A COMPARATIVE STUDY ON MAKING INVITATION IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE FROM CROSS CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY
FACULTY OF ENGLISH
CODE: 32

GRADUATION THESIS
B.A DEGREE IN ENGLISH STUDY
A COMPARATIVE STUDY ON MAKING INVITATION IN ENGLISH
AND VIETNAMESE FROM CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE
Supervisor: M.A, Vũ Tuấn Anh
Name of student: Nguyễn Việt Hưng
Date of birth: 05/02/1996
Class: K21A2(2014-2018)

Hanoi - 2018


DECLARATION
A Comparative Study on Making Invitations in English and Vietnamese from Cross
- Cultural Perspective

I certify that no part of the above report has been copied or reproduced by me from
any other’s work without acknowledgement and that the report is originally written
by me under strict guidance of my supervisor.
Hanoi, 15 April, 2018

Student

Supervisor

signature

signature

Full name

Full name


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, M.A. Vu Tuan Anh
for his enthusiastic and useful guidance, insightful comments, and encouragement
without which my thesis would not have been completed.
My special thanks go to all my lecturers in Faculty of English, Hanoi Open
University for their precious assistance, knowledge and enthusiasm.
I am grateful to all the participants for their enthusiastic participation in the thesis.
Especially, I am indebted to my classmates in K21A2, especially Nguyen Huu
Chinh and Phan Xuan Nguyen, for their great support.
Last but not least, I would like to express my indebtedness to my family, especially
my parents, brothers and sisters who have given me constant support and love
during the completion of the thesis.


TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEGDEMENT
PART A: INTRODUCTION ………………………………………………………… 1
1. Rationale ……………………………………………………………………………... 1
2. Aims and objectives of the study …………………………………………………….. 3
3. Scope of the study ……………………………………………………………………. 3
4. Research questions …………………………………………………………………… 3
5. Methods of the study …………………………………………………………………. 4
6. Design of the study ………………………………………………………………….... 4

PART B: DEVELOPMENT …………………………………………………………... 5
CHAPTER ONE: LITERATURE REVIEW ………………………………………… 5
1.1 Politeness strategies …………………………………………………………………. 5
1.2. Generalization of speech acts ……………………………………………………...... 9
1.2.1. Definitions of speech acts ………………………………………………………… 9
1.2.2. Classification of speech acts …………………………………………………….. 12
1.2.3. Direct and indirect speech acts ………………………………………………….. 15
1.3. Invitations as speech acts …………………………………………………………. 16
1.4. Pragmatics and cross-cultural pragmatics ………………………………………… 17


CHAPTER TWO: MAKING INVITATION IN ENGLISH AND
VIETNAMESE……………………………………………………………………….. 20
2.1. Categories of inviting in English and Vietnamese ……………………………….. 20
2.1.1. Direct invitations in English and Vietnamese …………………………………... 21
2.1.2. Indirect invitations in English and Vietnamese ………………………………… 27
2.2. The similarities and differences in making invitations between English and
Vietnamese ……………………………………………………………………………. 34
CHAPTER THREE: APPLICATION FOR ENGLISH LEARNERS IN
TRANSLATION …………………………………………………………………….. 37

3.1. Cultural mistakes ………………………………………………………….. 37
3.2. Solutions …………………………………………………………………... 39
PART C: CONCLUSION ………………………………………………………….. 42
REFERENCES ……………………………………………………………………… 44
In English
In Vietnamese
Sources from internet

PART A: INTRODUCTIONS

1. Rationale
There is no doubt that today mastering a language is very necessary because it can give
learners important opportunities to communicate to study and work effectively abroad. It
is very difficult to master a foreign language because the enormous vocabulary and
profound understanding in grammar are not enough.
From that view it is necessary for learners to understand the culture of the language that
they want to master. Let take English and Vietnamese as an example. There are
differences in the use of language between English and Vietnamese. To learn a language
means to learn the culture of the country where the language is spoken. This can help
learners to master this language as well as immerse in to the culture and daily life the
target language to comprehend that language.
Acquiring a second language demands more than learning new words and another system
of grammar (Levine and Adelman, 1982). The goal of learning language nowadays is to
be able to have effective communication with native speakers. However, communication
can fail to achieve as the misunderstanding of the country’s culture. The good knowledge
of the country’s culture can helps learners to interact well with the people in the native
country where the language is widely spoken. As a result, it is very difficult to combine
culture and use cultural knowledge well in learning a language. Each language and the
culture of the country cannot be separated from each other. Each country has its own
traditions, customs, rituals reflected by the language.
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Understanding social conventions and attention to such concepts as politeness, and face,
which are important to members in a particular culture, will certainly enable us to better
comprehend the different ways of speaking by people from different cultures, thus
helping eliminate ethnic stereotypes and misunderstandings. Problems arise as language
learners are not competent and fail to understand the cultural- social aspects of

communication. Take speech acts of invitation as an example. Vietnamese saying goes:
"khách đến nhà không trà thì bánh" (when guests come, either tea or cakes should be
served). This saying highlights the importance of inviting in Vietnamese culture, where
invitation speech acts make up a high proportion in daily interactions. Inviting
undoubtedly plays an important role in communication in all cultures. Wall (1987)
indicated that many of our daily social interactions involve making invitations and
responding to them. In daily social life, people are sometimes invited to go somewhere or
to do something on important occasions such as weddings, birthdays, and graduations, to
small ones like movies, eating out, or vendors in the markets invite customers to buy their
items. Take these two following sentences as examples:
(1) Alan and I wanted to have a few people over for a dinner party to celebrate finishing
my dissertation, and we’d like to invite you especially, since you’re chairman. (Tillitt &
Bruder, 1999, p.23).
(2) Ăn cho vui. Cô Nga. (Thach Lam, 2000, p.167)
Invitations help to establish, maintain, reinforce and further strengthen social rapports.
Americans and Vietnamese share certain similarities in terms of making and responding
to invitations in social interactions. However, differences are undoubtedly numerous.
Many cases of making invitations are different in Vietnam and American. Mastering how
to make appropriate invitations which are suitable to a particular culture should be taken
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in considerations so as not to cause hurts, shocks, misunderstandings, and
misinterpretations. A frequently misunderstood area in American verbal interaction is that
of extending, accepting, and refusing invitations (Levine & Adelman, 1982). Moreover,
helping Vietnamese learners of English master and use invitation-making effectively is a
must.

2. Aims and objectives of the study
The thesis aims to find out the good ways to make invitations in Vietnamese and English

native speakers. In addition, this paper aims to find out the syntactic and cultural
similarities and differences between spoken invitations in Vietnamese and English native
speakers.

3. Scope of the study
This paper focuses on how to make invitations in English and Vietnamese speakers. This
paper, moreover, aims to analyze the similarities and differences in making invitations in
English and Vietnamese.

4. Research questions
The research is aimed to answer the following to answer the following questions:
1. How to make spoken invitations in the English culture?
2. How to make spoken invitations in the Vietnamese culture?
3. What are similarities and differences in making spoken invitations in making spoken in
the Vietnamese and English cultures?
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4.What are the implications of the similarities and differences in making spoken
invitations in the English and Vietnamese to English learners?

5. Methods of the study
In carrying the research I have adopted such methods of study as descriptive methods,
contrastive analysis, statistic techniques and observation.

6. Design of the study
The study consists of three parts:
Part A -Introduction deals with Rationale, Aims, Scope, Research Questions, Methods and
Design of the study.
Part B- Development consists of three chapters: Chapter 1 talks about Literature Review,

Chapter 2 states on making invitation in English and Vietnamese, some similarities and
differences between English and Vietnamese invitations.
Chapter 3- Application for English learners in translation will be pointed out.
Part C - Conclusion will be shown, followed by References part.

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PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER ONE: LITERATURE REVIEW

1.1. Politeness strategies
Politeness, an issue which has a great impact to human being and deeply influences
to human interaction, will be now discussed right in this part because
Politeness is basic to the production of social order, and a precondition of
human cooperation … any theory which provides an understanding of this
phenomenon at the same time goes to the foundation of human social life.
(Brown and Levinson, 1987)
In language studies, politeness implies the following: "(a) how languages
express the social distance between speakers and their different role relationships,
(b) "how face-work, that is, the attempt to establish, maintain, and save face during
conversation, is carried out in a speech community" (Richards et al. 1985, p.281).
Languages differ in how they express politeness. In English, phrases like It’s hot
here. I wonder if I could open the window? can be used to make a request more
polite. In other languages, the same effect can be expressed by a word or particle.
Politeness markers and the use of address forms convey differences between formal
speech and colloquial speech.

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Human communication serves to establish and maintain not only a comfortable
relationship between people but also a social harmony. Therefore, in interpersonal
communication, in terms of politeness, every participant notes social factors such as
age, gender, power and distance among the interlocutors. Moreover, politeness may
be described as a form of behaviour which is exercised in order to consolidate and
promote relationship between individuals or, at least, to keep it undamaged.
According to Leech (1983), politeness means to minimize the effect of impolite
statement or expression (negative politeness) and maximize the effects of polite
illocutions (positive politeness) (Leech, 1983). However, the best-known theory is
developed by Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987). Their universalistic formulation of
politeness theory is problematic in some aspects.
The main issue of politeness is the notion of face. Face is defined as “the public
self-image that every member wants to claim for himself” (Brown and Levinson
1987, p.61). "Face" associates with the English idiom to lose face which means “to
do something which makes other people stop respecting you; to not maintain your
reputation and the respect of others”. Brown and Levinson treats the aspects of face
as “basic wants”, and distinguishes between positive face and negative face. Positive
face is interpreted as the want of every member to be desirable to, at least, some
others, whereas negative face is the want of every “competent adult member” for his
actions to be unimpeded by others (1987, p.62).
Moreover, Yule (1996) argues that in most English speaking contexts, the
participants in an interaction often have to determine, as they speak, the relative
social distance between them, and hence their face wants (1996, p.61)
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“In everyday social interactions, people generally behave as if their public selfimage, or their face wants, will be respected. If a speaker says something that
represents a threat to another individual’s expectations regarding self-image, it is
described as a face threatening act. Alternatively, given the possibility that some

action might be interpreted t as a threat to another’s face, the speaker can say
something to lessen the possible threat. This is called a face saving act.” (Yule 1996,
p.61).
Analyzing politeness, the anthropologists Brown and Levinson (1987)
distinguishes between positive
closeness, intimacy, and

strategies of politeness, those which show

rapport between the speaker and the hearer, and negative

politeness strategies, those which indicate various degrees of social distance
between the speaker and hearer. In this sense, politeness varies to show awareness
of another person’s face in situations of social distance or closeness. The choiceof
appropriate politeness strategies in a given context depends on a number of factors.
Brown and Levinson (1987) groups these factors into a simple formula consisting of
three independent variables, namely the social distance (D) of the speaker and the
hearer (a symmetric relation), the relative power (P) of the speaker and the hearer
(an asymmetric relation), and the absolute ranking of impositions (R) in the
particular culture.
The social distance (D) is a symmetric social dimension of similarity/difference
within which the speaker and the hearer stand for the purposes of this act. In some
situations, D is based on a evaluation of frequency of interaction and the types of
material and non-material goods (embracing face) between S and H. The evaluation
will be usually measures of social distance relied on stable social attributes.
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The relative power (P) which is an asymmetric social dimension is the degree to
which H can impose his own plans and his own self– evaluation (face) at the

expense of S’s plans and self – evaluation. Generally, there are two sources of P,
either of which may be authorized or unauthorized – material control (over
economic distribution and physical force) and metaphysical control (over the actions
of others, by virtue of metaphysical forces subscribed to by those others.The
absolute ranking (R) of imposition which is situationally and cuturally defined is the
degree to which there is an interference in the speaker’s wants or self-determination
or approval (speaker’s negative and positive wants). There are normally two scales
or ranks which are identifiable 21 for negative–face: a ranking of impositions in
proportion to the expenditure of services (including the time provision) and good
(including non –material goods such as information, regard expression and other
face payments). As for positive – face, the, ranking of imposition embraces an
assessment of the amount of "pain" given to the hearer’s face, based on the
differences between the hearer’s desired self-image and that presented in face
threatening acts. Cultural rankings of facets of positive face (like success, niceness,
beauty etc.) can be reranked in specific circumstances, so do the negative face
rankings. Besides, that there are also personal rankings can explain why some people
object to certain kinds of face threatening acts and some do not.
These three factors affect indirectness in human interaction, especially in the
choice of politeness strategies which is an essential aspect of inviting. Together with
cross -cultural perspective, politeness is an another aspect which are used to create
the anlytical framework for data analysis.
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Basing on the theory of Brown and Levinson (1987), a bank of 6 situations was
designed to elicit offers. These situations were grouped according to three variables,
namely social distance (D) of the speaker and the hearer, the relative power (P) of
the speaker and the hearer (an asymmetric relation), and the absolute ranking (R) of
impositions in the particular culture. The situations under study were as follows:
The speaker has more power than the hearer; they are unfamiliar with each other.

The speaker has more power than the hearer; they are familiar with each other The
speaker and the hearer are equal in power; they are unfamiliar with each other.
The speaker and the hearer are equal in power; they are familiar with each other.
The speaker has less power than the hearer; they are unfamiliar with each other.
The speaker has less power than the hearer; they are familiar with each other.
1.2. Generalization of speech acts
1.2.1. Definitions of speech acts
J. Austin (1962) takes the pioneering role in formulating the theory of speech acts.
According to him, all utterances should be viewed as actions of the speakers, stating
or describing is only one function of language. He points out that the declarative
sentences are not only used to say things or describe states of affairs but also used to
do things.
Also, in 1962, he defines speech acts as the actions performed in saying
something. When people produce utterances, they often perform actions via those
utterances. These actions are called speech acts: such as apology, complaint,
compliment, invitation, promise, or request. A speech act is part of a speech event.
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The speech act performed by producing an utterance, consists of three related acts
including locutionary act, illocutionary act and perlocutionary act. They are listed as
follows:
Locutionary act is the basic act of producing a meaningful linguistic expression.
The locutionary act is performed with some purposes or functions in mind.
Illocutionary act is an act performed via the communicative force of an
utterance. In engaging in locutionary acts we generally also perform illocutionary
acts such as informing, advising, offer, promise, etc. In uttering a sentence by virtue
of conversational force associated with it.
Perlocutionary act is what we bring about or achieve by saying something, such
as convincing, persuading, deterring perlocutionary acts are performed only on the

assumption that the hearer will recognize the effect you intended.
Speech acts, since then, developed by many famous philosophers and have been
central to the works and further developed by many other philosophers and a great
concern of any research paper in terms of doing researches on linguistic fields.
The two other famous linguistic researchers are Schmidt and Richards who
reaffirm that: speech act theory has to do with the functions of languages, so in the
broader sense we might say that speech acts are all the acts we perform through
speaking, all things we do when we speak. The theory of speech acts is partly
taxonomic and partly explanatory. It must systematically classify types of speech
acts and the ways in which they can succeed or fail. It must reckon with the fact that

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the relationship between the words being used and the force of their utterance is
often oblique.
Paltridge (2000) defines that a speech act is an utterance that serves a function in
communication. Some examples are an apology, greeting, request, complaint,
invitation, compliment or refusal. A speech act might contain just one word such as
"No" to perform a refusal or several words or sentences such as: "I' m sorry, I can't, I
have a prior engagement". It is important to mention that speech acts include reallife interactions and require not only knowledge of the language but also appropriate
use of that language within a given culture. Socio-cultural variables like authority,
social distance, and situational setting influence the appropriateness and
effectiveness of politeness strategies used to realize directive speech acts such as
requests (p.15).
Yule (1996, p.47), another famous linguist, defines that "in attempting to express
themselves, people do not only produce utterances containing grammatical
structures and words, they perform actions via those utterances." According to him,
actions performed via utterances are speech acts.
In daily communication, people perform speech acts when they offer an apology,

greeting, complaint, invitation, compliment or refusal. Since people often do more
things with words than merely convey what words encode, speech acts have to be
seen from real-life interactions. For example, in a classroom situation, when a
teacher says:
(1) May I have your attention?
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(1) is a request more than a question. In the same way, when a student talks to his

friend,
(2) We’re having some people over Saturday evening and wanted to know if

you’d like to join us.
(2) is an invitation more than a question. Moreover, speech acts require not only

knowledge of any languages but also the culture of the country where this
language is use. For examples in Vietnamese when we utter:
(3) Where are you going?

(3) means we are greeting the people we meet.

1.2.2. Classification of speech acts
According to Yule (1996), there is one general classification system that lists five
types of general functions performed by speech acts including declarations,
representatives, expressives, directives, and commissives.
Declarations are speech acts that change the world via their utterance. The
speaker has to have a special institutional role, in a specific context, in order to
perform a declaration appropriately. For example, "Priest: I now pronounce you
husband and wife."

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Representatives are speech acts that state what the speaker believes to be the
case or not. Statement of fact, assertions, conclusions and descriptions are examples
of the speaker representing the world as he or she believes it is. For example, “The
Moon goes round the Earth." or "It is windy today."
Expressives are speech acts that state what the speaker feels. They express
psychological states and can be statement of pleasure, pain, likes, dislikes, joy and
sorrow. For example, "What a great party!".
Directives are speech acts that the speakers use to get the Hearer to do
something. They express what the speaker wants. For instance, "Stand up, please!"
or "Could you open the door?".
Commissives are speech acts that speakers use to commit themselves to some
future action. They express what the speaker intends. For example: "I’ll give one
hand." or "I’ll be back."
Yule (1996) also presents a table showing speech acts classification as follows:

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Table 1.2.2: Speech acts classification

Speech act types

Direction of fit

S = Speaker
X = Situation

Declarations

words change the world

S causes X

Representatives

makes words fits the world

S believes X

Expressives

makes words fits the world

S feels X

Directives

make the world fits words

S wants X

Commissives

make the world fits words

S intends X

The usefulness of speech acts analysis is illustrating the kinds of things we can
do with words and identifying some of the conventional utterance forms we use to
perform specific actions. However, we need to look at more extended interaction to
understand how those actions are carried out and interpreted within speech events.
However, to compare selected speech acts from two languages, the topic is still
vast and could not be treated exhaustively in any one work. The cultural norms
reflected in speech acts differ not only from one language to another, but also from
one regional and social variety to another. So, different cultures find expression in
different system of speech acts, and that different speech acts become entrenched,
and, to some extent, codified in different languages.
Of these types, the characteristics of invitations can be easily recognised in
commissives and directives. In our daily interactions, inviting is one kind of speech
act that is commonly used with high frequency.
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1.2.3. Direct and indirect speech acts
In the former part, classification of speech acts have been made clear in terms of the
speaker's intention of Yule (1996). This part take a look at another way of classifying
speech acts.
Another approach to distinguish different types of speech acts is based on the
relationship between the structure and the function. Yule (1996) claims that three
structural forms (declarative, interrogative, imperative) and three general
communicative function (statement, question, command/request) can be combined to
create two other types of speech acts: direct and indirect speech acts. The following
example illustrates this:
Yule (1996) defines that whenever there is an indirect relationship between a
structure and a function, we have an direct speech act as in the following examples
(4) Do join me for a coffee? (Le Huy Lam, 2000)
Whenever there is an indirect relationship between a structure and a function, we

have an indirect speech act as in the following examples.
(5) Would you like to come over for dinner tomorrow? (Tillitt & Bruder, 1999)
It is not only used as a question but also a request, hence it is considered to be an
indirect speech act. He adds that indirect speech acts are generally associated with
greater politeness in English than direct speech acts.
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1.3. Invitations as speech acts
There are, first, two concepts that are needed to make clear, namely invite and
invitation. Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary indicates that to invite means to
ask somebody to come to a social event or to ask somebody formally to go to
somewhere or do something. According to Cambridge Advanced Learner’s
Dictionary, an invitation means a polite request in which a person is asked to come
to an event or to perform some task as in the examples below:
(6) I would like to invite you to a party next Friday.
(Tillitt & Bruder, 1999)
According to Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, an invitation means a
polite request in which a person is asked to come to an event or to perform some
task. As in the following examples:
(7) Would you like to come over my place on Thanksgiving?

(8) I’d love to. Shall I bring anything?

Similarly, Vietnamese dictionary (1994) defines "lời mời" as a wish or a polite
request that somebody does something or goes to somewhere. The following
examples illustrate this:

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(9) Anh Tuệ, mời anh vào chơi! (Khai Hung, 1988) (Mr.

Tue, Come in, please!)
(10) Rước cụ ngồi chơi. (Khai Hung, 1988)

(Get - you - sit - play)
In his dissertation, Nguyen Van Lap (2005) points that "Invitations are polite
utterances, requesting others to do something together, which satisfies both the
speaker and hearer's benefits.
Le Thi Mai Hong (2009) indicates that invitation is the act of inviting or a
requesting to participate, be present or take part in something. Invitation is also a
speech act that expresses the speaker’s friendliness, politeness as well as respect and
hospitality toward the hearer.". In addition, Wolfson (1989) defines invitations as
speech acts that contain reference to time and/or mention of place or activity, and
most important, a request for response.

1.4. Pragmatics and cross-cultural pragmatics

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As the study is centered on the speech act of invitations in terms of cross - cultural
perspective. It is, therefore, necessary to look at some basic information on what is
called pragmatics and cross - cultural pragmatics.
Pragmatics, since its appearance, has excited great attention from many leading
linguists. Enormous efforts have gone into reaching a satisfactory definition of this
linguistic phenomenon.
The notion of pragmatics is clarified by Richards, Platt, & Webber (1992, p.284) as
follows:

Pragmatics includes the study of:
How the interpretation and use of utterances depend on knowledge of the real
world;
How speakers use and understand speech acts;
How the structure of sentences is influenced by the relationship between the
speaker and the hearer.
Of the above issues, the study of speech acts is considered to be of high
importance to pragmatics.
Yule (1996, p.3) defines pragmatics as follows:
Pragmatics is the study of speaker meaning.
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Pragmatics is the study of contextual meaning.
Pragmatics is the study of how more get communicated than is said.
Pragmatics is the study of the expression of relative distance.
As "every culture has its own repertoire of characteristic speech acts" and "different
cultures find expression in different system of speech acts and different speech acts
become entrenched, and to some extent, codified in different languages"
(Wierzbicka (1991, p.25). Nguyen Thien Giap (2007) states that in different cultures,
speech acts are performed in different ways through different languages.
Linguists, these days, has studied, contrasted how language is used in different
cultures, which is called contrastive pragmatics. Nguyen Thien Giap (2007) adds
that in order to master a language successfully, to carry out effective intercultural
communication, having the knowledge of the language is by all means insufficient,
but the knowledge of pragmatics is a must.
Through what has been discussed so far, the speech act of invitations in English and
Vietnamese is not exception. It is about discussed in the study under contrastive
analysis. Cross-cultural perspective, certainly, is a great concern during the data
collection and analysis.

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CHAPTER TWO: MAKING INVITATIONS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE
2.1. Categories of inviting in English and Vietnamese
Invitations can be in the forms of direct or indirect utterances. This paper aims to
investigating the similarities and differences in terms of syntactic and cross-cultural
features of spoken invitations in English and Vietnamese, in the effort of increasing
not only the effectiveness of teaching and learning invitations utterance in English
and Vietnamese but the ability to use language for Vietnamese learners of English.
Nevertheless, there is a little proper work on inviting in both languages. The
analytic framework of this study has been collected from a number of English and
Vietnamese researches as well as practical textbooks to invitations which contains
different forms of inviting. These are dissertations by Nguyen Van Lap (2005), Luu
Quy Khuong (2004), Tran Yen Bao Tran (2009), and Tillitt and Bruder (1999). In
these researches and textbooks, different linguistic forms of invitations are specified
and found out. In this study, categories of inviting in English and Vietnamese be
respectively discussed.
Tilltitt and Bruder (1999) has introduced numerous structures of English
invitations used in formal situations to informal ones. In his dissertation, Nguyen
Văn Lap (2005) has introduced forms of Vietnamese inviting including invitations in
with performative verb (mời) and invitations without performative verb. Luu Quy
Khuong (2007), in addition, has introduced different kinds of direct invitations in
English and Vietnamese. He indicated similarities and differences between English
and Vietnamese through contrastive analysis. Plus, another research goes to Tran
25