a much weaker and
less information in response. It is possible to argue that his failure to do so
stems from a clash between the maxim of Quantity and Quality (B cannot
say for certain whether the new boyfriend is nice or not, and speaks only on
a basis of the evidence he has). A great deal of examples like this can be
observed in ordinary everyday communication.
2.2.1.4 Politeness Principle
The variety of ways we express politeness are determined by
underlying, cultural-based assumptions about what it means to be polite. The
illocutionary force behind a particular polite utterance, a compliment for
example, might differ completely from one culture to another. Sociopragmatic failure can occur as a result of the learner’s miscalculations
regarding social distance, his or her relative rights and obligations, and the
size of an imposition carried by an utterance (Thomas, 1983).
In the light of sociolinguistic studies, some analysts have tried to
establish a theoretical framework to assist in comparing and contrasting
politeness features across cultures. Brown and Levinson (1987) divide polite
behaviour into positive politeness and negative politeness. Positive

politeness strategies are attempts by a speaker to treat the listener as a friend
or as someone to be included in discourse. Negative politeness is an attempt


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by the speaker to save the listener’s face by engaging in some formality or
restraint.
In addition, the theory on politeness focuses mainly on the concept of
“face” to explain the motivation for politeness behaviour.
Face means the public self-image of a person. It refers to that emotional
and social sense of self that everyone has and expects everyone else to
recognize. Within everyday social interaction, if a speaker says something
that represents a threat to another individual’s expectations regarding selfimage, it is a face threatening act (FTA). The speaker can say something to
lessen the possible threat to another’s face, it is known as a face saving act
(FSA).
When we try to save another’s face, we can pay attention to their
negative face wants or their positive face wants. Negative face is the need to
be independent and positive face is the need to be connected.
2.2.2 Conversational Competence
2.2.2.1 Communicative Competence
The communicative approach in language teaching starts from a theory
of language as communication. The goal of language teaching is to develop
what Hymes (1972) referred to as “communicative competence”. Hymes
coined this term in order to contrast a communicative view of language with
Chomsky’s theory of competence. For Chomsky, the focus of linguistic
theory was to characterized the abstract abilities speakers possess that enable
them to produce grammatically correct sentences in a language. Hymes held
that such a view of linguistic theory was sterile, that linguistic theory needed
to be seen as part of the more general theory incorporating communication

and culture. Hymes’s theory of communicative competence was a definition


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of what a speaker needs to know in order to be communicatively competent
in a speech community. Hymes recasts the scope of competence because of:
• lack of empirical support for the Chomskyan position
• differential competence
• heterogeneous speech communities
• involving diglossia = the use of different languages
• or varieties of the same language
• in different domains of use
• limitations of sentence-level grammar
Hymes expands the Chomskyan notions of grammatically (=
competence) and acceptability (= performance) into four parameters
subsumed under the heading of communicative competence. The notion of
performance is left free to account for actually occurring language use. In
Hymes’s view, a person who acquires both knowledge and ability for
language use with respect to:
1. whether (and to what degree) something is formally possible;
2. whether (and to what degree) something is feasible in virtue of the means
of implementation available;
3. whether (and to what degree) something is appropriate (adequate, happy,
successful) in relation to a context in which it is used and evaluated;

4. whether (and to what degree) something is in fact done, actually
performed and what its doing entails.

[Hymes 1972, p.281]

According to the Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and
Applied Linguistics (1992), communicative competence is defined as the
ability not only to apply the grammatical rules of a language in order to form
grammatically correct sentences but also to know when and where to use
these sentences and to whom. Communicative competence includes:


- 16 1. knowledge of the grammar and vocabulary of the language
2. knowledge of speaking (e.g. knowing how to begin and end conversations,
knowing what topics may be talked about in different types of speech events,
knowing which address forms should be used with different persons one
speaks to and in different situations)
3. knowing how to use and respond to different types of speech acts, such as
requests, apologies, thanks, and invitations

4. knowing how to use language appropriately

[40, p.65-66]

When someone wishes to communicate with others, they must
recognize the social setting, their relationship to the other person(s), and the
types of language that can be used for a particular occasion. They must also
be able to interpret written or spoken sentences within the total context in
which they are used. For example, the English statement It’s rather cold in
here could be a request, particularly to someone in a lower role relationship,
to close a window or door or to turn on the heating.
2.2.2.2 Conversational competence
In studying conversational discourse, a distinction can be made between
grammatical competence and conversational competence. According to

Richard (1985, p.129) grammatical competence describes a speaker’s
knowledge of the underlying systems of vocabulary, morphology, and syntax
that are required to construct grammatical sentences in a language. The
sentence is the unit of description for grammatical competence.
Conversational competence, however, is defined not with reference to the
sentence, but to the utterance. This refers to the speaker’s knowledge of how
speech acts are used in social situations.
There are many sentences in a language that are not used as utterances.
For example: “It’s half after two; It’s a third after two; It’s two fives after


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two”. They are all sentences in English, but not conventional ways of telling
time in English. They have no status as utterances. The set of grammatical
sentences of that are utterances in a language is much smaller than the set of
sentences in the language. For any speech act, a conventional set of way of
coding it exists. Thus the utterances that could be used to perform the speech
act of “requesting a cigarette from someone” includes A but excludes B:
A

B

Got a cigarette?

The speaker requests a cigarette

Could I have a cigarette?

A cigarette is requested by me

I’d love a cigarette

That which I request from you

Gimme a cigarette

is a cigarette

[38, p.130]

2.2.3 Conversational Routines
2.2.3.1 What's routine?
In everyday life, we exchange information through communicating with
each other. We greet and bid farewell to one another, introduce ourselves and
others, apologize and express gratitude, buy groceries and order meals,
exchange wishes, make requests, ask for advice or information, report on
what we did, and announce what we are about to do, etc. As similar speech
situations recur, speakers make use of similar and sometimes identical
expressions, which have proved to be functionally appropriate. In every
society there are standardized communication situations in which its
members react in an automatic manner. Routines reflect, in a sense, a
conception of a social system and their importance for socialization as well
as secondary acculturation is quite obvious, because routines are tools which
individuals employ in order to relate to others in an accepted way.


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The Oxford English Dictionary defines routine as “a regular course of

procedure; a more or less mechanical or unvarying performance of certain
acts or duties”. Clearly, according to this definition, routine can be found in
a great variety of human practices. Whenever repetition leads to
automatization, we could call a performance a routine.
As early as 1962, Hymes pointed out that an immense portion of verbal
behaviour consists of linguistic routines, and that the speech habits of a
community cannot be fully described without a thorough account of routines.
The analysis of routines includes identification of idiomatic units, not only
greeting formulas and the like, but the full range of utterances which acquire
conventional significance, for an individual, group or whole culture.
According to The Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and
Applied Linguistics [1992, p.319], a routine is a segment of language made
up several morphemes or words which are learned together and used as if
they were a single item. In this sense, routines are fixed formulas and a slight
change in their structure can confuse the other party. For instance, “In
routine greetings morning is good, birthday is happy and Christmas is
merry.” (Ferguson, 1976). Happy morning, merry birthday or good
Christmas, most likely create problems in communication.
However, not all routines are idioms, in the sense that their meanings
are unpredictable. But routine usage of expressions can, and often have an
effect on the meanings and the meaningfulness of these expressions.
Excessive currency corrupts expressiveness and diminishes meaningfulness.
Phrases such as, Good to see you! How are you? Take care! I haven’t seen
you for ages! Nice to met you. I’m afraid I must…, I’m sorry, I have to…, Be
seeing you, Cheerio, See you, Many thanks! Good Lord, etc. are often


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perceived as hackneyed expressions having lost their expressiveness. They

don’t lack meaning in strict sense altogether. Frequency of occurrence and
meaningfulness are inversely related; thus, as they are used more they mean
less and less. Erosion of its literal meaning is one way in which an
expression can turn into an idiom.
2.2.3.2 Kinds of Routines
According to The Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and
Applied Linguistics [1992, p.319], a routine or formula which is used in
conversation is sometimes called a conversational routine (e.g. That’s all for
now, How awful, You don’t say, The thing is…. Would you believe it) and
one used to show politeness is a politeness formula (e.g. Thank you very
much).
Wardhaugh [56, p.74] observes:
“There are routines to help people establish themselves in certain positions:
routines for taking off and hanging up coats; arrangements concerning
where one is to sit or stand at a party or in a meeting; offers of hospitality;
and so on. There are routines for beginnings and endings of conversations,
for leading into topic, and for moving away from one topic to another. And
there are routines for breaking up conversation, for leaving a party, and for
dissolving a gathering…. It is difficult …to imagine how life could be lived
without some routines…”

In this sense, conversational routines include several different types of
conversational utterances. Some are situational formulae, such as “Check
please,” said in a restaurant when requesting a bill. Some accompany
particular speech acts, such as “Don’t mention it” as a way of
acknowledging thanks. Some signal directions within discourse, to mark the


- 20 -

speaker’s attitudes towards what has been said or what is to be said, such as
“As a matter of fact”.
Many social events require the use of conversational routines as do the
majority of speech acts. Associated with the everyday round of activities that
constitute the lives of all of us is the use of language in predictable ways.
Conversational routines help define speech situations, and their appropriate
use is a vital component of social competence in a language. The ability to
use routines contributes to the sense of naturalness and nativeness about a
person’s speech. Speakers of a language appear to know hundreds of them
and the situation when their use is required.
For Vietnamese learners of English, such routines of the target language
are often acquired before their function is fully understood. They are picked
up as “canned utterances”, and their use may lead to an impression of
fluency that the learner does not really have. A stock of routines may even
constitute a survival strategy for learners, who can maneuver their way
across the surface of many transactions with the occasional use of routines.
Successful mastery of routines, however, poses special problems, since there
may be wide differences between the form and function of routines in the
mother tongue and target language. For instance, in English, speaking in case
of happening to see a friend in the street, the utterance: “How are you?” is
meant by the speaker as a greeting routine rather than an ordinary question
for information of the listener’s state of health.
2.2.4 Language Transfer and Interference
2.2.4.1 What is Language Transfer?
On learning a language, learners seem to translate whatever comes into
their mind into the target language and may impose their own language or


- 21 -

behaviour on the target language usage. Frequently, language learners keep
trying to find linguistic or cultural equivalence of their native language and
immediately transfer it into the target language. This habit will, to a
remarkable extent, impede the language learning process.
Learners of English, therefore, should be aware that “for a non-native
speaker, any conversational exchange with a native speaker of the target
language is a form of cross-cultural encounter” (Richards and Sukwiwat,
1986:129). Consequently, in conversation with a native speaker, any failure
in transferring language of learners of English may create risks of
communicative breakdown. This is mainly because the learners themselves
are short of knowledge of the target conversational routines and culture, they
tend to impose their own communicative style on the target language. In
their arguments concerning this issue, Levine and Baxter have pointed out
that during the process of learning a new language, “understanding the new
culture and learning the rules to communicate comfortably in it are as
important goals as learning the rules of language” (Levine and Baxter,
1990:41).
Richards (1985:205) defines Language Transfer as the effect of one
language on the learning of another. There are two types of Language
Transfer may occur: Positive and Negative Transfer.
• Positive Transfer is transfer which makes learning easier. It may
occur when both the native language and the target language have
the same form.
• Negative Transfer (also known as interference) is the use of a native
language pattern or rule, which leads to an error or inappropriate
form in the target language.


- 22 -

2.2.4.2 Kinds of Interference
In social interaction, interference is found in various ways:
- Interference may be culture-free, related to language only.
It is because of the rules of speaking (e.g. greeting, ways of opening and
closing conversations, address system) from one language when speaking
another and also known as communicative interference. For example,
conversations in English often open with a health question How are you?,
but in other languages, such as Vietnamese, open with such privacy
questions as Where are you going? or Have you eaten yet?. A Vietnamese
speaker learning English who opens a conversation in English with Where
are you going? or Have you eaten yet? would be speaking with
communicative interference from Vietnamese to English.
- Interference may be language-free, related to culture only.
This happens as a result of differences in social situations of the two
languages. A friendly hug of an American man or woman to a Vietnamese
may make him/her embarrassed and the latter may misinterpret the former
non-verbal behaviour and think negatively about the counterpart. As a result,
culture shock might occur.
2.2.4.3 Causes of interference
According to Richards (1985), the causes of interference are due to four
factors including:
- Differences in social situations
- Same situation – different routines
- Same routine – different function


- 23 -

- Correct routine – wrong situation
a) Differences in social situations

Cultures define social situations differently. Although there are many
social situations that are common across cultures, such as meals, weddings,
and funerals, there are others for which no direct equivalence exists in the
other culture, such as “at the pub” in Britain, attending a Buddhist ordination
ceremony for a young man in Thailand, or visiting elders and family
members on the New Year in Chinese and Vietnamese societies.
Presumably, routines are associated with these and many other culturally
specific events that are particular and unique to the culture in which they
occur.
b) Same situation - Different routines
Many different cultures all over the world share common social
situations. That means a situation exists in one culture may also be found in
others. That is why a foreigner for the first time happens to notice the
similarity in a strange country may think that people are universally the same
and there is not much variation among cultures. But even where social
situations are similar in two cultures, the routines associated with them may
differ. The reason is people in different cultures have their own conventional
ways of expressions in particular situations. As a result, the way a routine
that accompanies a speech act to be acknowledged may also vary. For
example, in English a compliment may be acknowledged with thanks:
(8) A: That was a lovely meal!
B: Thank you. I’m glad you liked it.

[46, p.12]


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However, in Vietnamese culture, an apology rather than a thank is an
appropriate reply to the compliment, as in the following situation:

(9) A: Chiếc áo này đẹp thật
B: Ồ không đó chỉ là chiếc áo cũ tôi đã mua lâu rồi
(A: What a beautiful shirt!
B: Oh, no. It’s just an old thing I’ve got for years. )

[App.2-5]

Different routines used in responding to speech act may reflect a choice
of a different member of a set of possible responses. For example, in offering
an apology the speaker may:
1. make an expression of apology
2. explain or account for his or her behavior
3. acknowledge responsibility
4. make an offer of repair

5. make a promise of forbearance

(Olshtain and Cohen, 1983)

However, the selection of which option to express (through routines in
many cases) may vary across cultures. In one language, speakers may
typically make an expression of apology, and in another they may simply
explain or account for their behavior.
c) Same routine - Different function
Two languages may share a similar routine but use it differently. In
English thank you may use to express gratitude, but in Japanese the
equivalent routine may not sound sincere enough, leaving the speaker with
the urge to add I’m sorry.

- 25 When a Japanese wants to express sincere gratitude, he feels urged to say
“I’m sorry”, since “thank you” does not sound sincere enough. This is one of
the typical mistakes Japanese make in their interactions with English
speakers, the latter might likely to say “Why sorry?”

(Sugiyama, in Coulmas 1979)
Meanwhile, Vietnamese people sometimes do not express gratitude by
saying “Thank you”, especially, when participants are close friends. In this
case a good remark or blame rather than a thank seems to be better
appropriate. For example, a person comes to visit his friend and gives the
hostess a present. The hostess, in encountering, may say:
(10)

Hostess: Bác đến chơi là quý hoá lắm rồi.
(It’s very nice of you to come here)

Or

- Sao bác lại làm thế ạ (Why did you do like that?)
- Đáng ra bác đừng nên tốn tiền quà cáp làm gì
(You should not have wasted money buying present like that)
[App. 2-6]

Routines with different functions in one language may be translated by
a single routine in another. For example, an English native speaker may be
very surprised when a Vietnamese girl says “Sorry” as asking him for being
allowed to come fore. He then wonders whether the girl makes a mistake or
does any harm to him. He may not know that “Sorry” and “Excuse me” are
both translated by a routine “Xin lỗi” in Vietnamese; or linguistically, in
Vietnamese “Xin lỗi” has two pragmatic functions. For neglecting the

functional difference of “Sorry” and “Excuse me” in English, the girl has fail