Pragmatic transfer in interlanguage requesting by vietnamese learners of english

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

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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.

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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

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- 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.

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Chapter II: Literature review

I. 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.

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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.

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I. 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

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