ĐÒI lại AI một cái gì đó một NGHIÊN cứu về TIẾNG ANH của NGƯỜI VIỆT học TIẾNG ANH và NGƯỜI bản NGỮ

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Chapter one: Introduction

1.1. Rationale of the study

In the past few decades we have witnessed a big change in language teaching and learning.

That is the appearance of ‘communicative approach’ to language teaching and learning, which

puts a strong emphasis on master of language use. That is to say, language is viewed as a

means of communication and uses of language play a central part in language teaching and

learning (Brumfit and Johnson 1979). Focus on learners’ language use also means that

communicative approach takes priority over pragmatic competence, one of the four sectors of

communicative competence (Hymes 1972 in Brumfit and Johnson 1979). Much research on

pragmatic competence on the basis of diverse speech acts and speech act sets shows that

pragmatic competence plays a decisive role in learners’ communicative competence

development because it results in appropriateness and effectiveness in interactions, the goal in

learning a second or foreign language. Second or foreign language learners (L2 learners) can

approximate native speakers only when they master rules of language use that underline the

ability to use language in contextually appropriate and effective ways. Given these facts, L2

learners in classroom setting should be pragmatically aware and pragmatically competent.

However, in the language learning setting in Vietnam learners’ pragmatic competence seems

to be given less consideration than other aspects of language teaching. This can be manifested

through the examination of some types of speech acts taught in some teaching materials in

Vietnamese junior high schools. Let’s take some examples. In grade 7 English coursebook

some speech acts such as requests, gratitude, invitations, refusals, complaints or compliments

are introduced to learners, and they are taught along with other language items. However, the

matter lies in the fact that they are paid less attention to while they must have got much focus

on. Furthermore, the teacher, when teaching these types of speech acts, only introduces the

semantic formulas of these speech acts, then asks learners to try to make utterances basing on

the formulas. For example, in teaching invitations and responses in unit 6 on pages 66 and 67,

the teacher writes on the board the formulas such as Would you like to…? and Yes, I’d love

to… for agreement and I’m sorry. I can’t or Yes, I’d love to but… for refusal. The learners are

then asked to make a similar dialogue to the previous one they have been taught. This type of

teaching leads to the result that learners use only one expression in all interactional contexts,

and again this results in the learners’ sociopragmatic errors. For instance, in the classroom

learners were asked to work in pairs and in turn to practice giving invitations such as going to

the movies or coming home for lunch and replying to the invitations. However, when they

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came to the teacher’s home for joy, the teacher offered them some candy, of course, in

Vietnamese. One of the learners replied with an English utterance I’m sorry. I can’t. This

proves that learners with little L2 proficiency can perform a speech act communicatively, but

they cannot do it in a native-like manner. What is more, the status and power relationships

holding between speaker and hearer are usually ignored or rarely referred to in the

coursebook. For instance, in unit 3 on page 30 the learners are asked to practice making

complaints through exclamations such as What an expensive dress! But they do not know

whom they make the utterance with and in which situations they should make an utterance

like that. This causes them to make both sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic errors when

they interact in real life situations. In other words, pragmatic awareness is not taken account in

the coursebook.

As mentioned above, learning a foreign language is not only simply to acquire the linguistic

resources – phonological, lexical, and grammatical systems but also to learn how to

understand and convey pragmatic meaning and achieve successful communication in the

target language. It is the fact that the later has been the focus of much research on learner

language recently. L2 learners usually acquire the developing system that is neither that of

their native language nor that of the target language. Learners’ different developing systems of

the native language, of the target language, and of the learner language cause so much

difficulty in learners’ L2 acquisition in general and the acquisition of the pragmatic ability in

particular. Furthermore, the cultural differences of learners’ native language and the target

language are also the cause of pragmatic failure. The study of learner language or

interlanguage (ILP) can be useful in helping learners’ progress through the developmental

stages. Teachers, in particular, need to understand the domain of ILP to modify their teaching

practices to facilitate pragmatic development. In the present study learner language is

investigated through the speech act of asking for something back.

So far so many speech act sets such as requests, apologies, refusals, invitations, complaints,

compliments, greetings, gratitude, etc have been studied on both cross-cultural and

interlanguage pragmatics perspective but not the act of asking something back. Hence, the

speech act of asking for something back is chosen for this study for the reason that it has never

been investigated before though it occurs regularly in everyday conversations. Moreover, it

differs from other types of speech acts in the sense that it seems to require the speakers to use

many different communicative strategies to achieve the last goal, namely getting something

back from the addresses. Sometimes, the speech act has to be repeated many times and in each

time a new strategy may have to be used, and then the goal can be achieved successfully.

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Saying these things is to see that an investigation on the speech act can be hopeful to discover

interesting things. What is more, it is also very useful to find how learners learn to perform the

speech act, and to what extent and in what ways learners perform the speech act in the L2

differently from native speakers of the target language. From the findings of these, teachers

then can have appropriate approaches to the teaching of language functions.

1.2. Aims of the study

The study aims to find out if Vietnamese learners and native speakers differ in realizing the

speech act of asking for something back in the situations studied and if so, why they are

different.

1.3. Scope of the study

The study focuses on the speech act of asking for something back performed by Vietnamese

learners of English and then compares it with that performed by English native speakers to see

the similarities and differences between the two groups. The term ‘speech act’ here is used to

refer to the illocutionary act, that is, the study concentrates on illocutionary meaning. In

addition, the study pays attention to learner production rather than learner perception or

comprehension. What is more, because of the size of the study, the matter of learners’

pragmatic competence development also lies outside the scope of the study. Since we did not

collect data by recording or interview, the verbal features such as intonation, stress were not

discussed in the thesis either.

1.4. Organization of the study

The present study consists of six chapters. Chapter 1 concerns with the rationale of the study,

that is, why the subject matter is chosen to be studied. It also includes the aims, scope, and

organization of the study. Chapter 2 refers to some fundamental theories and concepts of

speech acts, politeness, pragmatics, and interlanguage pragmatics. Chapter 3 deals with

methods of data collection and data analysis. Chapter 4 reports the results of the study, basing

on the collected data and discusses some issues on learners’ language use, basing on the

results reported. Chapter 5 provides some concluding remarks drawn from the results of the

study, some implications for teaching language functions, and limitations of the study.

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Chapter two: Literature review

2.1. Speech act theory

2.1.1. Austin and Searle’s theory of speech acts

For a long time, the studying object of linguistics was mainly affirmative sentences, or

sometimes called statements, assertions. This was because, semantically, these sentences

could be all tested for their truth or falsity. Other sentences such as Could you tell me what

time it is?, I promise I’ll be more careful next time, or I bet you Barcelona will win the

Champions’ League, which could not be logically concluded to be true or false, were

considered meaningless (Levinson, 1983). Only when Austin’s (1962) theory of speech acts

was launched, did the changes occur. According to Austin, these above sentences when

uttered are not used to just say things or describe states of affairs but rather actively do things

such as raising a question, promising, or betting. He called these peculiar sentences

‘performative’ in order to differentiate them from the affirmative sentences, which he called

‘constatives’. However, after making a distinction between explicit performatives and implicit

performatives, Austin claims that there is no longer the contrast between performatives and

constatives. This is because constatives are also created by an illocutionary act (see below).

For example, the utterance It is raining is realized a statement, but it can also be used with the

first person singular I and a performative verb in the present tense to become an explicit

performative. Then, we have I state that it is raining. Yule (1996) formulates this deep

structure as follows:

I (hereby) Vp you (that) U

The formula is generalized by the Performative Hypothesis, which proposes that every

sentence has a deep structure of an explicit performative. In other words, all the implicit

performatives occurring in everyday conversations are originated from the deep structure of

explicit performatives. Nevertheless, as Do (2003) points out, the Performative Hypothesis is

collapsed for two reasons: first, in many cases, an implicit performative cannot be transformed

into an explicit one because one cannot find a performative verb which can be used to describe

it; second, when an implicit performative is made explicit by a performative verb, the meaning

of the utterance recognized by it can be changed. For example, a mother wants her son to turn

off the TV as he is always watching it. She says Turn off the TV but her son does not do that,

and she utters again I ask you to turn off the TV right now. In this case, one can see how the

mother’s attitude has changed when she makes an explicit performative.

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From Austin’s discussion, we can see that when we say something, we also do something.

And “actions performed via utterances are generally called ‘speech acts’” (Yule, 1996:47).

Austin argues that there are three types of acts: locutionary act, illocutionary act, and

perlocutionary act.

Locutionary act is the one, in terms of form and content, that uses linguistic elements such as

words, sounds of words, sentence combination to make a meaningful and well-formed

utterance.

Perlocutionary act is the one that brings about effects on listeners by means of utterances, and

is specific to the circumstances. For example, the utterance Turn off the TV spoken to the

addressee may make him/her turn off the TV, or it may also make him/her angry or

uncomfortable. The acts of turning off the TV, anger, or discomfort are all related to the

perlocutionary effects. The perlocutionary effects, though intended or unintended, are non￾conventional and are caused by some particular utterance in a particular situation.

Illocutionary act is the one performed via the conventional force in uttering a sentence with

some communicative purpose. The utterance Turn off the TV can be interpreted as a request,

an order, an advice, or a threat, depending on certain situations of communication. And this

called the ‘illocutionary force’ of the utterance. The illocutionary force is directly achieved via

speaker’s intention and a conventional procedure, whose operational rules, though not

represented in the utterance, are understood and followed by all the people in a certain

linguistic community. So it must be said that to master a language is not just simply to master

its syntax, phonetics, or lexicon, but to master the operational rules of the illocutionary act in

that language. That is to say, one must know how to make appropriately and effectively a

request, a promise, an invitation, a question, etc in the target language.

Among the three types of acts, the illocutionary act is the main focus of linguistic pragmatics.

And the term ‘speech act’ (Searle’s 1969 term) is exclusively used to refer to the illocutionary

act.

Although it is impossible to test whether an illocutionary act is logically true or false, it is

possible to examine whether it is appropriate or inappropriate when uttered. Searle (1969),

basing on the felicity conditions advanced by Austin (1962), proposes a set of conditions,

which an illocutionary act has to meet to be appropriate when uttered. This set includes