Vietnam national university - HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES DEPARTMENT OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES VŨ THÙY LINH AN AMERICAN AND VIETNAMESE CROSSCULTURAL STUDY ON TEACHERS’ CRITICISMS TO STUDENTS’ PRESENTATIONS NGHIÊN CỨU GIAO VĂN HÓA VIỆT MỸ VỀ CÁCH THỨC PHÊ BÌNH CỦA GIÁO VIÊN ĐỐI VỚI CÁC BÀI THUYỂT TRÌNH CỦA SINH VIÊN M.A MINOR THESIS Major: English Linguistics Code: 60 22 15 HANOI, 10/2009 Vietnam national university - HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES DEPARTMENT OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES VŨ THÙY LINH AN AMERICAN AND VIETNAMESE CROSSCULTURAL STUDY ON TEACHERS’ CRITICISMS TO STUDENTS’ PRESENTATIONS NGHIÊN CỨU GIAO VĂN HĨA VIỆT MỸ VỀ CÁCH THỨC PHÊ BÌNH CỦA GIÁO VIÊN ĐỐI VỚI CÁC BÀI THUYỂT TRÌNH CỦA SINH VIÊN M.A MINOR THESIS Major: English Linguistics Code: 60 22 15 Supervisor: Assoc Prof VÕ ĐẠI QUANG (PhD) HANOI, 10/2009 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ABSTRACT i ii iii Part I: Introduction 1 Rationale of the Study Aims of the Study Scope of the Study Methodology Design of the Study Part II: Development Chapter 1: Literature Review 1.1 Speech acts 1.2 Speech act of criticizing 1.3 Directness and Indirectness 1.3.1 Directness and Indirectness in Language 1.3.2 Directness and Indirectness in Culture 10 1.4 Oral Presentation 12 1.4.1 Definition of Presentation 12 1.4.2 Class Presentation Assessment Criteria 12 Chapter 2: The Study 15 2.1 Comments on Participants and Questionnaires 15 2.2 Data collection procedure 17 2.3 Data coding 17 Chapter 3: Results and Discussion 20 3.1 Criticizing strategies used by American and Vietnamese teachers 20 3.1.1 Direct criticisms 20 a Negative evaluation 20 b Disapproval 21 c Identification of problem 22 v d Consequences 23 3.1.2 Indirect criticisms 24 a Demand for change 24 b Indicating standard 25 c Request for change 25 d Advice for change 26 e Suggestion for change 27 f Asking/ Presupposing 28 3.2 Similarities and differences in using direct and indirect strategies 29 Part III: Conclusion 36 Appendix I PART I: INTRODUCTION RATIONALE The past decade has witnessed the rapid development of pragmatics and growing attention on speech acts such as apology, request, and compliment However, the speech act of criticism remains to be an area less explored by scholars at home and abroad According to Brown and Levinson (1987: 62), criticism is a face-threatening act that threatens the hearer’s positive face, which is “the want of every individual that his wants be desirable to at least some others” Therefore, the speaker tends to adopt various strategies to save face for the one being criticized However, cultural differences could result in variance in criticism strategy preferences and an interlocutor may inappropriately choose some criticism strategies according to his own culture with another interlocutor from different culture, thus leading misunderstanding in the cross-cultural communication The fact that criticism plays a very important in teaching and learning is undeniable This is because students may learn from mistakes of one another as well as from the comments that they receive Teachers, however, form different cultures have different ways of giving criticisms to their students’ presentations Some may be open and direct in their criticisms while others may resort to indirect strategies Thus, misusing this may have counter-productive effects on the relationships between the interlocutors All the aforementioned reasons have encouraged us to carry out a study entitled “An American and Vietnamese Cross – Cultural Study on Teachers’ Criticisms to Students’ Presentations” We this study with the hope of raising the awareness of cross-cultural differences in American and Vietnamese ways of criticizing in general and criticizing students’ presentations in particular AIMS OF THE STUDY The study aims to make a comparison in the ways of criticizing students’ presentations between American and Vietnamese teachers To reach this aim, two objectives need to be achieved First, the study examines what politeness strategies are employed by American and Vietnamese teachers when they give criticisms to their students’ presentations Second, the study also analyzes the similarities and differences between two groups of teachers in the use of politeness strategies in their criticism to students’ presentations SCOPE OF THE STUDY The main focus of this study is the teachers’ politeness strategies in giving criticisms to students’ presentation Not everything to criticism is studied but merely negative criticisms about presentations in classroom To serve the purpose of the research, the target population is identified as American and Vietnamese college teachers who teach third-year students This selection ensures that the students of these teachers are required to make frequent oral presentations during their terms and the teachers have experience in giving comments on students’ presentations METHODOLOGY Since the main purpose of the study is to compare the ways of criticizing students’ presentations between American and Vietnamese teachers; therefore, describing, comparing and contrastive analysis prove be the best candidates of all Thus, the thesis will be oriented in the following steps: - the questionnaire - identify strategies of criticism of both English and Vietnamese teachers in the source of questionnaire result - classify the criticisms into sub-strategies - describe the criticisms in each language to find out the typical features of each substrategies - analyze, compare, and contrast criticizing strategies based on the cultural features in the two languages to point out the basic similarities and differences in this aspect - reach the comments and conclusions on the subject under research DESIGN OF THE STUDY The study is composed of three parts: Part I: INTRODUCTION Introduction describes the study’s rationale, aims, objectives, scope and methodology Part II: DEVELOPMENT There are three chapters in this part Chapter 1: Literature Review lays the theoretical foundation for the research by discussing (1) theory of speech act, (2) speech act of criticizing, (3) directness and indirectness in language and culture, and (4) an overview of presentation and criteria for a good presentation Chapter 2: Study details the methods that have been used and the procedures that have been followed by the researcher Chapter 3: Results and Discussion presents the findings from the survey and discuss them in detail Part III: CONCLUSION This part ends the study by summarizing its main points as well as points out the limitations and suggestions for further studies PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 SPEECH ATCS The notion of speech acts dates back the British philosopher of language John Austin (1962) In his very influential work, ‘How to things with words’, Austin defines speech acts as the actions performed in saying something or actions performed using language In fact, when speaking, we perform certain linguistic actions such as giving reports, making statement, asking questions, giving warnings, making promises and so on In other words speech acts are all the acts we perform through speaking – all the things we when we speak Austin (1962) distinguished between the three kinds of acts, namely locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary then Of these, a locutionary act is the act of saying something in the full sense of “say” An illocutionary act is the one of using the sentence to perform a particular function; and a perlocutionary act is the one of producing some kinds of effects that are produced by means of saying something Among above three kinds of acts, the illocutionary act which Austin later termed “speech act” is the core interest of Austin as well as of other pragmatists (Levinson, 1983) Meanwhile, Searle (1974) argue that each type of illocutionary acts requires certain expected or appropriate called felicity conditions These conditions relate to the beliefs and attitudes of the Speaker and the Hearer and to their mutual understanding of the use of the linguistic devices for information What is more, Searle (1965), cited by Minh, (2005: 11) emphasized that Austin’s felicity conditions are not only dimensions in which utterances can go wrong but they are also constitutive of the various illocutionary forces, and therefore, can differentiate illocutionary acts from one another Searle classified those felicity conditions into four kinds, which are: (1) Preparatory conditions: the person performing the speech acts has to have quality to so (2) Sincerity conditions: the speech act must be performed in a sincere manner (3) Propositional context conditions: The utterance must have exact content (4) Essential conditions: The speech act has to be executed in the correct manner (Searle, 1979: 44) Both Austin and Searle have paved the way to research into linguistic functions instead of linguistic forms as is often observed in earlier linguistic studies They also have tried to classify speech acts and put them under categories Austin (1962) categorizes five classes of speech ants as: (1) Verdictives: “the giving of the verdict”, e.g assess, appraise (2) Exercitives: “exercising of powers, rights, or influence”, e.g command, direct (3) Commissives: “committing the speaker”, e.g promise, propose (4) Behavitives: “reaction to other people’s behavior and fortunes”, e.g apology, thank (5) Expositives: “expounding of views, the conducting or arguments and the classifying of usages and of references”, e.g accept, agree However, this classification is criticized for basing mainly on the performative verb through which a speech act is expressed and having no clear or consistent principle or set of principles based on which Austin constructed his taxonomy Thus, many speech acts according to his classification, may belong to two different categories Searle (1979), finding fault with Austin’s, suggests his own classification of speech acts These speech acts are further described as follows: (1) Representatives: representing states of affairs (e.g.: assertions, conclusion, or description) (2) Directives: getting the hearer to something (e.g.: suggestion, commands or requests) (3) Commissives: committing the speaker to doing something (e.g.: threats, refusals, or promises.) (4) Expressives: expressing feelings about states of affairs (e.g.: apologies, compliments or congratulation) (5) Declarations: bringing about changes of some states of affairs (e.g.: resignition, declaration or baptism.) Wardhaugh (1992) summarized and explains Austin’s (1962) and Searle’s (1975) speech act theories and then concludes: In contrast to Austin, who focused his attention on how speakers realize their intentions in speaking, Searle focused on how listeners respond to utterances, that is, how one person tries to figure out how another is using a particular utterance [ ] what we see in both Austin and Searle is a recognition that people use language to achieve a variety of objectives Wardhaugh (1992: 287) Another approach to distinguish types of speech acts can be made on the relationship between structure and function (Yule, 1996: 54) He divided speech acts into direct speech act and indirect act and defines, “Whenever there is a direct relationship between a structure and a function, we have a direct speech acts Whenever there is an indirect relationship between a structure and a function, we have an indirect speech act.” The utterances “Turn on the fan, please”, for example, the speaker (S) has directly requested the hearer (H) to turn on the fan The syntactic structure of this utterance indicates a straightforward request in English Nevertheless, the same request can be made in a more tacit, indirect manner to achieve the same result; S may say something like “It’s hot in here” 1.2 SPEECH ACT OF CRITICIZING In real-life communication, the speech act of criticizing – as in the case of complaining has proven to be composed of different speech acts and of great risk of causing face threatening act It is, therefore, suggested the studies on criticizing as a speech act across cultures should be carried out with the hope of contributing to the successful cross-cultural communication The speech act of criticizing has been studied by different researchers such as House and Kasper (1981), Tracy, van Dusen, and Robison (1987), Tracy and Eisenberg (1990), Wajnryb( 1993, 1995) and Toplak and Katz(2000) and others Tracy, et al (1987) investigated the characteristics of criticisms by people from different cultural backgrounds and distinguished “good” from “bad” criticisms According to him, a good criticism is one that displays a positive language and manner, suggests specific changes and possible critic, states justified and explicated reasons for criticizing and does not violate the relationship between interlocutions and is accurate Supporting that point of view, Wajnrub(1993) holds “an effective criticism must be kept simple specific, well-grounded, linked to strategies for improvement and delivered as an attempt ... STUDY ON TEACHERS’ CRITICISMS TO STUDENTS’ PRESENTATIONS NGHIÊN CỨU GIAO VĂN HÓA VIỆT MỸ VỀ CÁCH THỨC PHÊ BÌNH CỦA GIÁO VIÊN ĐỐI VỚI CÁC BÀI THUYỂT TRÌNH CỦA SINH VIÊN M.A MINOR THESIS Major:... kept simple and made meaningful to support the content  Handling questions In Templeton and FiztGerald’s (1999) opinion, it is important to be honest, in control, and confident Mandel (1987)... presentation, question -and- answer and feedback In the presentation section, students are given an opportunity to demonstrate their understanding of a topic and to explain it to an audience The question -and- answer