Politeness strategies in sympathy expressions in english with reference to vietnamese equivalents

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

M.A. THESIS
Field: English Language
POLITENESS STRATEGIES
IN SYMPATHY EXPRESSIONS IN ENGLISH WITH
REFERENCE TO VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS
(CHIẾN LƢỢC LỊCH SỰ BÀY TỎ SỰ CẢM THÔNG TRONG TIẾNG
ANH LIÊN HỆ VỚI TƢƠNG ĐƢƠNG TRONG TIẾNG VIỆT)

LE THI LAN ANH

Hanoi, 2018

i


MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

M.A. THESIS
POLITENESS STRATEGIES
IN SYMPATHY EXPRESSIONS IN ENGLISH WITH
REFERENCE TO VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS
(CHIẾN LƢỢC LỊCH SỰ BÀY TỎ SỰ CẢM THÔNG TRONG TIẾNG
ANH LIÊN HỆ VỚI TƢƠNG ĐƢƠNG TRONG TIẾNG VIỆT)

LE THI LAN ANH
Field: English Language
Code: 8220201

Supervisor name: PHAM THI TUYET HUONG

Hanoi, 2018

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CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY
I, the undersigned, hereby certify my authority of the study project report entitled
- “Politeness Strategies in Sympathy Expressions in English with Reference to
Vietnamese Equivalents - Nghiên cứu chiến lƣợc lịch sự bày tỏ sự cảm thông
trong tiếng Anh liên hệ với tƣơng đƣơng trong tiếng Việt” submitted in partial
fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master in English Language.
Except where the reference is indicated, no other person‟s work has been used
without due acknowledgement in the text of the thesis.

Hanoi, 2018

Le Thi Lan Anh

Approved by
SUPERVISOR

Ph.D. Pham Thi Tuyet Huong
Date:

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
It is obvious that this study would not have been possible without the assistance
and co-operative of many people.
I am most grateful to my supervisor, Doctor Pham Thi Tuyet Huong, who
stimulated me to investigate this topic in the first place. The success of the
dissertation is due to her constant encouragement, support, invaluable advice and
distinctive guidance, which she extended to me throughout the entire process. Of
course, any errors that have remained is my sole responsibility.
I wish to express my sincere thanks to all teachers of Hanoi Open University,
with whom I have taken courses, or come into contact during this time. I am
especially appreciative of the support and the constructive comments on the
thesis‟s proposal I received from them.
I would like to express my warmest thanks and enormous gratitude to the
participants who participated in my surveys to help me to have data collection to
fulfill my paper.
To my family and friends, I am really grateful of their unshakable love and
endless support. Had it not been for their launching pad, I could never have had
enough courage and energy to complete this study.

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ABSTRACT
This study investigates the politeness strategies employed by native English
speakers and Vietnamese speakers to express sympathy. It seeks what politeness
strategies English and Vietnamese speakers use in expressing sympathy, and then
how Vietnamese speakers should apply these politeness strategies in their daily
communication. The data was analyzed using a Discourse Completion Test and
relying on the models proposed by some pragmatists, such as Austin (1962),
Levison (1983), Searle (1990) about the speech acts, politeness, the issues of

implicature and politeness in expressing sympathy. The findings of the study
indicates that English speakers express their sympathy directly while the
Vietnamese prefer using roundabout and indirect expressions of sympathy. They
use a variety of external modifications. Furthermore, English speakers use a wide
range of internal modifications like the interrogatives, modals, intensifiers,
subjectizers, downtoners and commitment upgraders to release discomfort of the
hearers. On the other hand, Vietnamese speakers use a lot of external
modifacations with explanation, advice and promise to soothe the hearers. On the
basis of the findings, certain implications for teaching and learning English
language have been proposed, limitations have been pointed out and the further
research has been suggested.

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LIST OF FIGURE AND TABLES
Figure 1: Sympathy strategies by the English speakers .................................................. 39
Figure 2: Distribution of different types of sympathy external modifications by .......... 40
English speakers ............................................................................................................. 40
Figure 3: Summary of clause types of sympathy expressions chosen by English speakers
........................................................................................................................................ 42
Figure 4: The realization of communicative purposes used by English speakers to
express sympathy ............................................................................................................ 43
Figure 5: Sympathy strategies by Vietnamese speakers ................................................. 44
Figure 6: Distribution of different types of sympathy external modifications by
Vietnamese speakers ....................................................................................................... 45
Figure 7: Summary of clause types of sympathy expressions used by Vietnamese
speakers ........................................................................................................................... 47
Figure 8: The realization of communicative purposes used by Vietnamese speakers to
express sympathy ............................................................................................................ 48

Figure 9: Sympathy strategies by the English speakers and Vietnamese subjects ......... 50
Figure 10: Distribution of different types of sympathy external modifications between
the two nations ................................................................................................................ 52
Figure 11: Summary of the similarities and differences of clause types of sympathy
expressions in English and Vietnamese speakers ........................................................... 54
Figure 12: The realization of communicative purposes used to express sympathy........ 55

Table 1: Basic types of direct speech acts ...................................................................... 12
Table 2: The External Modifications made by Blum-Kulka et al (1987) ........................ 34
Table 3: Sympathy strategies by the English speakers ................................................... 38
Table 4: Distribution of different types of sympathy external modifications by English
speakers .......................................................................................................................... 39
Table 5: Summary of clause types of sympathy expressions chosen by English speakers
........................................................................................................................................ 41
Table 6: The realization of communicative purposes used by English speakers to
express sympathy ............................................................................................................ 42

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Table 7: Sympathy strategies by Vietnamese speakers ................................................... 44
Table 8: Distribution of different types of sympathy external modifications by
Vietnamese speakers ....................................................................................................... 45
Table 9: Summary of clause types of sympathy expressions used by Vietnamese speakers
........................................................................................................................................ 46
Table 10: The realization of communicative purposes used by Vietnamese speakers to
express sympathy ............................................................................................................ 48
Table 11: Sympathy strategies by the English speakers and Vietnamese subjects ......... 49
Table 12: Distribution of different types of sympathy external modifications between the
two nations ...................................................................................................................... 51

Table 13: Summary of the similarities and differences of clause types of sympathy
expressions in English and Vietnamese speakers ........................................................... 53
Table 14: The realization of communicative purposes used to express sympathy.......... 54

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
D: distance
DCT: Discourse Completion Task
FSAS: Face-saving acts
FTA: face-threatening act
MPQ: Meta-pragmatic Questionnaire
P: power
R: ranking

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LIST OF APPENDIXES

APPENDIX A METAPRAGMATIC QUESTIONNAIRE A ........................................ 65
APPENDIX B Discourse Completion Task B ................................................................ 69
APPENDIX C METAPRAGMATIC QUESTIONNAIRE C ........................................ 73
APPENDIX D Discourse Completion Task D ............................................................... 77

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY ................................................................................. i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................. iv
ABSTRACT...................................................................................................................... v
LIST OF FIGURE AND TABLES .................................................................................. vi
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ........................................................................................ viii
LIST OF APPENDIXES ................................................................................................. ix
TABLE OF CONTENTS.................................................................................................. x
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION .................................................................................... 1
1.1 Rationale for the study ............................................................................................ 1
1.2 Aims and objectives of the study ............................................................................ 2
1.3 Scope of the study ................................................................................................... 3
1.4 Methods of the study............................................................................................... 3
1.5 Design of the study ................................................................................................. 4
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW .......................................................................... 5
2.1 Previous Studies ...................................................................................................... 5
2.2 Some Concepts for the Study.................................................................................. 6
2.3 Speech Act .............................................................................................................. 7
2.4 Politeness .............................................................................................................. 10
2.4.1 Theory of Politeness ...................................................................................... 10
2.4.2 Social Factors Affecting Politeness ............................................................... 11
2.5 Directness and Indirectness .................................................................................. 12
2.5.1 Direct Speech Acts......................................................................................... 12
2.5.2 Indirect Speech Acts ...................................................................................... 13
2.6 Co-operative Principles......................................................................................... 14
2.7 The Issues of Implicature ...................................................................................... 18
2.8 Speech Act of Comfort ......................................................................................... 21
2.9 Politeness in Expressing Sympathy ...................................................................... 22
2.10 Summary of the Chapter ..................................................................................... 26
CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY .................................................................................. 27
3.1 The Research Questions........................................................................................ 27

3.2 Issues in Data Collection ...................................................................................... 27
3.2.1 Reasons for the Choice of Using the DCT .................................................... 27
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3.2.2 The DCT in Speech Act Studies .................................................................... 28
3.3 Data Collection Instruments ................................................................................. 29
3.3.1 Variables ........................................................................................................ 29
3.3.2 The Content of the Questionnaires ................................................................ 30
3.4 Data Collection Procedure .................................................................................... 32
3.5 The Subjects .......................................................................................................... 33
3.6 Analytical Framework .......................................................................................... 33
3.7 External modifications .......................................................................................... 34
3.8 Summary of the chapter ........................................................................................ 37
CHAPTER 4: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION ............................................... 38
4.1 Politeness strategies are preferably used by English speakers in expressing
sympathy in the certain contexts ................................................................................. 38
4.1.1 The Choices of Strategies by English speakers ............................................. 38
4.1.2 The Choice of External Modification by English speakers ........................... 39
4.1.3 The Internal Modification by English speakers ............................................. 40
4.1.4 The Realization of Sympathy Expressions by English speakers ................... 42
4.2 Politeness strategies are preferably used by Vietnamese speakers in expressing
sympathy in the certain contexts ................................................................................. 43
4.2.1 The Choices of Strategies by Vietnamese speakers....................................... 43
4.2.2 The Choice of External Modification by Vietnamese speakers .................... 44
4.2.3 The Internal Modification by Vietnamese Speakers ...................................... 46
4.2.4 The Realization of Sympathy Expressions by Vietnamese Speakers ............ 47
4.3 The similarities and the differences between English and Vietnamese in
expressing sympathy ................................................................................................... 49
4.3.1 The Choices of Strategies .............................................................................. 49

4.3.2 The Choice of External Modification ............................................................ 50
4.3.3 The Internal Modification .............................................................................. 52
4.3.4 The Realization of Sympathy Expressions .................................................... 54
4.4 Implications .......................................................................................................... 57
4.5 Summary of the Chapter ....................................................................................... 58
CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION ...................................................................................... 60
5.1 Summary of Findings............................................................................................ 60
5.2 Concluding Remarks............................................................................................. 60
5.3 Recommendation for Further Study ..................................................................... 61
REFERENCES ............................................................................................................... 62

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1 Rationale for the study
Cross-culture communication describes the ability to form, foster and improve
relationship with others. It is based on the knowledge of many factors, such as
the cultural values, perceptions, manners, social structures, decision-making
practices and the understanding of how members of various communities
communicate both verbally and non-verbally, in person, in writing or in any
other modes of communications.
However, people often fail to achieve the communicative goals due to
misunderstanding people from other cultures because people from different
cultures encode and decode messages differently, increasing the chances of
miscommunication. In other words, when miscommunication occurs, it means
that the speaker fails to get the speaker‟s intended meaning from the utterance.
Therefore, researchers need to probe into specific cultures to exploit concrete
speech acts to identify the different patterns and discourse strategies.
With its importance, Cross-culture Communication has been the topic of a large

number of Master Dissertations. A number of aspects of Cross-culture
Communication have been researched to be figured out like greetings,
requesting, prohibiting, thanking or apologizing. Research by Cenoz & Valencia
(1996) Cross-Cultural communication and inter-language pragmatics: American
vs European Requests; Trosborg (1987) Apology strategies in native & nonnative; Liao & Bresnahan (2006) A Contrastive pragmatics study on American
English and Mandarin refusal strategies have pointed out some difficulties in
acquiring a speech community‟s rules for appropriate language use like stated in
Tam (1998) Requests by Australian Native Speakers of English and Vietnamese
Learners of English; Phuong (2009) A Cross-Culture Study on Apology and
responding to Apologies in English and Vietnamese. All these dissertations have
indicated similarities and differences in the selection of the strategies and the
distribution of linguistic elements. However, one kind of emotion that is not easy
to express is expressing sympathy in English and Vietnamese and it has not been
adequately investigated. Therefore, the aim of the study is to compare the
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realization of the speech-act of sympathy made by Vietnamese speakers and
native English speakers to fulfill the gap in this area.
1.2 Aims and objectives of the study
AIMS OF THE STUDY

The aim of the study is to investigate major similarities and differences in
expressing sympathy in English and Vietnamese, particularly the communicative
strategies used to express the sympathetic emotion. It aims at providing a better
insight into cross-culture similarities and differences between the two languages
and cultures to help language users avoid communication breakdown.
OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

❖ Providing a general picture of the theory of speech acts and politeness

❖ Comparing and contrasting the communicative strategies used by Vietnamese
and English when they want to show their sympathy in verbal communication
to find out major similarities and differences in expressing sympathy in
English and Vietnamese in terms of linguistics in contexts studied.
❖ Contributing to raise cross-culture awareness among users of English and
Vietnamese languages
RESEARCH QUESTIONS

To achieve the objectives, the following three questions are raised to be
addressed:
1. What politeness strategies are preferably used by English speakers in
expressing sympathy in the certain contexts?
2. What politeness strategies are preferably used by Vietnamese speakers in
expressing sympathy in the certain contexts?
3. What are the similarities and the differences between English and Vietnamese
in expressing sympathy in terms of linguistics in contexts studied?

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The researcher needs to probe into specific contexts for the exploitation of
concrete speech acts and try to identify different patterns and discourse
strategies.
1.3 Scope of the study
The study is limited to the data obtained from the survey questionnaire on ways
of expressing sympathy in English and Vietnamese. The answers from
informants in the survey questionnaire and direct interviews are used as linguistic
inputs. Due to the limited time and the scope of the Thesis, only 55 English
speakers and 60 Vietnamese were chosen for data analysis. The study is also
restrained to verbal aspects of the act of expressing sympathy only. No matter

how important non-verbal aspects such as paralanguage and extra-language are,
they are excluded within the study. Only Vietnamese Northern dialect and
English native speakers are chosen for contrastive analysis. By English native
speakers, the author means those who speak English as their mother-tongue. The
study just focuses on social relationship and ignores the kinship between the
informants (Speakers) and the communicative partners (Hearers) as it is presupposed that in family relationship, sympathy is seemed to be expressed more
directly and frequently. The informants were asked to express their sympathy to a
certain person only, not a thing or an object.
1.4 Methods of the study
The survey is carried out with the following tools
(i)

Relevant publication

(ii)

Survey questionnaires

(iii)

Statistics, description and analysis of the collected data

(iv)

Consultation with the supervisor

(v)

Interview colleagues, friends and graduates

(vi)

Personal observation

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These methods have been used to research speech acts, choices of linguistic
forms or the choice of polite strategies in interaction to highlight some
similarities and differences of expressing sympathy in terms of linguistics
between English speakers and Vietnamese speakers in certain contexts.
1.5 Design of the study
The study consists of five chapters, references and appendixes.
Chapter 1: Introduction - Rationale, aims of the study, methodology and the
outline are addressed in this chapter.
Chapter 2: Literature Review. The chapter focuses on the theoretical issues
related to the topic of the study. To be begin with, it presents the issues of speech
acts and the speech act of comfort including the theory of politeness. After that,
the notions of directness and indirectness in sympathy, the matters of the
conversational maxims and the cooperative principles are pointed out.
Chapter 3: Methodology of the Research. The research questions, the design,
research methods including the selection of subjects, data collection instruments,
the procedure of the data collection and analytical framework of the study are
dealt with in this part.
Chapter 4: Data Analysis and Discussion. This section is about some findings on
the strategy and the choice of external and internal; modifications and sympathy
expressions in relation to the variables of power, social distance and ranking of
seriousness in the studying contexts.
Chapter 5: Conclusion. In this part the author aims at reviewing the research
findings and suggests some recommendations for Vietnamese users of English

and further studies.
References and appendixes come at the end of the study.

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CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
In this chapter, an overview of the theoretical background of the research is
indicated. It highlights the notions of speech act theory, classifications of speech
acts, some major issues of politeness in the performance of speech acts in
general. Besides, this chapter also deals with the issues of directness and
indirectness, the cooperative principle, the speech act of comfort. Then the
conversational maxims and the issues of implicature are also analyzed.
2.1 Previous Studies
The study of speech acts from a linguistic perspective, comparing either the
linguistic realization of speech acts in different languages or the speech acts
produced by native speakers and second language learners has been conducted by
both Vietnamese and foreign linguists. Research by Trosborg (1987) Apology
strategies in native/non-native; Liao & Bresnahan (1996) A contrastive
pragmatics study on American English and Madarin refusal strategies has
revealed some difficulties in acquiring a speech community‟s rules for
appropriate language use.
The studies of speech acts, face-threatening acts as requests, advice, refusals,
apology like in Tam (1998) Requests by Australian native speakers of English
and Vietnamese learners of English; Phuong (1999) A cross-cultural study on
advertising in English and Vietnamese have also pointed out similarities and
differences in the selection of the strategies and the distribution of linguistic
elements.
Furthermore, Vang‟s (1990) study on requests raises concerns in cross-cultural
issues about requests. The research indicates that there are potential differences

in perspective and the use of politeness strategies in making requests between
Vietnamese subjects and the Australian ones which are relevant to Vietnamese
learners of English.
In addition, in a study on thanking, Tam (1990) pointed out a diversity of
differences between Vietnamese speakers and Australian speakers. One of the
differences is about non-linguistic factors, which means when communicating in
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English, Vietnamese speakers apply their native norms in speaking English, and
they do not express their thank when native speakers expect it, thus they are
considered to be impolite.
These studies have provided some significant insights into both the difficulties of
Vietnamese learners of English as well as where Vietnamese learners have fewer
difficulties.
However, a study on politeness strategies of sympathy expressions in English
and Vietnamese has not been thoroughly researched. Therefore, the writer aims
at comparing the realization of the speech-act of sympathy by Vietnamese native
speakers and English native speakers to fulfill the gap of research in this area.
2.2 Some Concepts for the Study
Language was born to communicate, so it is closely linked to the culture in which
it exists and serves. Culture definitely is the background for language to develop,
and in return, language operates to serve culture. In fact, they are really interrelated and inter-dependent. Through language, speakers expose their culture,
and with knowledge of the cultural background, hearers may realize their
partner‟s culture in spite of the fact that individuals differ in the way they use.
It is the fact that there is no clear cut between cultures, which often causes
difficulties for foreigners in communication with people from different cultures.
Therefore, it is very necessary for cross-cultural communicators to be aware of
what the pragmatics is and what the differences between their cultures are in
order to avoid culture shock and to ensure successful communication.

According to Levinson, S. C. (1983:21), “pragmatics is the study of the
relationship between language and context that are basic to an account of
language understanding”. Pragmatics, on the whole, investigates the way in
which language is appropriate to the context in which it occurs. Therefore,
pragmatics goes beyond the meanings implied in individual words and word
order.
As for Richards (1992:284), pragmatics focuses on the three main aspects:

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- How the interpretation and use of utterances depend on knowledge of the real
world.
- How the speakers use and understand speech acts.
- How the structure of sentences is influenced by the relationship between the
speakers and the hearers.
Yule (1986:87) defines cross-cultural pragmatics as the study of differences in
expectations based on cultural schemata is part of a broad area of investigation
generally.
2.3 Speech Act
The theory of speech act has been so far developed by many pragmatists as
Austin (1962), Levinson (1983), Hymes (1964), Searle (1969) and Grice (1975).
They all define that speech act is a unit of speaking and each unit performs
certain functions in interaction such as greetings, congratulations, invitations,
complaints, apology, prohibitions, etc. Speech Act theory began with the work
“How to do things with words”. Austin (1962) claims that we do not use
language just to make utterances but to perform actions, which led him to a
theory of what he called illocutionary act.
The speech act theory is stated by the other philosophers, like John, R.S. (1969),
Brown, P. & Levinson, S. (1987) and Yule, G. (1996) that language is a part of a

theory of action, which means that when saying something, the speaker also
wants to do something. For example, if a person says: “I‟ll give you a hand when
you are in need.”, both the addresser and the addressee understand that the
utterance not only conveys the information but is also interpreted as a promise.
Sharing the same view, Nunan (1993) points out that when using language, we
not only want to make propositional statements about objects, entities, state of
affairs but we fulfill other functions as suggesting, requesting, denying,
introducing or apologizing. For instance, if someone says: “I think you should
turn down the radio. The baby is sleeping.” This is an act of complaining, or “I
regret to inform you that you were dismissed.” means an act of expressing
sympathy.
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When uttering a sentence, the speaker does not only characteristically perform
several acts but also bring about certain effects on the hearer. According to
Austin (1962) and Searle (1969), a speech act always consists of three related
acts: Locutionary act, Illocutionary act and Perlocutionary act. First, the
speaker‟s locutionary act is simply the act that we perform in saying something
or producing a meaningful linguistic expression. In Searle‟s view, a speaker
performs illocutionary acts by expressing his/her intention to get someone to do
something, to assert something… in a way that the listener can realize the
intention. For example if one says “It‟s a pity that he was rejected from Yule
University”, which is the act of expressing sympathy. The Perlocutionary acts are
the effects of illocutionary act. The addressee understands the intended meaning
of the addresser and performs the act that the addresser wants him to do. The
intended meaning is usually disguised in the form of structures, the literal
meaning if which does not directly relate to the intended meaning.
Of these three dimensions of an utterance, the illocutionary act is the only act that
puts the communicative force into the utterance. That is why illocutionary act

carrying the illocutionary force is the most important and the most discussed.
Further, Searle (1990) divided illocutionary acts into five major categories
namely

Directives,

Commissives,

Representatives,

Expressives,

and

Declaratives.
(1) Directives: The addresser tries to make the addressee do something with
words like ask, request, dare, invite, insist, beg… This directive function may be
realized by a wide range of forms like imperative statements, questions or a
statement whose illocutionary force is that of a directive. For instance, if
someone says “I am starving”, it acts as a request to have something to eat.
(2) Commissives: The addresser commits himself (or herself) to a (future) course
of action with verbs like pledge, swear, undertake, guarantee… Like directives,
commissives may vary in strength. They may be very strong and highly hedged
in either positive or negative directions. For example, one may say “Don’t worry!
I’ll lend it to you tomorrow”. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that the
appropriate forms used for commissive vary according to social relationship
between participants in a speech event.
8

(3) Representatives: The addresser asserts a proposition to be true, using such
verbs as “affirm, report, conclude, assert, admit…”
(4) Expressives: Expressives are speech acts that express an inner state like
feelings or attitudes to some prior action or state of affairs. These can be
statements of pleasure, pain, likes or dislikes, etc. With an expressive, the
addresser makes the words match the world (feeling). For instance, “What a nice
day!”.
(5) Declaratives are speech acts that make the world change via utterances. By
using a declarative, the addressee wants to make both the world match the words
and the words match the world. For example, when the host says “I declare the
meeting open”, it means it is time to start to make speeches.
As clearly indicated, expressing sympathy is of expressive types of illocutionary
act when people offer sympathy. They want to share others their feelings,
especially disappointment and sadness. In Oxford student‟s dictionary of current
English (1995), sympathy is defined as “the ability of sharing the feelings
(troubles, pain) of others, feeling of pity or sorrow for somebody”. For instance,
when someone is shocked, disappointed and full of grief, one might say:
❖ What awful news! I am sorry.
❖ I‟m sorry to hear such bad news.
❖ I‟m terribly sorry to hear that.
❖ I really don‟t know what to say. I can‟t believe it. I‟m very sorry.
❖ If there‟s anything I can do, just let me know.
❖ I‟m sorry. Is there anything that I can do to help?
❖ Please accept my sincerest condolences/sympathies.

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2.4 Politeness
Each society has a great deal of rules or ideas towards etiquette, thus, politeness

differs or greatly varies between cultures. In this section, politeness theory will
be presented and the influence of speech act in general and speech acts of
sympathy in particular will be analyzed.
2.4.1 Theory of Politeness
A large number of works have mentioned theory of politeness. Notably, Leech
(1980) and Brown & Levinson (1987) have focused on politeness as a pragmatic
phenomenon. In their views, politeness is interpreted as a strategy employed by a
speaker to achieve various goals, such as promoting or maintaining harmonious
relations.
Furthermore, Yule (1996) also defined politeness in an interaction as “the means
employed to show awareness of another person‟s face. In this sense, politeness
can be accomplished in situation of social distance or closeness.”
Goffman (1967:65) defined face as “the positive social value a person effectively
claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken during particular
contact. Face is an image of self-delineated in terms of approved social attributes
– albeit, an image that others may share as when a person makes a good showing
for his profession or religion by making a good showing for himself.” Within
politeness theory, face is best understood as every individual‟s feeling of selfworth or self-image; this image can be damaged, maintained or enhanced through
interaction with others.
In fact, politeness norms vary from culture to culture though there exist many
common principles of politeness and what is polite in this culture may be judged
as impolite in another culture. For example, in Vietnamese daily conversations,
we can ask others “How old are you?” or “Have you tied the knot?” to express
our care for others. However, they are considered impolite or curious in other
cultures.

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2.4.2 Social Factors Affecting Politeness

When we communicate, the expressions in given contexts will be influenced by
various factors.
Crystal (1992) states that language has a clear link to the following identities:
- Physical identity: sex, age, physical type and condition
- Psychological identity: personality and talent
- Social identity: class, role, status and distance
- Geographical identity: accents, dialects and linguistic areas
- Ethnic and national identity: ethnicity and nationalism
- Contextual identity: settings, participants and activities
The most important factor that affects the Vietnamese‟s choice of politeness
strategy is psychological identity.
Moreover, Brown and Levinson (1987) claim that there are three independent
variables that have a systematic effect on the choice of appropriate, polite
expressions in performing aface threatening act (FTA)under a certain
circumstance, outlined as follows:
- The social distance of the Speaker and the Hearer.
- The relative power of the Speaker and the Hearer.
- The absolute ranking of imposition in the particular culture.
The social distance in Brown & Levinson‟s (1987) terminology is a
symmetricsocial dimension of similarity/difference within which the Speaker and
the Hearer stand for the purposes of this act. In effect, it is the degree of
familiarity and solidarity the Speaker and the Hearer share as represented through
in-group or out-group membership.
The relative power is defined by Brown & Levinson (1987) as an asymmetric
social dimension of relative power or more simply it is the power of the Speaker
11


with respect to the Hearer. In reality, the power is the degree to which the
Speaker can impose his/her own plans and his own self-evaluation (face) at the

expense of the Hearer‟s plans and self-evaluation. Generally, there are two
sources of power, either of which may be authorized or unauthorized. In most
cases, an individual power is drawn from both these sources, which may overlap.
2.5 Directness and Indirectness
Pragmatic literature classifies speech act according to the degree of their
explicitness or directness. Speech acts could be replaced on a continuum ranging
from the most direct down to the least direct act which may be confused with a
normal constative utterance. It is crucial that speakers are aware of this
continuum because the degree of explicitness that is opposite for a given social
context is vital to observe. Any failure in this respect can misfire and cause
undesirable effects.
2.5.1 Direct Speech Acts
The degree of politeness is accompanied with directness and indirectness. Direct
speech acts are those acts where the utterance explicitly abides by its felicity
conditions (especially the structural ones). There are three basic types of direct
speech acts, and they correspond to three special syntactic types that seem to
occur in most of the world‟s languages.
Table 1: Basic types of direct speech acts

Speech act

Sentence type

Assertion

Declarative

Question

Interrogative

Function

Examples

To convey information He has got 3 gold
either true or false

To elicit information

medals.

Has

he

won

the

game?

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Orders and
requests

Imperative

To

cause

others

to

behave in certain ways

Keep quiet!

Although assertions, questions and orders are fairly universal, and most of the
world‟s languages have specific syntactic constructions that distinguish them,
other speech acts do not have a syntactic construction that is specific to them. For
instance: “If you do not try hard, you will fail the exams.”
This is simply a cause and effect relationship between physical events.
Or to express a threatening, one might say: “If you keep coming to work late, you
will be dismissed”, which is specific to the speech act of threatening.
A consideration of the syntactic means available for expressing the various
speech acts leads us to recognize that even for the three basic speech acts laid out
in the table above, speakers may choose means of expressions other than the
basic type associated with the speech act is question. To some extent, this just
reflects the existence of a diversity of means expression, but a more pervasive
reason is that speakers may use indirect rather than direct speech acts.
2.5.2 Indirect Speech Acts
It is a common knowledge that directness, indirectness and politeness are closely
interlinked and associated with different speech acts.
Blum-Lulka (1987:131) believes: “Politeness is defined as the interactional
balance achieved between two needs: the need to pragmatic clarity and the need

to avoid coerciveness. This balance is achieved in the case of conventional
indirectness, which indeed received the highest ratings for politeness''.
It might be the case that when giving a face-threatening act, indirectness degree
is measured as an indicator of reducing or minimizing the threat, which is equal
to
politeness. Direct strategies, in the favor of pragmatics clarity or noncoerciveness, can be considered to be impolite because they indicate a lack of

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concern with face and non-conventional indirect strategies can be considered as
impolite because they indicate a lack of concern for pragmatic clarity.
Leech (1983) suggests that given the same prepositional content, it is possible “to
increase the degree of politeness by using a more and more indirect kind of
illocution'' because indirect illocution is regarded as more polite by increasing the
degree of option.
If a teacher says to her student:
Could you say again your example, please?
She uses her utterance in a polite and indirect way. By doing so the teacher (1)
encourages her/his student to be self- confident enough to say the example again,
(2) does not use the power of teacher on the student, and (3) gives a soft and
beautiful request but does not impose the reaction of the student by using words
like ''Could'',''Please''.
Blum-Kulka also thinks ''Indirectness does not necessarily imply politeness that
is the reason why the most indirect strategies cannot obviously be regarded as the
most polite ones ''. The hearer's face can be threatened by the utterance:
“Khiếp ở đâu ra mà bẩn như ma bùn thế ?”
(Few, you look as if you were covered in mud)
And of course it is not as polite as:“Rửa mặt đi em.”(Wash your face).
2.6 Co-operative Principles

The success of conversation depends upon speakers‟ approaches to the
interaction. The way in which people try to make conversations work is called
the Cooperative Principle.
In order to examine the Cooperative Principles, we will first outline briefly the
basic concepts behind the Cooperative Principles and Maxims. Previous work by
Austin (1962) and Searle (1969) had largely been concerned with the relationship
between direct and indirect speech acts, and the concept that you could „do‟
things with words: language is as much of an action as opening a door or closing
a window. These proponents of the theory had moved away from the truth values
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