The informants are not varied and numerous enough for the author to come to ‘fixed’ conclusions

Chapter I: Introduction I.1. Rationale for the study With the advent of today's global economic system, we observe an increasing degree of communication across different cultures between people of different languages. In order to be successful in communication, it is essential for second language learners to know not just grammar and text organization but also pragmatic aspects of the target language (Bachman 1990)1. ‘Pragmatic competence’ can be specifically defined as “knowledge of communicative action and how to carry it out, and the ability to use language appropriately according to context” (Kasper 1997). The study of the learner language has been a growing source of concern in pragmatics in recent years. The pragmatic perspective toward the learner language led to the birth of a new interdiscipline, interlanguage pragmatics (ILP). ILP studies are concerned with language learners’ performance and acquisition of pragmatic competence in their second language. The influence of language learners’ linguistic and cultural background on their performance of linguistic action in a second language has been a focal concern in ILP. Among non-structural factors interacting with pragmatic transfer is second language proficiency, which has been found to constrain pragmatic transfer in requesting (Blum-Kulka, 1982). A number of ILP studies, both cross-sectional and longitudinal, regarding the use of pragmatic realization patterns and strategies have been conducted on a number of languages such as English, Hebrew, Spanish, French, German, Danish, Arabic, Portuguese, Korean, etc. Informants examined ranged from the English learners of Hebrew as TL (Blum-Kulka, 1982; 1983; Olshtain, 1983), the German learners of English (House & Kasper, 1987; House, 1988; DeCapua, 1989), the Danish learners of English (House & Kasper, 1987; Trosborg, 1987; Faerch & Kasper, 1989), the Japanese learners of English as TL (Takahashi & Dufon, 1989; Beebe et al, 1990), the Hebrew (Cohen & Olshtain, 1981), the Russian (Olshtain, 1983), the German (House, 1988), the Spanish (Scarcella, 1983), the Venezuelan (Garcia, 1989), and the Japanese (Beebe et al, 1990; Takahashi & Beebe, 1993), and the Thai learners of ESL (Bergman & Kasper, 1993). Up till now, the following speech acts have been investigated cross-linguistically: request (Blum-Kulka, 1982; 1983; House & Kasper, 1987; Faerch & Kasper, 1989; Takahashi & Dufon, 1989), complaint (DeCapua, 1989), and apology (Cohen & Olshtain, 1981; Olshtain, 1983; Trosborg, 1987; House, 1988; Garcia, 1989; Beebe et al, 1990; Bergman & Kasper, 1993), refusal (Beebe et al, 1990), and correction (Takahashi & Beebe, 1993). Besides, some other non-linguistic factors, such as discourse accent (Scarcella, 1983) and politeness orientation and styles (Takahashi & Beebe, 1993) were also investigated. Studies of speech act realization have at least highlighted ILP research in five ways (Liu, 2002): first, these reports suggested that even quite proficient learners tended to have less control over the conventions of forms and means used by native speakers in the performance of linguistic action; second, there were differences between learners’ and native speakers’ sociopragmatic perceptions of comparable speech events that were systematically related to differences in their speech act performance; third, pragmatic transfer at the pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic levels persisted at higher levels of proficiency; fourth, learners produced more speech than native speakers did when the task was less demanding on their control skills; fifth, researchers should pay close attention to the constraints of different data collection instruments on learners’ performance (Kasper & Blum-Kulka, 1993:63). There have been studies on similarities and differences in the realization of speech acts by Vietnamese speakers and English speakers. Nevertheless, pragmatic transfer, which has been a focal concern in interlanguage pragmatics, has not been investigated in studies on Vietnamese learners of English. Requests, along with the speech acts of apology and refusal, have received substantial attention in second language acquisition research (Ellis, 1994). Tam (1998) has investigated how the form of requests made by native Australian speakers differs from that by Vietnamese learners of English with respect to the use of strategies, internal modifications, and external modifications, and how these forms vary in relation to the variables of Power, Distance and Ranking of imposition. She found that Vietnamese learners were limited in modifying their requests syntactically and lexically as well as internally. While, the choices of request strategy by the Australian speakers and Vietnamese speakers were similar in some situations, differences that were also found suggested that the Vietnamese speakers lack the pragmatic knowledge of the appropriate strategy. However, the study still did not include data for L1 Vietnamese to provide confirmation of pragmatic transfer and did not look at the performance of learners at different levels. Addressing differences between English and Vietnamese in request perception and production, this study will deal with pragmatic transfer of requesting by Vietnamese learners of English. With the aim of finding useful information on the development of pragmalinguistic competence, we pay attention to language proficiency effects on Vietnamese learners’ performance of request in English. Specifically, we are going to examine whether English language proficiency affects Vietnamese learners’ pragmatic transfer in requesting. Besides, the influence of gender on Vietnamese learners’ pragmatic transfer in requesting is also going to be investigated for the first time. I.2. Aims of the study The study aims to find out: the influence of contextual factors on pragmatic transfer from Vietnamese to English in the realization of request the influence of English proficiency of Vietnamese learners on their pragmatic transfer from Vietnamese to English in the realization of request the influence of Vietnamese learners’ gender on their pragmatic transfer from Vietnamese to English in the realization of request I.3. Scope of the study The study is limited to the investigation of requesting and request realization in ten situations. The survey does not cover paralinguistic and nonverbal aspects although their importance in communication is undeniable. The informants of the survey include 21 native English speakers and 48 Vietnamese learners of English (28 intermediate learners and 20 advanced ones, 30 female learners and 18 male ones). All the native English speakers are working in Vietnam. The informants are not varied and numerous enough for the author to come to ‘fixed’ conclusions. However, the study is expected to point out the influence of contextual factors, learners’ proficiency and gender in English on pragmatic transfer from Vietnamese to English. Chapter II: Literature review Speech act I.1. Speech act When we are producing utterances containing grammatical and lexicological factors, we are performing actions through these utterances. It means utterances not only contain a message, it also have a social force For example, when we say ‘I promise I’ll do it’, not only information is conveyed but the act of promising is also constituted. The actions performed via utterances for the purpose of communicating are called speech acts. A speech act is separated into three acts: locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts (Austin, 1962). When we make an utterance, we perform an act of saying something, which is a locutionary act. It is simply an act of producing a linguistically, well-formed and meaningful expression. The illocutionary act is the function of utterance that the speaker has in mind. When we say ‘I’d like a cup of tea’, we not simply say the sentence but we also intend to require someone to give us a cup of tea. Thus, the illocutionary act is performed for communicative function and it is considered the most important of the three dimensions of a speech act. Yule claims ‘ the term speech act is generally interpreted quite narrowly to mean only the illocutionary force of an utterance.’ (1996,49). There may be no one-to-one correspondence between syntactic forms and illocutionary acts. For example, the statement ‘ I’m cold’ may have the illocutionary act of requesting somebody to turn on the heating system. When we make an utterance, we intend to have an effect on the hearer and that is the perlocutionary act. For example, when we say ‘I’d like to have a cup of tea’, we wish the hearer to give you a cup of tea. The act of giving you a cup of tea done means that the perlocutionary perfomed. As the illocutionary act is the most important, Searle (1969) has set up five types of speech acts as follows: ♦ Declarations: are those kinds of speech acts that change the world via their utterances (bring about states of affairs such as firings, namings,..) ♦ Representatives: are those kinds of speech acts that state what the speaker believes to be the case or not (E.g: assertions, conclusions,..) ♦ Expressives: are those kinds of speech acts that state what the speaker feels. They denote the speaker’s physical state or attitude (E.g: pleasure, pain, likes, dislikes, joy,..) ♦ Directives: are those kinds of speech acts that the speaker uses to get someone else to do something. (E.g: commands, requests, suggestions,..) ♦ Commissives: are those kinds of speech acts that the speaker uses to commit themselves to some future action. (E.g: promises, threats, refusals, pledges,..) I.2. Speech act of requesting Requesting is defined as an act of requiring the other(s) to do something performed through utterance(s) in interaction. As the speaker makes a request, s/he desires the hearer’s expenditure of time, energy or material resource. In other words, requests impose the speaker’s interest on the hearer. They can be regarded as a constraint on the hearer’s freedom of action. Thus, requesting is considered one of the most sensitive illocutionary acts in communication. Requests are complex speech acts which involve a relationship of different elements. These elements have been identified by Blum-Kulka (1991) as the request schema which includes requestive goals subject to a cultural filter, linguistic encoding (strategies, perspective and modifiers), situational parameters (distance, power, legitimization) and the social meaning of the request according to cultural and situational factors. Whereas, Gordon and Lakoff (1971) claims the combination of the three factors: the literal meaning of the sentence, the perceived context, and a so-called conversational postulate, helps the hearer interpret the speaker’s utterance intended as a request. Politeness II.1. Politeness Politeness is a common word that means ‘having or showing that one has good manners and consideration for other people’ (Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary.) It is similar to ‘civility’, ‘courtesy’, and ‘good manners.’ However, politeness also means that ‘behaving or speaking in a way that is correct for the social situations you are in, and showing that you are careful to consider other people’s needs and feelings’ (Longman Advanced American Dictionary.) We have ‘commonsense’ politeness and ‘scientific’ notions of politeness. Politeness can be manifested through general social behaviour as well as linguistic means. This assumption, however, emphasizes once again on the fact that politeness cannot and should not be assessed out of context, since from a pragmatic point of view, all utterances in conversation are interpreted firstly contextually and only secondly literally (Coulmas, 1981). The hypothesis that, what is implied and/or meant at a discourse level varies according to the context of the utterance, was originally introduced by Grice, in 1968. Every utterance has always been looked upon in the social context in which it is uttered. Embedded in a social context the function of a greeting, an apology or a compliment differs in its form. Obviously politeness is culturally determined and undergoes gender differences. This means for example that Americans differ in their polite behavior massively from Japanese or Indian politeness norms. Furthermore it is a recognized fact that within one culture there are existing different polite social behavior structures between females and males. But some things can be said as true overall. It is true that politeness expresses concern for the feelings of others. The strategies to do so differ from situation to situation and can be expressed linguisticly as well as non-linguisticly. In addition, politeness theories distinguish between referential and affective function of language use and between negative and positive politeness. If we look at personal face to face interactions there is more to being polite than just opening the door and listening to the communication partner. Everyone has to establish a public self-image, which is scientifically called face. Yule defines face by saying: “It refers to that emotional and social sense of self that everyone has and expects everyone else to recognize.” Therefore, politeness can be defined as being aware of another person’s face and presenting one’s own face. To accept somebody’s face means using strategies which are either threatening or saving respectively and which express a negative or a positive face. Using these strategies helps to establish social distance, respect, deference or closeness, solidarity or friendship, depending on the situation and the used strategies. On the one hand, if something is said which could be seen as a threat to somebody else’s self image, it is called a face threatening act. Face-threatening acts (FTA), are liable to threaten or damage the Hearer’s positive face, i.e. expressions of disapproval/criticism, accusations, contradictions, interrupting, expressions of violent emotions, etc., and threaten his/her negative face, i.e. orders, requests, remindings, offers, promises, etc. Moreover, certain acts can also be face threatening to the Speaker’s positive face, such as expressing thanks, excuses, acceptance of offers/apologies, etc., as well as his/her negative face, such as apologies, acceptance of compliments, confessions/admissions of guilt or responsibility, etc. On the other hand, reducing the possibility of a threat to someone’s self image is seen as a face saving act. Being polite means trying to save another persons face. We can either contribute to the needs of our communication partner or not. Expressing polite behavior can be done either by employing a negative face or by using a positive face. A person’s negative face is the need to be independent, to have freedom of action, and not to be imposed on by others. The word ‘negative’ here doesn’t mean ‘bad’, it’s just the opposite pole from ‘positive’. A person’s positive face is the need to be accepted, even liked, by others, to be treated as a member of the same group, and to know that his or her wants are shared by others. In simple terms, negative face is the need to be independent and positive face is the need to be connected. Thus, the Speaker should adopt certain strategies, in order to maintain his or her own face undamaged and at the same time to minimize the possibility of affecting the positive or negative face of the Hearer It is generally accepted that various markers contribute to the politeness of an utterance and the explanations of their existence are placed within a broad framework of cultural differences. As aforementioned, it is undoubtful that different socio-cultural norms are reflected in all levels of the linguistic code. Therefore, when observing politeness norms the researcher should always take account of the relationship between the Speaker and the Hearer and the nature of the interaction in which they are involved (Leech, 1983) A politeness strategy is employed by the ‘weightiness.’ The weightiness is calculated by speakers from the social variables such as power difference between speaker and hearer (P), the perceived social distance between speaker and hearer (D), and ranking of imposition (R). R differs from culture to culture because they are how threatening or dangerous in a specific culture. P, D and R do not have any absolute value. Mainly a speaker values them according to the situation and culture subjectively. Thus, weightiness is calculated as follows. Wx = D (S, H) + P (S, H) + Rx Leech (1983) sees cultural rules at work in expressions of politeness and attempts to categorize in more detail some of the underlying intent behind these forms by articulating a set of rules or Politeness Maxims at work in polite dialogue. 1) Tact maxim: minimize cost and maximize benefit to other. 2) Generosity maxim: minimize benefit and maximize cost to self. 3) Approbation maxim: minimize dispraise and maximize praise of other. 4) Modesty maxim: minimize praise and maximize dispraise of self. 5) Agreement maxim: minimize disagreement and maximize agreement between self and other. 6) Sympathy maxim: minimize antipathy and maximize sympathy between self and other. While these maxims do not seem to contradict each other in principle, failure to recognize these maxims as they are expressed in particular utterances can lead to what Thomas (1983) calls “cross-cultural pragmatic failure” (p. 92). Thomas indicates that pragmatic failure can occur at two levels: failure to understand which proposition the speaker has expressed and failure to understand the pragmatic force of the speaker’s utterance. The potential of pragmatic failure is apparent when reviewing specific contrastive examples of politeness features across cultures. II.2. Politeness-Directness-Indirectness Politeness is a number of different general principles for being polite in social interaction within a particular culture. S.Blum-Kulka has defined politeness as the interactional balance achieved between the need for pragmatic clarity and the need to avoid coerciveness If the Speaker decides to perform a FTA, then Brown and Levinson (1978) suggest a framework that determines the choice of his/her strategy: Even though certain pragmatic features do manifest themselves in any natural language, the issue of universality of Politeness phenomena is challenged since the system of variant patterns governing the linguistic expression of Politeness, derives from different norms and values that are culturally bound (Sifianou, 1989). This is the main source of criticism for Brown and Levinson’s theory of politeness, which has shown to be inadequate especially as far as face is concerned, since its exact content is culturally specific. Different languages have different ways of marking politeness. People from some cultures tend to favour directness, while people from other cultures favour less directness. Even so, directness may also vary in relation to social context. The relationship between directness and politeness as examined by Blum&Kulka (1987:133 ff.) illustrates that while these notions may be related, they are not one and the same. This field of research suggests that politeness may be better defined as doing what is appropriate in a given cultural context. The relationship between directness and indirectness and politeness is examined first in a general way, and subsequently using examples from cross-cultural research on speech acts and politeness. Perhaps the most common comparison involves Americans and Europeans versus Japanese and other Asian cultures. In Asian cultures, the importance of remaining in “good face” assumes a particularly high value (Ho, 1975). Holtgraves and Yang’s (1990) comparison of Korean and American speakers showed Koreans significantly more likely to use very polite forms. A study by Kim and Wilson (1994) arrived at simila