A vietnamese – english cross – cultural study of the use of hedging before giving bad news

PART 1: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale
It goes without saying that language plays an important part not only in recording and
understanding culture but also in communication among people who share or do not share the
same nationality, social or ethnic origin, gender, age, occupation. What is more, “language is
closely related to the way we think and to the way we behave and influence the behavior of
others” (Karmic 1998:79). Hence, culture can be well-understood or grasped with the help of
language and culture exchanges (i.e. cross-cultural or intercultural communication). To support
this point of view, Durant (1997: 332) claims that “to have a culture means to have
communication and to have communication means to have access to a language.”
Although well aware of the ultimate objective of learning a foreign language toward successful
communication, many Vietnamese learners of English hold that a good command of a foreign
language or success in foreign language learning lies only in mastering grammar rules and
accumulating as much vocabulary as possible. As a result, even possibly producing
grammatically well-formed utterances, they may experience unwanted culture shock, and
communication breakdown when running into a real and particular context of situation. This
unexpected incidence occurs due to their insufficient knowledge and awareness of social norms
and values, roles and relationships between individuals, especially those from the target
culture.

It is worth noting that different languages and cultures have different expressions of behavior
and different realizations of speech acts by language users. This has suggested a considerable
number of researchers, both local and foreign to conduct their studies on cross-cultural
pragmatics and/ or communication such as thanking, requesting, complementing, etc.
However, little attention has been paid to the speech act of giving bad news using hedges. In
daily life, no one likes to give their relatives or friends bad news because rarely does he/ she
find it easy to reduce listeners’ feeling of sadness, to lessen the hurt, but sometimes even the
best, brightest and most talented, the informers are left with no choice. Nevertheless, to convey
bad news such as informing the death of the husband in an accident to his wife if the speaker
goes straight to the point with:
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“Your husband died in the accident.”
he/ she may cause such a sudden shock to the wife (the hearer) that she can hardly stand it.
Conversely, the wife in the above case will feel less painful if the news is given this way:
“As you know, among 212 passengers, only two survived. And I regret to inform you
that your husband is not among the lucky two”
Needless to say, hedges such as “as you know”, “I regret to inform” have been resorted to for
the effect of minimizing the shock. Hedging is used in a certain context for specific
communicative intent such as: one strategy of politeness, vagueness, and mitigation. Therefore,
a desire to have a further insight into major similarities and differences in using hedges before
giving bad news by native speakers of VNSs and ENSs has inspired the writer to develop her
research entitled “A Vietnamese-English cross-cultural study of the use of hedging before
giving bad news” . It is hoped that this study can provide the increase of some socio-cultural
knowledge and awareness needed for better cross-cultural communication and foreign
language learning and teaching in Vietnam.
The significance of the study is two-fold: First, giving bad news is one of highly sensitive acts
since this type of acts happens in everyday social interaction, and is obviously face threatening.
Second, how to employ hedges/ hedging appropriately in order not to hurt the other in the act
of giving bad news is essential to achieve successful communication. As there is a culture gap
between Vietnamese and English, inappropriate language use may cause misinterpretation,
miscommunication and communication breakdown among cross-cultural communicators.
2. Scope of the study
- Although natural communication always comes with paralinguistic (speed, tone, loudness,
pitch...) and extra-linguistic factors (facial expressions, eye contact, postures, orientation,
proximity, movement, clothing, artifacts...), the study is confined to the verbal aspects of the
act of giving bad news with the use of politeness and hedging. In addition, adjacency pairs are
beyond the scope of this paper.
- The study strictly pertains to the perspective of pragmatics though the author realizes that
syntactic theory and semantics apparently do explain the meaning of the spoken word.
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- The Northern Vietnamese dialect and the English spoken by Anglophone community of

England, America, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, are chosen for contrastive analysis.
- The data are collected by conducting survey questionnaires to examine the ways VNSs and
ENSs use hedges in conveying bad news.
3. Aims of the study
- To find out the similarities and differences in the way VNSs and ENSs give bad news using
hedges as a politeness strategy.
4. Research questions
.What are the major similarities and differences in the ways VNSs and ENSs use hedges in
conveying bad news?
5. Methodology
- Quantitative method in the form of survey questionnaires is much resorted to. To collect data
for analysis, both Metapragmatic Questionnaire (MPQ) and Discourse Completion Task (DCT)
are designed. The collected data will be analyzed in comparing and contrasting techniques to
find out the similarities and differences in the ways VNSs and ENSs perform the act of giving
bad news using hedges as a politeness strategy.
- The questionnaires were delivered to English-speaking people mostly living in Vietnam
(working for Apollo, Language Links, British council) and some abroad (mostly in Australia,
Singapore and Hong Kong). Based on English-speaking informants’ status parameters, the
researcher looked for the Vietnamese subjects of similar parameters in order to have a
symmetrical distribution of informants and data for the study.
- Besides, discussion with the supervisor, colleagues, personal observations, recording from
mass media and data collection from newspapers and magazines are also significant to the
study.
6. Design of the study
The study is composed of three parts. They are:
Part 1 (Introduction) presents the rationale, scope, aims, research questions, and methodology
of the study
Part 2 (Development) consists of three chapters:
Chapter 1 (Theoretical lead-in): discusses the notions of language-culture relationship,
speech act theory, directness-indirectness, face, politeness, and politeness strategies.

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Chapter 2 (Hedging before giving bad news): explores different conceptualizations of
hedging and gives hedging strategies, based on speech act and politeness theories
Chapter 3 (Data analysis and findings) analyses collected data to find out major cross-
cultural similarities and differences in the choice of hedging strategies in given situations
Part 3 (Conclusion): summarizes the main findings of the study, provides some implications
for TEFL, and offers suggestions for further research.
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PART 2: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL LEAD-IN
When two or more strangers from different cultures communicate or exchange their
information and attitude, they are doing intercultural or cross-cultural communication, trying to
show or let the other(s) learn about their cultural values, norms, and beliefs. Since intercultural
communication and cross-cultural communication are not very much different and are used
interchangeably (Scollon in Hinkel 1999: 183), we therefore would like to adopt the view of
intercultural communication as the exchange of information between individuals who are
unalike culturally (Rogers and Steinfatt, 1999: 103). What is more, such communication is
much influenced by different factors, notably the binary system of competence-performance
(what one knows vs. what one does) and context (which sets the scene and shapes the meaning
that will attributed to what is said).
Cross-cultural or intercultural communication is simply defined as “the exchange of
information between individuals who are unalike culturally” (Roger and Steifatt 1999: 103) or
“whenever a message producer is a member of one culture and a message receiver is a member
of another” (Porter and Samovar, 1985: 39). In cross-cultural communication, people from
different cultures may not understand each other or get in trouble if they bring their cultural
values and norms into mutual exchanges. One of the typical examples of cultural
misunderstanding is that they transfer what is accepted in their culture to new situation of
communicating with others from a different culture. This leads to not only serious
misunderstanding, but also communication breakdowns or fatal consequences. For instance,
people from the Anglophone cultures feel normal when saying “thank you” when offered a

compliment on the work. Nevertheless, it is not the common way for many VNSs to do the
same job. Therefore, when contacting each other, a Vietnamese and his Anglophone
counterpart may have unexpectedly negative comments on each other about the same act.
According to Thomas (1995) and Cutting (2003) one of the reasons for communication failure
is that interlocutors may not have a good acquisition of the common language used in cross-
cultural communication.
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All the above disruption can be said to be culture shock, which can lead to the feelings of
estrangement, confusion, anger, hostility, indecision, frustration, etc. That is why one is
advised to know how far one can go as individuals and learn about the culture one is exposed
to.
1.1. Speech Acts
“The inference the hearer makes and takes himself to be intended to make is based not
just on what the speaker says but also mutual contextual beliefs.”
(Bach, 1979: 5)
Naturally, sociolinguistics confirms that the study of language has to go beyond the sentences
that are the principle focuses of descriptive and linguistics. It must bring in social context. It
must deal with the real contexts that make up human communication and social situations in
which they are used. From this viewpoint, Austin discovers that:
“The business of a statement can only be to describe some state of affairs or to state
some fact, which must do either falsely or truly”
(Cf Nguyen Hoa, 2000: 69)
Some sentences, as he realizes, are not intended to do as such, but rather, are to evince emotion
or to prescribe conduct, or to influence it in special ways. In uttering the sentence, the S is
often performing some non-linguistic act such as: daring, promising, resigning, requesting, and
warning and so on. Hence, the theory of speech act originated in Austin’s observation (1962) in
which it is said that sentences are used to report states of affairs and utterance of some
sentences can be treated as performance of an act. Richards defines speech acts as an utterance
or a functional unit in communication. Similarly, Hymes (1972) defines them as the acts we
perform when we speak. When we say “Hello” or “How are you” that is, we have just

performed an act of greeting, “Please open the window” – an act of requesting and so forth. It
is argued that speech acts are culture-specific and the manner of performing them is governed
by social norms which differ from one speech community to another. Indeed, Hudson believes
that the concepts used in classifying speech acts are typical of cultural concepts.
Following is how illocutionary acts are classified:
Austin Searle Bach and Harnish
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Exposives Assertives/ Representatives Assertives
Commisives Commisives Commisives
Behabities Expressives Acknowledgement
Exercitives Directives Directives
Verdictives Declaratives Verdictives
Effectives
1.2. Directness and indirectness
1.2.1. Directness and indirectness
“I love you. Please marry me!” (A direct way)
“I’ll buy a house but I would be very lonely when living there without you” (an indirect
way to ask a special person to marry) – Sunflower, 1997
Similarly, in many Vietnamese folk poems, indirect ways of love declaration are found
abundant. For example:
“Bây giờ mận mới hỏi đào
Vườn hồng có lối ai vào hay chưa?”
In daily life, the utterance is not always unambiguous and clear. Not only direct but also
indirect ways are resorted to for verbal expressions. Thus, directness and indirectness are the
two basic forms of expression that are linguistically and culturally universal. It is impossible to
say that one language uses only straightforward or direct ways of expression while the other
employs just roundabout or indirect expressions. The ways of language is employed to depend
largely on what is termed “culture thought patterns” that appear, to various degrees, different in
different cultures.
In the study of 700 essays of international students in the United States, Kaplan (1972: 31)

proposes four discourse structures (otherwise referred to as “cultural thought patterns”) that
contrast with English linearity (figure a). He mainly concentrates on writing and restricts his
study to paragraphs.
Parallel constructions, with the first idea completed in the second part (figure b)
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Circularly, with the topic looked at from different tangents (figure c)
Freedom to digress and to introduce “extraneous” material (figure d)
With different lengths and parenthetical amplifications of subordinate elements (figure e)
They are respectively illustrated by the following diagrams:

(a) (b) (c) (d) (e)
Kaplan’s diagrams
Each diagram represents a certain language or a group of languages. He identifies his discourse
types with genetic language types, respectively:
Figure a with English
Figure b with Semitic
Figure c with Oriental
Figure d with Romance
Figure e with Russian
According to the diagrams, English people often use roundabout and direct patterns whole the
Oriental people in general and the Vietnamese in particular seem to prefer roundabout and
indirect patterns. In the Anglophone main stream culture, the ideal form of communication
includes being direct rather than indirect. Many expressions exemplify this tendency such as
Don’t beat about the bush! Let’s get down to business; Get to the point! etc. All indicate the
importance of dealing directly with issues rather than avoiding them. Let’s look at the
following example:
Host: Would you like some more dessert?
Guest: No, thanks. It’s delicious but I really had enough.
Host: Ok, why don’t we leave the table and sit in the living room?
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The host does not repeat the offer because he is sure that the guest really means what he says.
In such a situation, if the guest is still hungry, he will directly say Yes, I’d like some more.
Thank you.
In the same situation, the Vietnamese, when invited, to take some more tend to refuse to be
socially accepted as “polite” and expect that the offer will be extended the second or third time
before he accepts it.
For example:
Host: Chẳng mấy khi bác đến chơi nhà, mời bác ở lại dùng bữa với chúng em
(You rarely come to visit us, we invite you to stay and have dinner with us)
Guest: Ôi thôi, cảm ơn cô chú. Tôi chỉ ghé qua thăm cô chú và gia đình thôi.
(Oh, no, thank you. I only pay a short visit to you and your family)
Host: Bác cứ nói thế, chả mấy khi ……..
(You say so, rarely …..)
Guest: Phiền cô chú quá, cứ mỗi lần đến chơi cô chú lại bày vẽ ……
(I trouble you, whenever I visit you; you go to unnecessary lengths to …..)
Finally, the guest agrees to stay and have dinner with the host
Directness and indirectness in English and Vietnamese can also be found in what Nguyen
Quang call “by-the-way phenomenon”. For such “safe” topics as good news, congratulations,
weather. This phenomenon happens less frequently. But for the “subtle” and “unsafe” topics
(bad news, borrowing money, sex, religions, etc) this phenomenon appears much more
frequently.
It has been found that, in English, the purpose of interaction seems to be made overt at the
beginning, but in Vietnamese, things seem to go the other way round. In many cases, if
someone puts the purpose of his talk upfront, he may be considered rude. According to Nguyen
Quang (1998), if time permits and relationship allows, interactants will have small talk or
discussion of unrelated issues.
He proposes the following diagrams first:
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(Vietnamese)

(American English)
1.2.2. Factors affecting directness and indirectness
There are many socio-cultural factors affecting the degrees of directness and indirectness in
communication. Nguyen Quang (1998: 5) proposes twelve factors that, in his argument, may
affect the choice of directness and indirectness in communication.
1. Age: the old tend to be more indirect than the young
2. Sex: the female prefer indirect expression
3. Residence: the rural population tend to use more indirectness than the urban one
4. Mood: While angry, people tend to use more indirectness
5. Occupation: Those who do social sciences tend to be more indirect than those who
do natural sciences
6. Personality: The extroverted tend to use more directness than the introverted
7. Topics: While referring to a subtle topic, a taboo …., people are more inclined to
indirectness
8. Place: When at home, people tend to use more directness than when they stay
elsewhere.
9. Communication environment/ setting: When in an informal climate, people tend to
express themselves in a more direct way.
10. Social distance: Those who are closer tend to talk in a more direct way.
11. Time pressure: When in a hurry, people are likely to use more directness
12. Relative powers: When in a superior position, people tend to be more direct to their
inferiors.
(English version by Ngo Huu Hoang, 1998:14)
1.3. Face, politeness, and politeness strategies
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By the way PurposeSmall talk
Purpose By the way Small talk
“Politeness is basic to the production of social order and a precondition of human
cooperation, so that any theory which provides an understanding of this phenomenon
at the same time goes to the foundation of human social life.”

(Brown and Levinson 1987: 54)
1.3.1. What face?
Face is a technical term used in psychology and sociology to refer to the status and esteem of
individuals within social interactions (Thompson 2003: 32). Since face, understood as every
individual’s feelings of self-image (Thomas 1995: 169), can be damaged, maintained or
enhanced through interaction with others, a person often claims for him/ herself through
interaction. That is why in everyday interchange, we usually avoid embarrassing the other
person, or making him feel uncomfortable simply because we bear in mind that everybody has
basic face needs or wants which refers to the respect that individual has for him or herself.
According to Brown and Levinson (1987: 61-62), face is “the public self image that all rational
adult members of society possess” and “something that is emotionally invested, and that can be
lost, maintained or enhanced and must be constantly attended to in interaction with others.
Once face is damaged or threatened, there seems to be a risk of communication breakdown.
Therefore, maintaining or partially satisfying each other’s face seems to be the major and
apparently the only motivation to be polite in communication (Watts 2003, Holmes 1995). To
many scholars, face consists of two opposing face wants: Positive and negative face.
1.3.1.1. Positive face
Normally, people are typically caught between the wants to achieve their own goals and the
desire to avoid infringing their partners’ face (both positive and negative face). Positive face,
as Brown and Levinson (1987: 61) observe, is “the positive consistent self-image or
personality (crucially including the desire that this self-image be appreciated and approved of)
claimed by interactants”. In other words, positive face is seen as the desire that others like,
admire, value, or approve of one’s wants (material or non-material) or the need to be accepted
and liked by others, treated as a member of the group, and to know one’s wants are shared by
others.
1.3.1.2. Negative face
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Negative face, according to Brown and Levinson is “the basic claim to territories, personal
preserves, rights to non-distraction, i.e. to freedom of action and freedom of imposition”. In
other words, “negative face is reflected in the desire not to be impeded or put upon, to have

the freedom to act as one chooses” (Thomas 1995: 169), or “the wants that one’s action be
unimpeded by others” (Eelen 2001: 3), and “the need to be independent, to have freedom of
action, and not to be imposed on by others” (Yule 1996: 61)
1.3.1.3. Face threatening acts (FTAs)
According to Brown and Levinson (1987), certain illocutionary acts are liable to damage or
threaten another person’s face; such acts are known as “face threatening acts” (FTAs) by, for
instance, representing a threat to or damaging the H’s positive face (insulting the addressee or
expressing disapproval of what the H holds valuable or does something) or his/ her negative
face (impinging upon H’s freedom of action in the case when H likes gossiping). They define
FTAs as “those acts that by their nature run contrary to the face wants of the addressee and/ or
of the speaker” (Brown and Levinson 1987: 65). Along the line, Yule (1996) observes that an
FTA occurs when a speaker says something that represents a threat to another individual’s
expectation regarding self-image.
1.3.2. What politeness?
1.3.2.1. Politeness defined
Politeness has received various amounts of attention and controversy from all areas of
linguistics, especially sociolinguistics and pragmatics, throughout the 20
th
century. There have
been so far two main approaches to politeness: politeness as social norms (normative
politeness) or conversational principle and maxims or do’s and don’ts (Lakoff 1973, 1989;
Leech 1983) and face-saving acts or politeness strategies (strategic politeness) (Brown and
Levinson 1978, 1987) (Cf Nguyen Duc Dan 1998, Nguyen Quang 2003).
In her cross-cultural study on politeness, Blum-Kulka (1987: 131) suggests that politeness is
“(i) a function of redressive action with the latter having correlative relationship with
indirectness, (ii) an interaction achieved between two needs, the need for pragmatic clarity
and the need to avoid coerciveness and (iii) a social distance and role relationship”. By giving
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such a definition, Blum-Kulka implies the tendency that the more indirect we go, the more
polite we become. More correctly, she places politeness on the same par with negative

politeness by challenging the claim that there is a direct relationship between indirectness and
politeness. Intuitively speaking, it seems workable as seen in Anglophone cultures. However, it
is, too, intuitively untenable because it does not necessarily means that going direct is less
polite, hence “indirectness does not necessarily/ always imply politeness” (Blum-Kulka 1987:
131). For example:
(1) Indirect: Nhà cửa gì mà trông như chuồng lợn thế này. (Implied to tidy up the room)
Direct: Dọn dẹp phòng đi con. (Tidy up the room, son)
(2) Indirect: What’s the wife expected to do at this time? (Meaning “to prepare dinner”)
Direct : Time to cook, honey.
Despite the fact that all utterances are FTAs to various degree, the direct ones seem more
comfortably accepted, thus more polite. However, this confirms the idea proposed by Dascal
(1983, cf. Thomas 1995: 120) that indirectness is costly and risky in that an indirect utterance
takes longer for the speaker to produce and longer for the H to process (costly) and the H may
not understand what the speaker is getting at (risk).
Nguyen Quang (1994: 23) provides a satisfactory definition of politeness (which is adopted as
a working definition of politeness for this study), not “leaning” to any side of the coin, and
with no bias against either positive or negative politeness, but reconciliation of the two
extremes. He confirms that “politeness is any communication act (either verbal or non-verbal,
or both) that is intentionally and appropriately meant to make another person/ other people feel
better or less bad”. Setting aside the non-verbal aspect as mentioned in the scope of the study,
the thesis author in convinced that this definition covers both ends of the continuum of positive
and negative politeness by implying that politeness involves taking into account the feelings of
others (Holmes, 1992: 296, Wardhaugh 1986: 280) and it is the means employed to show
awareness of another person’s face (Yule 1996: 60), used to show concern for people’s face
(Brown and Levinson 1987).
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In this study, the adopted model of politeness, or “polite way of talking” which is seen as
deviations from Grice maxims (for politeness reasons) is that of Brown and Levinson’s due to
the following reasons:
First, putting aside the views of conversational principle and maxims, and conversational

contract, the distinction between normative and strategic politeness is rather loose and relative
in that almost all illocutionary acts should operate within the framework of interpersonal
relationships.
Second, it is the author’s opinion that normative politeness based on social norms is the
departure or foundation of strategic politeness. What require normative politeness to be
realized are interpersonal relationships where interlocutors should follow some certain
politeness norms to save or preserve the other’s face. This, in turn, will more or less make a
twist and impetus to implement strategies.
Third, in interpersonal verbal interaction, no matter whether a dispraise is constructive or not,
every dispraising utterance carries in itself potential damage or threat to the addressee’s
positive and negative face.
Fourth, politeness strategies, both positive and negative, when used, can (i) support and
enhance the addressee’s positive face (positive politeness) and (ii) help avoid transgressing the
addressee’s freedom of action and freedom from imposition (negative face).
Finally, Brown and Levinson’s model is adequate for the interpretation of ongoing verbal
interaction in which participants are reciprocally attending to one another’s face needs (Watts
2003: 101)
1.3.2.2. Politeness principles
This is certainly true that all of the approaches to politeness (Lakoff’s, Leech’s, and Brown &
Levinson’s) are appropriacy-based or conflict-avoidance-based, where politeness is a matter of
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using the right words in the right contexts as determined by conventional rules of
appropriateness.
Lakoff (1973) argues that the majority of conversation is governed by what is termed the
politeness principle. Similar to Grice (but earlier), she claimed that there are three maxims or
rules that speakers should follow in conversation to maintain politeness:
Don’t impose – This is similar to the theory of negative politeness – trying not to
impose on people or to disrupt them in any way. It can be seen through such
expressions as:
- I’m sorry to bother you …..

- Could you possibly ……?
- I know it’s asking a lot ……
Give options – It is avoiding forcing the other participant into a corner with the use of
such expressions as:
- It’s up to you ……
- I won’t be offended if you don’t want to ….
- I don’t mind if you don’t want to …….
Make the hearer feel good – We say things that flatter the other participant and make
him/ her feel good; rather in the same way we pander to positive face. This can be seen
through the use of such expressions as:
- What would I have done without you?
- I’d really appreciate your advice on this
- I owe you one for this
Leech’s (1983) Politeness principle (PP) consists of 6 maxims (Tact, Generosity, Approbation,
Modesty, Agreement and Sympathy), which are related to the notion of cost and benefit and
much related to offering favorableness to the hearer. Leech sees PP as being of the same status
as Grice’s Cooperative Principle (CP), which it “rescues” by explaining why speakers do not
always observe the Gricean maxims (Thomas 1995: 159).
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Leech (1983) includes politeness as interpersonal rhetoric that involves three different sets of
conversational maxims, namely those pertaining to Grice’s cooperative principle, the principle
of politeness akin to that of Lakoff, and the “irony” principle. In his theory, politeness may be
realized by weighing one’s linguistic behavior against a group of maxims whereby speakers
can minimize hearer’s cost and maximize hearer’s benefit (tact maxim), minimize their own
benefit and maximize that of the hearer (generosity maxim), minimize hearer dispraise and
maximize hearer praise (approbation maxim), minimize self-praise and maximize self-dispraise
(modesty maxim), minimize disagreement and maximize agreement between oneself and others
(agreement maxim) and minimize sympathy between oneself and others (sympathy maxim).
Brown and Levinson (1987) do not set a rule of politeness principles as Lakoff and Leech did,
but drop a hint by providing the following schema, termed “possible strategies for doing

FTAs”, available to speakers to encounter unavoidable face-threatening acts, to make
appropriate communicative choices and to reduce the possibility of damage and threat to
hearer’s face or to the speaker’s own face. Once a decision has been made, they argue, the
speaker selects the appropriate linguistic means to accomplish the chosen strategy. Their
schema proposes five components of communicative choices: (1) without redressive action
badly, (2) positive politeness, (3) negative politeness, (4) off record and (5) don’t do the FTA
(or refrain from doing the FTA). Each strategy on the schema is numbered 1-5, the general
principle being that the higher the number the more polite the strategy.

1. Without redressive action, badly
On record 2. Positive politeness
Do the FTA With redressive action
4.Off record 3. Negative politeness

5. Don’t do the FTA
Possible strategies for doing FTAs (Brown & Levinson, 1987: 69)
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Based on this model, Brown and Levinson have identified a whole series of linguistic strategies
available to speakers to enable them, if they so wish, to minimize threat to face. If a speaker
chooses to commit an FTA, they can go “on record”, say “badly, without redress”:
- Smarten yourself up
The second way available to go “on record” is to choose to pay attention to face through
redressive action. Thus, they may redress the FTA by choosing positive politeness that attends
to positive face, to enable S to pay attention to H’s positive face by the use of in-group identify
markers such as:
- You’re so good at solving computer problems. I wonder if you could just help me
with a little formatting problem I’ve got.
Or they can redress the threat with negative politeness that respects the hearer’s negative face
(when FTAs are unavoidable) which includes the marking of deference through using the V
pronoun, or, for example, the elimination of all reference to both S and H through the use of

impersonal pronouns, inclusive pronoun they or we.
- It is said that ….. (impersonalization)
- People said that …(impersonalization)
Alternatively, they can’t go “off-record” and drop a hint to the hearer:
- It’s a laundry day, I see.
Finally, they can choose not to do any FTAs, seen as the least face-threatening acts (just to be
safe).
To conclude, in doing an FTA, the speaker needs to balance three wants:
- The want to communicate content of the FTA
- The want to be efficient (or urgent)
- The want to maintain H’s face to any degree
1.3.2.3. Positive politeness and strategies
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As regards the sociological factors/ variables of P, D and R that bring about significant
influences on positive polite linguistic choices, positive politeness is defined as forms for free-
ranging, solidarity-oriented emphasizing shared attitudes and values, minimizing social
distance, “maximizing the politeness of polite illocutions” (Leech 1983: 84) and “essentially
other-oriented behavior” (Holmes 1995: 26)
According to Brown and Levinson (1987: 101-103), “positive politeness is redress directed to
the addressee’s positive face, his perennial desire that he wants …should be thought of as
desirable”. However, they emphasize “it is not necessarily redressive of the particular face
want infringed by the FTA because positive techniques are used as a kind of metaphorical
extension of intimacy, implying common ground or sharing of wants, social accelerator to
indicate that he (the hearer) wants to ‘come closer’ to H”. For example:
- to an acquaintance (about 5 years younger than you)
Take a chill pill, man!
All of the above ideas of positive politeness are summarized in Nguyen Quang’s definition
which reads:
“Positive politeness is any communicative act which is intentionally and appropriately
meant to show the speaker’s concern to the hearer/ addressee, thus, enhancing the

sense of solidarity between them. Simply put, positive politeness is to show the
speaker’s concern to others. In this case, positive politeness can be called warm or
proximal, intimate politeness”.
(Lecture note on cross-cultural communication, CFL-VNU, 2003: 43)
The kernel thrust of the definition Nguyen Quang contributes to the intracultural and cross-
cultural communication is that he implicitly suggests that positive politeness strategies are
appropriate between those who know each other well, or those who wish to know each other
well, and being polite in the contexts of P, D and R’s operation involves how to express a
range of speech functions in a culturally appropriate way.
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When interacting or getting socialized with other people, what we normally do is to pay
attention to satisfying face needs. When face is threatened in interaction, both aspects of face
come under fire (Mey 1993) or under risk of “losing face”, which motivates the speaker to
adopt linguistically appropriate choices to ‘save face’. In the case of the undesirable state of
threatened face engendered by an FTA, politeness strategies are developed to satisfy the dual
aspects of face or any aspect of an FTA, and then there appear positive and negative politeness
strategies when the speaker goes on-record with redressive action. Therefore, it is worthy of
note that politeness strategies are relevant realizations of redressive action for the speaker’s
choice to go on-record. Brown and Levinson (1987) give multifarious examples to illustrate the
kinds of choices to open to the speaker and posit fifteen sub strategies of politeness addressed
to the hearer’s positive face. According to them, positive politeness strategies aim to save
positive face, or are addressed to H’s positive face and described as expressions of solidarity,
intimacy, informality, and familiarity. Thus, they are developed to satisfy the positive face of
the hearer chiefly in two ways: (i) by indicating similarities amongst interactants (using in-
group markers such as let’s in English or chúng ta/ chúng mình in Vietnamese), and (ii) by
expressing an appreciation of the interculator’s self-image.
The following fifteen strategies are addressed to positive face, and are thus examples of
positive politeness (cited from Watts 2003 and Nguyen Quang 2003).
(1) Strategy 1: Notice, attend to H (her/ his interests, wants, needs, goods etc)
- Ái chà chà! Hôm nay nhân dịp gì mà diện bộ củ đẹp thế. À này, có tiền cho tớ vay năm chục.

(Wow, how smart you look today! What occasion? By the way, can I borrow 50,000 VND, if
you have?)
(2) Strategy 2: Exaggerate (interest, approval, sympathy with H)
- Good old Jim. Just the man I wanted to see. I knew I’d find you here. Could you spare me a
couple of minutes?
- Giời ơi, chặc …. chặc….., chặc …. con bé ấy vô cùng quyến rũ.
(3) Strategy 3: Intensify interests to the hearer in the speaker’s contribution
- You’ll never guess what Fred told me last night. This is right up your street.
- Cậu biết không, bọn tớ quyết định tháng sau sẽ cưới.
(4) Strategy 4: Use in-group identity markers in speech
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- Here’s my old mate, Fred. How are you doing today, mate? Could you give us a hand to get
this car to start?
- Ta đi chứ anh bạn (Shall we go, mate?)
(5) Strategy 5: Seek agreement in safe topics
- I agree, right. Manchester United played badly last night, didn’t they? D’you reckon you
could give me cigarette?
- Mình chuyển sang làm cho UNICEF rồi.
- Cho UNICEF cơ à? Nhất đấy!
(6) Strategy 6: Avoid disagreement
- Well in a way, I suppose you’re sort of right. But look at it like this. Why don’t you?
- Anh nói cũng có lý nhưng theo tôi không thể đốt cháy giai đoạn được.
(7) Strategy 7: Presuppose, raise, and assert common ground
- People like you and me, Bill, don’t like being put around like that, do we? Why don’t we go
and complain?
- Túi nặng quá em ạ.
- Em biết lắm chứ. Toàn bộ giầy dép của em ở trong ấy mà lị.
(8) Strategy 8: Joke to put the hearer at ease
- A: Great summer we’re having. It’s only rained five times a week on average
- B: Yeah, terrible, isn’t it?

- A: Could I ask you for a favor?
- Các bố ấy không phải là Mike Tyson và vợ các bố ấy không phải là những bịch cát
(9) Strategy 9: Assert and presuppose knowledge of and concern for hearer’s wants
- I know you like marshmallows, so I’ve bought you home a whole box of them. I wonder if I
could ask you for a favor.
- Tớ biết cậu không khoái ba cái trò tiệc tùng bù khú nhưng vì hôm nay có cả sếp của tớ dự
nên cậu đến tiếp hộ tớ nhé.
(10) Strategy 10: Offer, promise
- I’ll take you out to dinner on Saturday if you cook the dinner this evening.
- Này, hôm nào ra Hải Xồm lai rai đi.
(11) Strategy 11: be optimistic that the hearer wants what the speaker wants, i.e. that the FTA
is slight
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- I know you are always glad to get a tip or two on gardening, Fred, so if I were you, I wouldn’t
cut your lawn back so short.
- Trông mời mọc quá nhỉ. Tớ phải thử một miếng để xem tài nấu nướng của cậu tiến bộ đến
đâu rồi.
(12) Strategy 12: Include both S and H in the activity
- I’m feeling really hungry. Let’s stop for a bite.
- Tại sao ta không đi biển nhỉ?
(13) Strategy 13: Give and ask for reasons
- I think you’ve had a bit too much to drink, Jim. Why not stay at our place this evening?
(14) Strategy 14: Assert reciprocal exchange or tit for tat
- Dad, if you help me with my math homework, I’ll mow the lawn after school tomorrow.
- Tớ thổi cơm, cậu dọn bàn nhé.
(15) Strategy 15: Give gift to H (goods, sympathy, understanding, cooperation)
- A: Have a glass of malt whisky, Dick.
- B: Terrific, thanks!
- A: Not at all. I wonder if I could confide for a minute or two.
In addition, Nguyen Quang (2003: 91-99) proposes two more strategies

(16) Strategy 16: Console, encourage H
- Việc gì phải buồn, thua keo này ta bày keo khác.
- It’s nothing, really. Don’t give up. You have my backing.
(17) Strategy 17: Ask personal questions
- Thu nhập có khá không?
- Anh chị sinh được mấy cháu rồi?
1.3.2.4. Negative politeness and strategies
Whereas positive politeness is free ranging, negative politeness is specific and focused; it
performs the function of minimizing the particular imposition that the FTA unavoidably effects
(Brown and Levinson, 1987: 129) or it is “minimizing the impoliteness of impolite illocutions”
(Leech 1983: 84). Socio-linguistically, negative politeness involves expressing oneself
appropriately in terms of social distance and respecting status differences (Holmes, 1992: 297).
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Recognizing that “negative politeness is redressive action addressed to the addressee’s
negative face: his want to have his freedom of action unhindered and his action unimpeded”
(Brown and Levinson, 1987: 129), Thomas (1995: 172) makes it clear by stating that
“negative politeness is oriented towards a hearer’s negative face, which appeals to the
hearer’s desire not to be impeded or put upon, to be left free to act as they choose”.
To observe and cover both pragmatic and socio-linguistic aspects of intra-culturally and cross-
culturally communicative environment, Nguyen Quang (2003: 44) proposes his own definition
of negative politeness: “Negative politeness is any kind of communicative act which is
appropriately intended to show that the speaker does not want to impinge on the addressee’s
privacy, thus, enhancing the sense of distance between them. Simply put, negative politeness is
not to poke your nose into others’ privacy. Negative politeness can be called distancing/ cool/
distant politeness”
Briefly, negative politeness strategies, in Brown and Levinson’s (1987) words, conversely are
addressed to H’s negative face and are characterized as expressions of restraint, formality, and
distancing. They are furthermore viewed as more face redressive, i.e. more polite, than positive
strategies, a point which was discussed earlier. Thus, they can be also expressed in two ways:
(i) by saving the interlocutor’s face by mitigating FTAs; or (ii) by satisfying negative face by

showing respect for the addressee’s right not to be imposed on.
Following are the ten strategies addressed to the hearer’s negative face (cited from Watts 2003
and Nguyen Quang 2003)
(1) Strategy 1: Be conventionally indirect
- Could you tell me the time please?
- Anh có thể lấy hộ tôi quyển sách ở trên bàn kia được không?
(2) Strategy 2: Do not assume willingness to comply. Question, hedge
- I wonder whether I could just sort of ask you a little question.
- Nói chí ít ra anh ta cũng kiểu như hơi chậm hiểu.
(3) Strategy 3: Be pessimistic about ability or willingness to comply. Use subjunctive
- If you had a little time to spare for me this afternoon, I’d like to talk about my paper.
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- Nên chăng ta đứng ngoài cuộc thì hơn.
(4) Strategy 4: Minimize the opposition
- Could I talk to you for just a minute?
- Tôi chỉ muốn hỏi anh là tôi có thể mượn ô tô của anh về quê ngày mai được không?
(5) Strategy 5: Give deference
- Excuse me, officer. I think I might have parked in the wrong place.
- Tôi ngu quá đi mất. Nhẽ ra tôi phải hỏi ý kiến anh trước mới phải.
(6) Strategy 6: Apologize
- Sorry to bother you but ……..
- Xin lỗi phải ngắt lời anh nhưng đấy không phải là ý tôi muốn nói.
(7) Strategy 7: Impersonalize the speaker and the hearer. Avoid the pronouns I and you
- A: That car is parked in a no-parking area.
- B: It’s mine, officer
- A: Well, it’ll have to have a parking ticket.
- Có lẽ vấn đề không đơn giản như vậy đâu.
(8) Strategy 8: State the FTA as an instance of a general rule
- Parking on the double yellow is illegal, so I’m going to have to give you a fine.
- Đề nghị hành khách xuất trình hộ chiếu và vé máy bay khi làm thủ tục vào sân bay.

(9) Strategy 9: Nominalize to distance the actor and add formality
- Participation in an illegal demonstration is punishable by law. Could I have your name and
address, madam?
- Mong ước của tôi là hàng tháng kiếm đủ tiền để nuôi các cháu ăn học đầy đủ.
(10) Strategy 10: Go on record as incurring a debt, or as not indebting H
- If you could just sort out a problem I’ve got with my formatting, I’ll buy you a beer at
lunchtime.
- Việc này trong tầm tay tôi. Anh khỏi phải lo.
Nguyen Quang (2003) suggests one more strategy
(11) Avoid asking personal questions
- How much do you earn a month? (avoided)
- Why don’t you marry at such an age? (avoided)
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- Chị làm ở đấy lương có cao không? (avoided)
- Anh bao nhiêu tuổi rồi? (avoided)
However, it is worth pointing out that there are some overlaps, or overlapping cases in which it
is hard to identify what kind of politeness an utterance belongs to. For example,
Stop whining (Ngừng ca cẩm đi)
Im ngay đi (Shut up)
It is firstly, a directive which is a non-redressive on-record act, thus not seen as a polite
utterance. However, if it is added with some redressive factor, such as the politeness marker
please, kinship terms etc. It can become less face-threatening:
Stop whining, please. (English)
Làm ơn im ngay đi. (Vietnamese)
The above view can be found in Thomas (1995), Eelen (2003), Watts (2003) and others when
they claim that there exist some cases in Brown and Levinson’s model which is hard to
demarcate even what positive politeness and negative politeness are.
All the theories discussed above are the basic way leading to hedging/ hedges displayed in
chapter 2

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CHAPTER 2: HEDGING BEFORE GIVING BAD NEWS
2.1. Hedging defined
The word “hedge” or “hedging” can be broadly defined as referring to a barrier, limit, defense
or the act or means of protection (see The Oxford English Dictionary vs. hedge and hedging).
The designation “hedge/ hedging” itself was introduced first by G.Lakoff (1972) in his article:
“Hedges: A study in meaning Criteria and the Logic of Fuzzy Concepts”. In his synchronic,
non-contrastive study of the oral and written standard English, Lakoff defines hedges (from the
point of view of language philosophy) as words whose function is to make meaning fuzzier
(e.g. sort of) or less fuzzy. Lakoff argues that the logic of hedges requires serious semantic
analysis for all predicates. Lakoff defines hedges as follows:
“For me, some of the most interesting questions bare raised by the study of words
whose meaning implicitly involves fuzziness-words whose job is to make things fuzzier
or less fuzzy. I will refer to such words as “hedges”’.
However, with the fast development of linguistics, hedging phenomena, seen as a purely
semantic phenomenon, have been attacked from the perspective of pragmatics, thus said to
contribute to the interpersonal function of language, by which we are able to “recognize the
speech function, the type of offer, command, statement, or question, the attitudes and
judgments embodied in it, and the rhetorical features that constitute it as a symbolic act”
(Halliday and Hassan 1989:45, cf. Vartalla 2001)
Although the terms “hedge” and “hedging” have been part of linguistic vocabulary for some
thirty years now, no unified description of the concepts is to be found in literature. As Hylland
(1998) states “straightforward definitions of the notions are rather rare and the existing
characterizations soon reveal that the terms are used in different ways by author”. Despite
attempts to bring order into multitude of definition, it appears that researchers continue to
approach the concepts of hedge and hedging in a variety of ways. Differences are also to be
found in terminology relating to the area, terms other than hedge and hedging being employed
to describe some of the linguistic phenomena elsewhere described as hedges. Notions like
stance markers (Atkinson 1999), compromisers (James 1983), understatements (Hubler 1983),
downtowners (Quirk et al 1985), downgraders (House and Kasper 1981), softeners (Crystal &

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