A comparative study of the politeness markers in the offering in english and vietnamese

Chapter 1

Introduction
1.1.

background of THE research
This descriptive and comparative research into the Politeness markers

including Strategies of language use (or Illocutionary Strategies) and Social Deixis
(primarily consisting of Person-referring Forms and Formal Items) (Brown P. and
Levinson S. [11], Nguyen Duc Hoat [36, p. 325]) in the speech act of offering in
English and Vietnamese is carried out because of the following reasons:
1.

There have been so far a lot of contrastive studies into certain speech acts

including Face- threatening Acts (FTAs) such as requests by Nguyen Duc Hoat
[36], Ha Cam Tam [83], Mulken M. V. [62], Sifianou M. [79], Nguyen Van Do [104],
Ohashi J. [66], Tran Lan Phuong [124], complaints by Eslami - Rasekh Z. [22],
refusals by Liao C. C. and Bresnahan M. I. [55], Phan Thi Van Quyen [68] etc.; and
Face- enhancing Acts (FEAs) such as compliments by Nguyen Quang [125],
Nguyen Minh Nguyet [65]. In spite of its frequent occurrences in various kinds of
interpersonal communication there has been little research done on the speech act
of offering which may be either a FTA or a FEA.
2.

If any, there still remain limitations in the study of this speech act. The studies

by Rabinowitz J. F. [69], Hoang Thi Thu Lan [52] mainly focus on the linguistic
expressions of the offering. They do not base on the face notion to explain the
Politeness Markers used in the speech behavior of offering. Chu Thi Bich [97] narrows

down her study on the speech act of offering in Vietnamese. Although Nguyen Thi
Hong Ha [32] has a more expanded cross-cultural research on the speech acts of
offering and responding in English and Vietnamese, her research centers round
offering gifts, which is one part of the offering. In fact, according to Wierzbicka A. [91]
and Rabinowitz J. F. [69], the offering involves offering a service or an item. In other
words, the offering to a full sense involves “the offerer’s
showing or expressing the willingness or intention to do something for or to give
something to the hearer” (Hornby A. S. [38, p. 623]). In this sense, the speech act of

1


offering has not been thoroughly studied by Chu Thi Bich and Nguyen Thi
Hong Hµ either.
Generally, the above-mentioned studies on the speech act of offering are
restricted to the linguistic expressions rather than based on the face assumption which
may be radically influenced by the cultural features to explain the use of the
Politeness Markers in this speech act. Nonetheless there exist in all languages these
interrelated elements to express politeness in speech acts including the offering.

1.2. aims and Scope of the research
Due to the time and resource constraints, this research is restricted to the
descriptive and comparative study on the Politeness Markers in the offering in
Australian English and Vietnamese. As a result, the research is intended:
1.
To describe the Politeness Markers used in the speech act of
offering

performed by the native Australian speakers.
2. To describe the Politeness Markers used in the speech act of

offering performed by the native Vietnamese speakers.
3. To compare their use of the Politeness Markers in the speech act of
offering along the directness/indirectness dimension in various social
situational contexts studied.
4.
To explain the underlying reasons for the similarities and/or
dissimilarities in their use of these Politeness Markers.
1.3. Theoretical and practical implications
This research could offer the following theoretical and practical implications:

1.

The findings of this research could provide the knowledge of the

speech act of offering in Australian English and Vietnamese, which could be
necessary for the researchers of pragmatic field and for those who use it as
a means of intercultural communication to avoid “culture shock”.
2.

This research based on the face assumption which may be impacted by the

cultural features to explain the use of the Politeness Markers in the speech act of

offering in Australian English and Vietnamese could make a significant contribution

2


compared to the former researches restricted to the study of the linguistic
expressions of speech acts including the offering. Truly a speech act is a basic

pragmatic unit of communication (Trosborg A. [85]), whose semantic structure
is closely associated with the ideology and cultural features of the community
employing that speech act. The ideology and cultural features of the community
in their turns determine whether or not a speech act is of politeness in the ongoing verbal interaction from the interlocutors’ perception of face. In other
words, there must be an entwined relationship between the semantic structure
and pragmatic sense of a speech act including the offering in association with
linguistic politeness, which may not have been intensively studied by the
previous studies on the speech act of offering.

3.

This research could help the pragmatists and the learners of English

or Vietnamese as a foreign language have a deeper insight into speech acts
including the offering in Australian English as an Indo-European inflectional
language and in Vietnamese as a typical tonic and non-inflectional AustroAsiatic language. Especially the findings of this research is useful for
Vietnamese learners of English and Australian learners of Vietnamese in
that they could help these learners better learn English or Vietnamese as a
foreign language in a scientific and systematic way and in this way could
prevent them from committing unexpected pragmatic errors.
1.4. research methods
The methods used in this research are descriptive and comparative.
-

Descriptive: the Politeness Markers in the speech act of offering in

Australian English and Vietnamese are described in relation to the semantic
structure and pragmatic properties.
- Comparative: The coding system for the comparison of the strategies
of

offering in Australian English and Vietnamese used in this thesis are
modified from the coding system of strategies developed by Blum-Kulka S.
et al. [8] and Rabinowitz J. F. [69], which cover seven strategies within the
three major Strategy Categories ranking in a decreasing level of directness.

3


The comparative method is preferred to the contrastive method because of
the following reasons. The findings from the thesis based on this comparative
method (to find out the similarities and differences) could offer not only the
practical implications in a foreign language teaching method of a speech act (as
the contrastive method [to find out the differences] could) but also the linguistically
theoretical implications concerning the semantic, structural and pragmatic aspects
of a speech act including the offering in the two languages compared.

1.5. structure of the thesis
From the above-mentioned issues, this thesis could be organized into
the following chapters:
Chapter 1 introduces the background, the aims and scope, the theoretical
and practical implications, the research methods and the structure of the thesis.

Chapter 2 provides a review of different approaches to linguistic
politeness study and discusses my viewpoint on the appropriate approach to
study linguistic politeness in Vietnamese culture.
Chapter 3 discusses the methodology issues including research questions, data
approach and the research method, the data collection methods, the selection of
subjects, the research procedure involving the procedure for the administration of the
Pilot Questionnaires (PQs) and the Discourse Completion Tests (DCTs).

Chapter 4 describes and discusses the identification of the speech act of
offering in Australian English and Vietnamese to highlight its distinctive features. A
further analysis of the Politeness Markers used in the speech act of offering in
Australian English and Vietnamese is then carried out as a coding framework.
Chapter 5 presents and discusses the findings on the use of the Politeness
Markers in the offering in Australian English and Vietnamese in relation to such
social variables as the Relative Power (P), the Social Distance (D) and the
Imposition Rank (R) in the situational contexts studied and the underlying reasons.

Chapter 6 presents the conclusion of the thesis including the summary of
the major findings, the implications and the suggestions for further research.

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Chapter 2

speech act theory and linguistic politeness
This chapter provides an overview of different approaches to linguistic
politeness study and presents my viewpoint on the appropriate approach to
study linguistic politeness in the context of Vietnamese culture.
2.1. speech acts and politeness
Speech acts have been studied and defined by different theorists such as
Austin J. [1], Searle J. R. [73], Levinson S. C. [54] and others. Their common point
of view is that a speech act is a unit of communication. Each of these units
performs a certain function such as: complimenting, apologizing, offering etc.
According to Austin J. [1], stating is only one function of language. He notes that
some ordinary declarative sentences are not just to say things or describe states of
affairs but also used to do things. He distinguishes constatives - statements,

assertions - from performatives which are used to perform actions. According to
Austin, an utterance is perceived as having three basic senses and in performing a
certain act, the speaker is said to perform simultaneously three kinds of acts:

- Locutionary act: the uttering of a certain sentence with certain sense and
reference. This again is roughly equivalent to “meaning” in the traditional sense;

Illocutionary act: the making of a statement, an offering, etc. in
uttering a sentence by the conventional force associated with it; and
- Perlocutionary act: the effect on the hearer achieved by saying something.
According to Austin, the term “speech act” is actually used exclusively to refer
to the illocutionary act. He also suggests that different speech acts can be classified
and compared basing on the classification of speech act verbs available in a
language. Yet, he fails to show systematically the relation between illocutionary force
and the explicit and implicit performatives and their felicity conditions.

Searle J. R. [73] further expands on Austin’s work and basing on the
felicity conditions for different speech acts, Searle J. R. [74, 75] comes up
with the taxonomy of speech act types:

5


Representatives or assertives which commit the speaker to the truth
of a proposition, for example, asserting or stating;
Directives, the point of which is to get the hearer to do something, for
example, ordering, requesting;
- Commissives, which commit the speaker to some future action, for example,

promising, offering;

Expressives, which express certain feelings and attitudes of the
speaker, for example, thanking, apologizing; and
- Declaratives, acts of announcing the emergence of an event, for example,

declaring, christening.
Searle’s taxonomy takes the illocutionary act as the starting point in identifying
speech act types but not speech act verbs as proposed by Austin J. [1]. Searle J. R.

[77] also makes a claim that “the basic unit of human communication is the
illocutionary act” and that his taxonomy has universal application.
According to Searle J. R. [76], in everyday interactions, it is often found that the
speaker may utter a sentence and mean what s/he says and also mean another
illocution with a different illocutionary content. For example, the utterance (2.1)

‚May I help you?‛ can be meant not as a question with the inversion of the Modal
Auxiliary Verb (MAV) May and the First Personal Subject I but as an offering to
help somebody. Utterances of this type fall under what Searle J. R. [76] calls
“indirect speech acts” or the cases in which “… one illocutionary act is performed
indirectly by performing another”. The distinction between what is meant and what
is said shows that a polite utterance reveals the speaker’s true intentions only
indirectly. The speaker seeks ways to modify what s/he is planning to say, thus
s/he could express his/her intention indirectly enough to avoid a social conflict.
Indirectness has been associated with the levels of politeness by many Western
researchers. These researchers assert indirectness is the chief motivation for
politeness and indirectness and the closely associated notion of politeness operate
under universal principles (Searl J. R. [75], Brown P. and Levinson S. [10], Leech G.
N. [53]). Utterances of offering in English using Interrogative forms, e. g. (2.2)

6

‚Can I offer some help?‛ [DCT 5] are called Conventionally Indirect offering and are
considered polite in that the form seems to give the hearer the option of refusal
since the “yes” or “no” alternative question allows “no” as a possible answer.
Within the framework of pragmatics, it is primarily the speech act theory which has
succeeded in accounting for the linguistic aspects of politeness. Since the mid1970s, Eastern and Western speech act theorists in their different approaches
have more or less converged views on the notion of politeness.

2.2. notions of politeness and definitions
In the Vietnamese language, the closest equivalent to the English word
“politeness” is lÞch sù which is defined by Hoang Phe et al. as “…having elegant
manners and observing propriety in conformity with social rules and expectations
in interaction” [122]. However, from a traditional point of view, the modern concept
of politeness lÞch sù also encompasses the concept of LÔ (The Sino-Vietnamese
word for Li “rites”). As a result of extensive contacts with, and influence from
Chinese culture, the concept of Li was introduced and assimilated into Vietnamese
culture through nearly a thousand years of Chinese domination and adoption of
Confucianism as an official political doctrine and a source of moral codes by
successful feudal states and Confucian scholars in ancient Vietnam (Tran §inh
Huou [111]). LÔ is a set of norms or social etiquettes which prescribes appropriate
behavior in dyadic relationships mainly of the vertical nature between the king and
his subjects, between the teacher and the student, parent and his child, husband
and his wife, between friends etc. Social juniors are expected to show deference to
their seniors while social super-ordinates are supposed to protect and take care of
social subordinates.
In over the last two decades, various Western researchers working on linguistic
politeness have proposed different models on linguistic interaction and its associated
notions of politeness. Lakoff R. [49-51] defines politeness as those forms of behavior
which have been “developed in society in order to reduce friction in interpersonal
interaction”. Leech G. N. [53] defines politeness as “strategic conflict avoidance” and

the ability of participants to engage in interaction with an atmosphere of

7


relative harmony. Brown P. and Levinson S. [12] do not take politeness to
result from pragmatic principles but rather from a more underlying need to
minimize potential imposition on the addressee as a result of the verbal act.
In the long run, the above researchers believe that “what politeness essentially
consists of is a special way of treating people, saying and doing things in such a way
as to take into account of the other person’s feelings”. In other words, politeness in
their viewpoint is volition-oriented conflict avoidance behavior. They may have
disregarded the social-norm role in regulating a community’s members’ appropriate
behavior to show politeness. As far as I’m concerned, the term politeness should
cover

both

conventional

and

volitional

politeness.

Conventional

(discernment/normative) politeness is compared to a system of traffic rules, which are
socially imposed on every member of the society and strategic (volitional/tact)

politeness to one’s individual driving styles. Conventional politeness and volitional
politeness are intricately linked to each other. Conventional politeness provides a set
of constraints on the creative and manipulative use of the verbal behavior by the
speaker to achieve his or her communicative goal/intention.
The common theme underlying these varying definitions is the idea of
appropriate language use associated with smooth communication. Concerning this
matter, Watts R. J. has suggested the term politic behavior-“that behavior, linguistic or
nonlinguistic, which the participants construct as being appropriate to the ongoing
social interaction” [88, p. 257]. Watts R. J. assumes that this type of social interaction
has become institutionalized and is subject to some kind of interaction order and
conventions. Politic behavior is distinguished from polite behavior by Watts R. J. [88,
p. 169] and Nguyen Van Do [105, p. 2], who claim that politic behavior is not
equivalent to polite behavior. Truly, there could leave open the possibility that there
are certain circumstances where interlocutors could hold the verbal interaction within
the framework of the politic behavior may not be perceived by others as being polite.
In fact, the offerer’s formulaic offering like (2.3)‚Can I help?‛ may not always be polite
and welcomed by a strange offeree who may not expect the offerer’s offering
assistance and assume it an unnecessarily intruding

8


action into the offeree’s individual freedom though this format has become
institutionalized. I assume that this could bring into light the invevitable role of
the situational context (encompassing the interlocutors’ belief, intention, their
social relationship and the spacial/temporal parameters of communication etc.)
in determining whether a politic behavior is perceived as a polite behavior.
In the field of cross-cultural politeness research, many authors have attempted to
construct various models with the aims of establishing universal research frameworks.
Frazer B. [26] outlines the four major views of politeness: the Conversational-Maxim

view, the Face-Saving view (Brown P. and Levinson S. [12]), the Fraser’s own
Conversational-Contract view and the Social Norm view. Following is the review of
these major views on politeness and the argument that calls for the extension of the
existing views in order to fully account for politeness phenomenon.

2.3. An overview of the theoretical perspectives on politeness
2.3.1. STRATEGIC viewpoints on politeness
2.3.1.1. The conversational-maxim view

a. Grice’s Conversational Principles
Grice P. [30] proposes the Cooperative Principles (CP). In Grice’s viewpoint, the
speaking agent is rational and his/her talk exchange is purposive so that the CP
(which consists of four main maxims of quantity, quality, relation and manner) is
normally observed. Given this cooperative nature of talk, any violation of a maxim is
thought to signal some conversational implicature(s). When regarding the politeness
maxim as one of the other possible maxims of the CP besides the above-mentioned
four maxims, Grice argues that the observance of the politeness maxim may, in many
cases, produce certain non-conventional implicatures [30, p. 46]. For instance, if A
wants to offer to help B, the production of an Imperative offering such as: (2.4) ‚Let me
help you!‛ is quite relevant to the main maxims of the CP. Yet, this direct offering is not
relevant to the politeness maxim because it is more imposing than an indirect offering
such as (2.5) “Can I help you?” [DCT 29]. Thus, if A uses an Interrogative instead of an
Imperative offering, the use of the Interrogative form is constrained mainly by the
politeness maxim rather than by the other maxims of the CP.

9


Under the constraint of the politeness maxim, the Interrogative acquires another
conversational implicature (a force of offering) besides its primary force of questioning.

Grice’s ideas of rational speaking agents and purposeful talk, of the Cooperative
Principle, and of the relationship between implicatures and politeness are important
points of departure for politeness theorists within the strategic perspective.

b. Lakoff ’s Rules of Pragmatic Competence
Grice’s ideas are first developed by Lakoff R. [49] into a theory of
politeness. Lakoff R. assumes politeness to be a means to avoid conflict.
She formulates two rules of pragmatic competence: 1) Be clear, and 2) Be
polite. She takes these two rules to be in opposition to each other. In
addition, she points out the following sub-rules:
Rule 1: Don’t impose (used when formal / impersonal politeness is required).

Rule 2: Give options (used when informal politeness is required).
Rule 3: Make A feel good (used when intimate politeness is required).
Lakoff R. [49, p. 301] suggests that “all polite action is such because it is in
accordance with the dictates of one or more of Rules 1, 2, 3, as a polite utterance”.
The speaker, in choosing a level of politeness, has to assess the situations and adopt
the appropriate rules. However, Lakoff’s rules are to a certain extent, arbitrary and
non- discrete. The three rules above can be said to have the overall function of
“making A feel good”. When one is trying to “give option”, it is synonymous with “don’t
impose”. In general, these rules mainly reflect the rules of politeness in typical AngloSaxon culture which emphasizes non- interference and freedom of actions of
individual speakers and cannot be considered universally pragmatic rules.

c.

Leech’s Maxims of Politeness

Leech’s theory builds on the speech act theory of Austin and Searle and
Grice’s theory of conversational implicature, but at the same time incorporates
other socio-pragmatic principles of language use, with Politeness Principle (PP)

being the most important factor regulating human interaction.
Leech G. N. makes a distinction between the speaker’s illocutionary goals
(what speech act the speaker intends to convey through the utterance) and the

10


speaker’s social goals (what position the speaker is taking on being truthful, polite,
ironic etc.). Similar to Lakoff R., Leech G. N. argues that his Cooperative Principle
and Politeness Principle often create a tension for the speaker who must make a
compromise between what message to convey and how to convey it.

Like Grice’s, Leech’s global statement is “Minimize the expression of
impolite beliefs [53, p. 81]. Leech G. N. claims that PP is a complement to CP
and it is good for both verbal and non-verbal communication. He also claims
that his model could be applied universally across cultures. However Leech’s
model can best be applied to English culture, where indirectness may be
interpreted as keeping a “distance” which is given higher value and accordingly
not suitable for all situations or societies where social intimacy is highly valued,
hence indirectness may mean insincerity and lack of consideration.
2.3.1.2. Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory

a. Politeness in Brown and Levinson’s Viewpoint
Brown and Levinson’s work [10, 12] is one of the most comprehensive
theories on politeness phenomenon. For Brown P. and Levinson S., a strong
motivation for not talking strictly according to conversational maxims is to
ensure politeness except for the case of sarcasm, and irony.
In contrast to Leech G. N., Brown P. and Levinson S. maintain that observed
linguistic behavior often deviates from models such as Grice’s theory of conversation,
in which the main purpose of conversation is assumed to be the maximally efficient

exchange of information (Grice P. [30, p. 47]). Brown P. and Levinson S. [10, 12] found
that such deviations from “model” situations had a motivation - politeness - which
could be explained largely in rational terms, and they proposed a detailed and
comprehensive theory of politeness which they assume to be universal [10, p. 61]. In
their theory, they postulate the principles of politeness, and from those principles
derive specific politeness strategies grouped into five categories, of which the two
described at most length in their study are the by now widely known redressive
strategies of positive politeness and negative politeness. Moreover, they suggest that
the failure to communicate the intention to be polite

11


through these redressive strategies may be taken as absence of the required polite
attitude. Conversely, using “redressive strategies properly the speaker could reveal
the intention to be polite and hence could express politeness towards the others. Let’s
take the case of the speech act of offering. The speaker of (2.6) ‚Would you like some
help?‛ [DCT 19], for example, implicates not only an offering (the speaker only states
what (s)/he would like to do something for the hearer), but also implicates the intention
to be polite. On the other hand, the uttering (2.7) ‚Let me help you.‛ under the same
situational context of non-intimate and upward speech may be heard as conveying the
lack of polite intentions and therefore impolite.

b. Brown and Levinson’s Notion of Face
Basic to their theory is the concept of “face” which is defined by Brown P. and
Levinson S. [12, p. 61] as “the public self-image that every member wants to claim
for him/herself” which consists of negatice face: the basic claim to the rights of
non-distraction, i.e. the freedom of action and freedom from imposition; and
positive face: the positive consistent self-image claimed by the interlocutors.
In their viewpoint, face is something that can be lost, maintained or enhanced

and any threat to face must be constantly monitored during an interaction. A person
will always have two points of view towards face-saving: defensive orientation toward
saving one’s own face and a protective orientation towards saving others’ face. It is
this tension that regulates verbal and non- verbal behavior according to social and
contextual situations as mutually recognized by the interlocutors in the speech event.
These two aspects are also treated as two basic “face-wants”:

-

Negative face-want: the want of every “competent adult member” that

his/her actions be unimpeded by others; and
Positive face-want: the want of every member that his/her wants be
desirable to at least some others.
Some speech acts, according to Brown P. and Levinson S., are considered
potentially face-threatening and are called Face-threatening acts (FTAs); for
instance, requesting, offering, which may interfere with the addressee’s freedom of
action and are believed to threaten his/her negative face. Acts, such as apologizing,

12


which approve of the hearer’s want, threaten speaker’s positive face. Some acts threaten
both speaker’s and hearer’s positive and negative face, for example, complaining.

In verbal interaction, speakers try to avoid or minimize the threat to face either of
the speaker, or the hearer or both; therefore, people resort to “politeness” or “tact”
strategies. Brown P. and Levinson S. have formulated five possible sets of strategies
depending on the degrees of face-risk. The higher (level) the risk may be, the more
polite the strategies are to be selected. The degree of threat or risk posed by a FTA is

calculated by such “rational” members of a culture as the additive Weighting (W) of the
three dependent variables: 1) Social Distance between speaker and hearer (D);

2) their Relative Power (P); and 3) the absolute Imposition Rank (R) in a
particular culture.
These FTAs according to Brown P. and Levinson S. can be realized using one of
the following strategies (in the order of increased politeness levels): 1) bald on-record
without redress; 2) on- record with positive politeness redress, i.e. bringing positive
face by expressing solidarity with the addressee; 3) on- record with negative
politeness redress, i.e. using mechanisms which make the addressee feel s/he is not
imposed upon; 4) off - record, i.e. doing the act so that it is possible to refuse the
responsibility; and 5) not doing the act in case the face threat is too great [12, p. 60].
Politeness is thus reduced to a cover term “indirectness” which is related to the
illocutionary opacity of the utterance. The more indirect and elaborate a speech act
utterance is the more polite it becomes. Like Leech G. N., Brown P. and Levinson S.
also claim the universality of their theory though allowing for exceptions (“in many or
perhaps all cultures” [10, p. 79]). Brown P. and Levinson S. believe that their model
can offer a framework for cross-cultural comparison in politeness, according to the
different weights assigned to the factors (P), (D) and (R) in different societies and
cultures. Moreover Brown P. and Levinson S. claim that specific types of polite
activities in different languages and cultures are motivated by the desire to maintain
face. The tendency to defend one’s own positive and negative face, and the protection
of others’ positive and negative face, is assumed to be the important functions of
politeness in virtually all languages and cultures. They also claim that

13


politeness is essentially based on rational principles which are
systematically related to human intentions in all languages and cultures.

2.3.1.3. The conversational-contract view

Politeness, in the Conversational-Contract (CC) view by Fraser B. [26]
converges in many ways with the “Face-Saving view” in that rational participants are
aware that they are to act within the negotiated constraints and generally do so to be
polite and politeness still a focus in interaction. When they do not, however they are
then perceived as being impolite. It could be seen that this approach may differ in one
way from that of Brown P. and Levinson S. In this approach, politeness is a state that
one expects to exist in every conversation not only in cases of such FTAs as
requesting, ordering, and offering. In addition, being polite does not involve making the
hearer “feel good” as in Lakoff or Leech’s viewpoint. Politeness simply involves
speakers who are polite and then only if their utterances reflect an adherence to the
obligations they carry in that particular conversation.
2. 3. 1. 4. Comments on strategic viewpoints on face and politeness

As mentioned above, one of the problematic issues of the strategic viewpoint
on politeness is the link between face and politeness. According to this viewpoint,
human communication is seen as a dangerous effort which may threaten either the
hearer’s or the speaker’s negative or positive face, therefore “face-work” is called
for to redress the Face Threatening Acts (FTAs) for the sake of politeness. Brown
P. and Levinson S. believe that virtually all polite behavior can be attributed to the
outcome of rational choices of individuals motivated by face want [10, p. 64]. In
other words, in carrying out a FTA, the interlocutors try to satisfy either a protective
or defensive face want, which they claim to be universally valid social needs.
Brown and Levinson’s theoretical assumptions, especially the concept of face,
have been contested by scholars researching politeness in non- Western languages
and cultures. In their study of politeness phenomenon in the Japanese language, from
the viewpoint of social cognition, Ide S. [42] and Matsumoto Y. [61] claim that the
concept of face as posited by Brown P. and Levinson S. does not have any
counterpart in Japan, and perhaps, in other Asiatic countries. They assert that Brown

14


and Levinson’s approach reflects the highly individualistic mentality in the
conceptualization of face and the approach is merely appropriate for the
individually-oriented cultures where equality in human relationship is highly valued.
Ide S. [42] explains that politeness in Japanese culture like in many other Asian
cultures including Vietnamese culture does not solely revolve around this type of
face but is closely linked to the notion of relative place and interpersonal
relationships are characterized by inequality in status. Speakers are socially
obligated to acknowledge their relative roles and positions in the group due to the
community/collectivism orientation to have linguistic politeness behavior.

2.3.2. normative viewpoints on politeness
2.3.2.1. The social-norm view

According to the Social-Norm view, politeness is considered a form of
behavior which conforms to
a particular set of social norms consisting of more or less explicit rules
that prescribe a certain behavior, a state of affairs, or ways of thinking in
a context. A positive evaluation (politeness) arises when an action is in
congruence with the norm, a negative evaluation (impoliteness =
rudeness) when an action is to the contrary [26, p. 220].
Polite behavior in this sense is dictated by the dominant social group in relation
to specific social events and some forms of behavior are highly ritualized. Failure to
observe these socially imposed norms could bring the loss of face to the interlocutors.
The use of speech levels in honorific languages like Japanese, Person Referring
Terms especially the use of Kin Terms (KTs), Honorific Pragmatic Particle (HP),
Formal Semantic Items (FSIs) and many other politeness formulae in Vietnamese are

typical examples of ritualized linguistic behavior in upward speech.
2.3.2.2. COMMENTS ON normative VIEWPOINTS ON POLITENESS

However, the Normative view has its weakness as theoretical concepts in
establishing universally valid principles in politeness research. The sets of
prescriptive rules fail to capture the dynamic, contextually negotiated nature of
polite behavior. They are often culture or even group specific and cannot form a

15


viable theory capable of accounting for the interactive nature of polite behavior.
Brown P. and Levinson S. [12, p. 86] argue against the norm-based approach
to politeness research stating that since norm-based approaches are specific to
particular social populations or cultures, they have limited explanatory role in
human interactive verbal behavior. Therefore, the norm-based approach has
few adherents among Western researchers (Fraser B. [26, p. 221]).
According to this Social-Norm view, the concept of face in Vietnamese culture
is closely associated with ones own achievement and behavior in accordance with
the communitys moral standards. The behavior and achievement of one individual
is expected to bring about not only self-respect but also respect and honor to
his/her family, village, community and even the whole country. Yet, an improper
behavior of a family member or his/her failure to live up to the familys expectation
is said to bring a loss of face not only to himself/herself as an individual but also to
his/her whole family, even his ancestors in relation to other people in the
community. This has been reflected in the Vietnamese sayings not having any
face to see other people (mất mặt với thiên hạ), or having no face to see the
ancestors (không còn mặt mũi nào nhìn lại tổ tiên). The individuals endeavor to
maintain face in the Vietnamese context is thus mainly interpersonally motivated
while in Western context, face want in Brown and Levinsons term is basically

intrapersonally motivated (Gu Y. [31], Jia W. [44], Yu M. C. [94, p. 1704]).
From the Social-Norm view, the notion of politeness in the strategic viewpoint is
also of problem to Vietnamese culture. In his book titled Những vấn đề văn hoá Việt
Nam đơng đại (The contemporary Vietnamese cultural matters), Huynh Khai Vinh
[136] comments that Confucianism - a doctrine which takes the family as the basic
social unit and uses the familys united structure as the micro model for building an
ideal society - has exercised its strong influence on the Vietnamese peoples behavior.
Confucian ethics emphasizes the principle of the three principal social ties - King and
subjects, husband and wife, father and son. A person is as a result regarded as a
member of a community rather than as a distinct individual in Vietnamese culture. In
other words, what is of paramount concern to the

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Vietnamese is not much their own territory, but their position in relation to the
others in the group and their acceptance by the others as norms. In this way being
polite is taken to be abiding by the social norms and vice versa. This kind of
politeness is termed as normative / discernment/ positive politeness (Nguyen Duc
Hoat [36], Vu Thi Nga [117]), which is different from strategic/volitional/ negative
politeness which highlights the rational use of language to avoid intrusion into
others’ private freedom as stated in Brown and Levinson’s viewpoint.

2.3.3. A hybrid approach to the study of politeness
We have so far considered the four perspectives on how to account for
politeness: the Conversational-Maxim view, the Face-Saving view, the
Conversational-Contract view and the Social Norm view. I observe that
according to these views politeness is a socially-oriented speech behavior
that each member of a community has to conduct to be favorably accepted
by other in-group members and politeness in this sense is mainly

appropriate for Non-Western or Eastern culture. In addition, politeness is an
individually intended behavior conducted by rational agents towards others
and politeness in this sense is mainly suitable for the Western culture.
But is it really true that negative face and strategic politeness is entirely
negligible in Vietnamese culture? Is it really true that positive face and normative
politeness is quite disregarded in Australian culture? Researchers such as Hill B. et al.
[35], Ide S. [42], Matsumoto Y. [61], Gu Y. [31], Huynh Khai Vinh [136], Yu M. C. [94]
assume that the two concepts of face, i.e, positive or interpersonal face (related to
normative politeness) and negative or intrapersonal face (related to strategic
politeness) are not exclusive but they could co-exist at different degrees in different
cultures. I quite agree with these researchers’ viewpoint on this hybrid approach to the
study of politeness. One situational context I could think of to illustrate this argument is
when offering to help their new younger teacher in doing something that requires
much skill and knowledge of technology like fixing the video in class the Vietnamese
students could display high sensitivity to the offeree’s negative face in this nonintimate context. They could start their indirect offering

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with the Formulaic Entreaty ‚Xin lçi‛ (‚Excuse me‛) as a Preparator (PR) and
could use the Modal Auxiliary Verb cã thÓ and the Interrogative softening
Pragmatic Particle (Int. SOP) ®-îc kh«ng? in the Head offering to avoid
imposition on the offeree in case they are not sure if their offering should be
accepted by the offeree.
(2.8)‚Xin lçi, t«i cã thÓ gióp c« söa m¸y vi-®ª-« nµy ®-îc kh«ng?” (DCT 17)
PR

Head Offering

“Excuse me, can I help you fix this video?”

Obviously the expression like this is usually used to soften the following
verbal offering that is felt to be a potential threat to the addressee’s negative face.

Also with the same situation as above but in a different context where
the teacher is elder and close in relationship with the student, native
Australian offerers could express their sensitivity to positive face by using
the Direct Strategy of the Imperative (DIM):
(2.9) ‚Let me have a look.‛ (DCT 52)
or using the Direct strategy showing the offerer’s Willingness (expressed with I’ll)

to help the offeree without investigating into the offeree’s Wish or Desire:
(2.10) ‚I ’ll give you a hand.‛ (DCT 49)
As shown from my research the frequency of using Direct Strategy Category
(DC) to show their sensitivity to positive face by native Australian speakers is higher
(16 %) in the same situation as (2.8) but in a different context in which the offerer is
elder than the offeree as his/her teacher and has a close relationship with the teacher.
This Direct Strategy Category has been used under various strategies such as Direct
Strategy of the Imperative (DIM: 10%) as shown in (2.11), Direct Strategy showing the
offerer’s Willingness to help (DWL: 5%) as illustrated in (2.12), Direct Strategy
showing the offerer’s Ability to help (DAB: 1%) as shown in (2.13).

(2.11) ‚Let me have a look at it.‛ (DCT 30)
(2.12) ‚I ’ll help you fix it.‛ (DCT 31)
(2.13) ‚I can have a look at it.‛ (DCT 54)

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It is this co-existence and preference of positive face and negative face
at different degrees in Australian and Vietnamese cultures that may underlie

the similarities or/and dissimilarities in the use of the Politeness Markers in
the speech act of offering in Australian English and Vietnamese.
In Vietnam, politeness has also been studied by such other researchers as
Nguyen Dinh Hoa [108], Nguyen Kim Than [130], Nguyen Duc Hoat [36], Vu Thi
Thanh Huong [110] etc. Among them, Nguyen Duc Hoat and Vu Thi Thanh Huong
have paid their special attention to the study of linguistic politeness in Vietnamese
communication. Nguyen Duc Hoat and Vu Thi Thanh Huong assume that
Vietnamese linguistic politeness covers both aspects of politeness: strategic
politeness of the Westerners and normative politeness of the Chinese and the
Japanese. In general, normative politeness in Nguyen Duc Hoat and Vu Thi Thanh
Huong’s viewpoint is the basic linguistic behavior in accordance with the social
norms in terms of the interlocutor’s social role, status, age, etc., expressed through
such speech acts as addressing, greetings, etc. that every member has to adopt.
Strategic politeness is the tactful linguistic behavior in order to avoid offence,
expressed through such speech acts as hints, indirect requests, refusals, etc.
In his research on “Politeness Markers in Requests in Vietnamese”, Nguyen Duc
Hoat [36] focuses on the two elements of politeness: lÔ ®é (deferent behavior) and tÕ
nhÞ (tactful behavior). With the former sense, social juniors are expected to show
deference to their seniors. For the latter sense, interlocutors have to show elegant and
refined manners with each other to maintain harmony. Expanding Nguyen Duc Hoat’s
notion on politeness, Vu Thi Thanh Huong [110] assumes that politeness consists of
four factors: lÔ phÐp (deferent behavior), ®óng mùc (proper behavior), khÐo lÐo
(elegant behavior) and tÕ nhÞ (tactful behavior) which integrate with each other. In my
viewpoint, politeness is composed of two elements: ®óng mùc (proper behavior) and
tÕ nhÞ (tactful behavior). In the first sense, everyone is expected to behave properly
according to their social role, status and age conforming to the social norm: ‚showing
deference to the superordinate and yield to the subordinate‛. In this sense ®óng mùc
(proper behavior) has covered the sense

19

of lÔ phÐp (deference behavior) suggested in Vu Thi Thanh Huong’s viewpoint. TÕ
nhÞ (tactful behavior) means having elegant and refined manners to other people to
avoid conflicts. Thus, tÕ nhÞ (tactful behavior) has itself covered the sense of khÐo
lÐo (elegant behavior). Sharing the same viewpoint with Nguyen Duc Hoat and Vu Thi
Thanh Huong, Tran Lan Phuong [124, p. 18] assume that normative politeness and
strategic politeness in Vietnamese interweave with each other. Normative politeness is
related to the social sanctioned rules and fixed while strategic politeness is related to
specific circumstances of communication and flexible.

2.4. CONCLUDING REMARKS
It has been seen so far that strategic politeness and normative politeness
could be found to co-exist at different degrees in different cultures to avoid any
social conflicts and enhance social harmony. Politeness researchers like Lakoff R.
[49], Brown P. and Levinson S. [10] and Leech G. N. [53] and many other Western
researchers mainly conceptualize politeness as a redressive strategic conflict
avoidance (tact) for Negative-face Threatening Acts, thus giving undue attention to
the normative aspect of polite language use which is closely linked to a specific
culture or subculture. On the contrary, Fraser B. [26] and many other normative
politeness researchers view politeness as a socially dictated appropriate behavior
that social members have to observe to be perceived polite by other in-group
members. As a result, these researchers have bypassed the flexible contextually
negotiated nature of linguistic politeness. Nonetheless it is the co-existence of
normative/discernment politeness and strategic/volitional politeness at different
degrees which regulates the use of the Politeness Markers in speech acts
including the offering in Australian and Vietnamese cultures.

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chapter 3

Methodology
This chapter discusses methodology issues including research questions,
data approach and methodology, data collection methods, selection of subjects,
research procedure involving the procedure for the administration of the Pilot
Questionnaires (PQs) and the Discourse Completion Test (DCT).

3.1. Research questions
In order to achieve the aims of the thesis, the following research
questions are suggested:
1.

How are the Politeness Markers used in expressing politeness in the

speech act of offering performed by native Australian speakers in relation to
the social variables given under the situational contexts studied?
2.

How are the Politeness Markers used in expressing politeness in the

speech act of offering performed by native Vietnamese speakers with regard
to the social variables given under the situational contexts studied?
3.

How are the native Vietnamese speakers different from or similar to the native

Australian speakers in their use of the Politeness Markers in the speech act of

offering under the situational contexts studied?
4.

What are the possible underlying reasons for the similarities or/and

dissimilarities in the use of the Politeness Markers in the speech act of offering

performed by native Australian and Vietnamese speakers?
3.2. data approach and methodology
Two major methods which have been used in this thesis are:
- Descriptive: The Politeness Markers in the speech act of offering in
English

and Vietnamese are described in relation to the semantic, syntactic structure
and pragmatic properties.
This description is based on various data sources:
+ Primary data sources:

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„
Questionnaire, Discourse Completion Test (DCT) on the
offering

completed by:
*

The native Australian speakers aged between 27 and 35,

who are in different job conditions in Australia; e.g. teachers, shopassistants, post-office clerks, doctors, factory workers and occasional
bystanders who happen to be drawn into the DCT by chance.
* Their native Vietnamese counterparts in different places in
Hanoi,

Vietnam.
„

Authentic Speech Observation (ASO): The data on the

offering have been collected through the observation and processed also by
the author of this thesis.
+

Secondary data sources: Tokens of offering withdrawn from films, plays,

short stories, textbooks in English and Vietnamese and from the former pragmatic
researches on the Social Deixis and Pragmatic Particles in Vietnamese by Nguyen
Anh Que [128], Nguyen Duc Hoat [36], Nguyen Thi Luong [114], Nguyen Van Chinh
[101] etc. could be used as a reliable samples of spoken language; especially data
from plays and films could be a reliable source since the language used is in the
spoken mode, i.e. written to be spoken. In addition, from the play and film situations,
background information can be deduced as regards the actors’

relative social relations, sex, feelings and interaction settings.
-

Comparative: In order to bring into focus the similarities and

differences in the Politeness Markers used in the offering performed by the

native Australian and Vietnamese speakers, a comparison is made of in
situated contexts in Australian English and Vietnamese. This comparison is
based on the coding system in Australian English and Vietnamese modified
from the coding system developed by Blum-Kulka S. et al. [8] and
Rabinowitz J. F. [69], which cover seven Strategies within the three major
Strategy Categories ranking in a decreasing level of directness.

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3.3. Data collection methods
3.3.1. a review of data collection methods
Various methods have been used in the studies on speech acts. Each
method has its own advantages and disadvantages.
Ethnographic method or Authentic Speech Observation (ASO) method
has been used to collect naturally occurring speech acts which are observed or
recorded. This method is defined as “the process of providing scientific
descriptions within a particular context and based mainly on observation”
(Wiersma W. [89]). It provides the real, spontaneous and unscripted data.
People are being themselves, saying what they actually say rather than what
they think they would say (Clyne M. [17]). However, this method costs time and
effort to collect the necessary data. Therefore, it is restrictedly used in this
thesis to collect the example tokens of offering for descriptive purpose.

Role-play method used by Rintell E. M. [70], Kasper G. [46] is a
method, in which a situation is described to the subject orally by the
researcher who later asks the subject what s/he would say in the situation
under the conditions controlled. Nonetheless, this method requires the
researcher’s time and effort as the ethnographic method does.
In Multiple Choice method used by Carrell P. L. and Konneker B. H. [14], a

series of questions are prepared with answers and then subjects are asked to
choose the answer they think is the most appropriate. It helps the researcher
get information from a large population within a short time. Nonetheless, the
subject cannot give much information since the responses depend on the
number of possibilities given in the questionnaire. Furthermore, the information
obtained may not be authentic enough in case the questions and answers are
prepared by a non-native researcher who may not have good knowledge of
sociolinguistics and pragmatics of the language under study.
The Interviews used by Barnlund D. C. and Araki S. [3] and Knapp M. L. et al.
[47] could avoid a written bias and motivate spoken discourse but have their own
problems. It is not always easy for the researchers to record the precise wording

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(Knapp M. L. et al. [47, p. 16]). Besides, to obtain a large amount of data, a lot of
trained students are needed (fifteen for the first and forty-three for the second
study of Knapp M. L. et al. [47]). Also, much effort has to go into transcription.
Discourse Completion Test (DCT) method used by Blum-Kulka S. et al. [8] is
the one in which the test consists of scripted dialogues that represent socially
differentiated situations. Each dialogue is preceded by a short description of the
situation, followed by an incomplete dialogue which subjects are asked to
complete by filling in the missing part, thereby providing the required speech act.

3.3.2. Data collection methods in the research
For the above reasons, I concur with Rose K. and Ono R. [71, p. 207], who
argue that “We should not expect a single data source to provide all the necessary
insights into speech act usage as each data type will provide different information,
so as many sources of data should be employed as possible”. In this research; to
collect sufficient and reliable data within the time and resource constraints, I have

collected the data using Questionnaire, Discourse Completion Test (DCT) and
Ethnography or Authentic Speech Observation in combination.

Among these methods, DCT has been mainly used for the following
reasons. Firstly, it allows elicitation of data from a large sample of subjects in a
short time. Also, the DCT is an effective means to gain insight into social and
psychological factors that are likely to affect speech performance (Beebe L.
[4]). In addition, Varghese M. and Billmyer K. [86] acknowledge that when more
information in the situational context is provided, the subjects appear to modify
the discourse more closely to the words of natural conversation. Cohen A. [18]
concludes that “Discourse Completion Test is an effective means of gathering a
large amount of data quickly, creating an initial classification of semantic
formulae, and ascertaining the structure of speech act(s) under consideration”.
By contrast, Ethnographic method requires a lot of time and effort though due
to observation the researcher could jot down the vivid speech acts under study.

The following subsections debate the precise contents of the Pilot
Questionnaires and the Discourse Completion Tests.

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3.3.2.1. Pilot Questionnaire (PQ)

Based on the work of Brown and Levinson [12], the PQ is designed and
composed of 6 situations covering 16 contexts, which reflect the constructs of
variables namely: the Relative Power of the offerer over the offeree (P), the Social
Distance between the interlocutors (D) and the Imposition Rank of the offering (R).
As (R) is kept within a low range in this thesis, the constellations of the variables
which are assumed to underlie the contexts are presented as follows:

(+P, +D): Much higher Power, non-intimate; (+P, -D): Much higher
Power, intimate
(=P, +D): Equal Power, non-intimate; (=P, -D): Equal Power, intimate
(-P, +D): Powerless, non-intimate; (-P, -D): Powerless, intimate
As far as the variable (P) is concerned; Brown P. and Levinson S. [12] argue
that (P) pertains to the status relationship between the participants, which is
specified either by the authority of the speaker over the hearer, or by the lack of
authority. In this study, (P) is assumed to be legitimate Power (Spencer- Oatey H.
[81]), which refers to the right a person has when making an offering by virtue of
role, age or status depending on a particular context. In this way, the factors taken
into account in the assessment of Power include age, role and status. The (P)
values investigated in this study are (+P), (=P) and (-P), in which (+P) refers to
situational contexts where the offerer has much higher Power than the offeree,
(=P) refers to contexts where the two interlocutors are equal in Power and (-P)
refers to those contexts where the offerer has no Power over the offeree.

In this research, Social Distance (D) refers to the feature of
intimacy/familiarity between participants. The interlocutors in this study
either know each other well (-D) or they are people who have never met
each other before or who only know each other for the first time (+D).
Within this study, the Imposition Rank (R) of the offering made by the
offerer on the offeree is ranging within a low range throughout the situational
contexts studied.

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