HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY CODE: 26 FACULTY OF ENGLISH - - GRADUATION THESIS B.A DEGREE IN ENGLISH STUDIES A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF THE UTTERANCES CONTAINING IMPLICATURES IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE CULTURE (Based on Utterances from Funny Stories) Supervisor : Nguyen The Hoa, M.A Student : Hoang Thi Yen Date of birth : 20/11/1994 Course : K19 (2012-2016) HANOI, 2016 Graduation Paper DECLARATION “A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF THE UTTERANCES CONTAINING IMPLICATURES IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE CULTURE” (Based on utterances from funny stories) I certify that no part of above report has been copied or reproduced by me from any other’s work without acknowledgement and that the report is originally written by me under strict guidance of my supervisor Ha Noi, 15thApril, 2016 Student Supervisor Hoang Thi Yen Nguyen The Hoa Hoang Thi Yen - 1271A06 (2012 - 2016) Graduation Paper ACKNOWLEDGEMENT At this stage of research accomplishments, I would first like to thank my supervisorMr Nguyen The Hoa of the Fulculty of English at Hanoi Open University He consistently allowed this paper to be my own work, but steered me in the right the direction whenever he thought I needed it I would also like to acknowledge Faculty of English, Hanoi Open University, all my teachers and the librarians for providing favorable conditions for my study to be implemented Finally, I must express my very profound gratitude to my parents and to my friends for providing me with unfailing support and continuous encouragement throughout my years of study and through the process of researching and writing this thesis This accomplishment would not have been possible without them Thank you Hoang Thi Yen - 1271A06 (2012 - 2016) Graduation Paper TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ABBREVIATION LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES PART A: INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale Aims and objectives of the study 3 Scope of the study Research questions Methods of the study Design of the study PART B DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1 Overview of discourse analysis 1.1.1 Definition of discourse 1.1.2 Discourse analysis 1.1.3 Context in discourse analysis 1.2 Utterance meaning 10 Hoang Thi Yen - 1271A06 (2012 - 2016) Graduation Paper 1.3 Contrastive analysis 11 1.4 Implicatures 12 1.4.1 The notions of implicature 12 1.4.2 Kinds of implicatures 14 1.4.2.1 Conventional implicature 14 1.4.2.2 Conversational implicature 14 1.4.3 The Cooperative principle 16 1.4.4 Maxims and flouting maxim 17 1.4.4.1 The Maxim of Quantity 17 1.4.4.2 The Maxim of Quality 18 1.4.4.3 The Maxim of Relation 19 1.4.4.4 The Maxim of Manner 19 1.5 Overview of funny stories 20 1.6 Summary 22 CHAPTER II INTERPRETATION AND ANALYSES 23 2.1 Funny stories in English 23 2.1.1 Violating the Maxim of Quantity 23 2.1.2 Violating the Maxim of Quality 24 2.1.3 Violating the Maxim of Relation 27 2.1.4 Violating the Maxim of Manner 29 2.2 Funny stories in Vietnamese 32 Hoang Thi Yen - 1271A06 (2012 - 2016) Graduation Paper 2.2.1 Violating the Maxim of Quantity 32 2.2.2 Violating the Maxim of Quality 34 2.2.3 Violating the Maxim of Relation 38 2.2.4 Violating the Maxim of Manner 39 2.3 Discussion 41 2.3.1 The violating of maxims in English and Vietnamese 41 2.3.2 Similarities between English and Vietnamese implicatures 43 2.3.3 Differences between English and Vietnamese implicatures 45 2.3.4 Summary 48 CHAPTER III SUGGESTION SOME STRATEGIES TO TRANSLATE THE UTTERANCES CONTAINING IMPLICATURES 49 PART C: CONCLUSION 52 REFERENCES Hoang Thi Yen - 1271A06 (2012 - 2016) Graduation Paper LIST OF ABBREVIATION C.A.: Contrastive Analysis C.I: Conversational Implicature CP: Cooperative Principle Hoang Thi Yen - 1271A06 (2012 - 2016) Graduation Paper LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES Table 1: Result of survey on breaking of maxims in English and Vietnamese funny stories…………………………………………………………………….41 Chart 1: Result of survey on breaking of maxims in English and Vietnamese funny stories…………………………………………………………………….42 Hoang Thi Yen - 1271A06 (2012 - 2016) Graduation Paper PART A: INTRODUCTION Rationale Nobody can deny that language plays an important role in human development Language is the means to serve the purposes of communication among people who share the same nationality and social origin In other words, language exchanges the human behaviors, “language is closely related to the way we think and to the way we behave and influence the behaviors of others” (Karmic 1998, p.79).The relationship between language and culture isa complex one due largely in part to the great difficulty in understanding people’s cognitive processes when they communicate.Each of nations has their own language and culture; therefore, Vietnamese learners of English have to encounter with a variety of issues in understanding this language Moreover, along with social exchanges, the utterances usually contain implicature, making people confused in the communication As Geoffrey Leech (1983, p.34) argues “we cannot really understand the nature of language itself unless we understand pragmatics” Thus, melting the theory of pragmatics is the key step to improve the ability of using language Pragmatics deals with the study of language in use in different contexts It did not appear as an independent branch of linguistics until 1960s and 1970s As a branch of pragmatics, the theory of implicature experienced along history and can be traced back to relations with Semiotics and the Theory of Deviation However, in 1967, the theory ofimplicature was formally suggested by Herbert Hoang Thi Yen - 1271A06 (2012 - 2016) Graduation Paper Paul Grice (1913-1988), an English linguistic philosopher He introduced the technical notion of implicature in systematizing the phenomenon of meaning one thing by saying something else In introducing the notion, Grice drew a line between what is said, which he understood as being closely related to the conventional meaning of the words uttered, and what is conversationally implicated, which can be inferred from the fact that an utterance has been made in context Since Grice’s seminal work, implicatures has become one of the major research areas in pragmatics.In particular, some of the best-known works include “Presumptive Meanings” (The Theory of Generalized Conversational Implicature), by Stephen C Levinson (2000), “Pragmatics” by George Yule (1996), “Relevance Theory” bySperber & Wilson (1986) In Vietnamese, a lot of famous linguistic philosophers researched into the characteristics of implicatures The popular works belong to Nguyen Duc Dan (1996), Nguyen Thien Giap (2000), “Tiếng Việt – Mấy vấn đề ngữ âm, ngữ pháp ngữ nghĩa” by Cao Xuan Hao (1998) Building on the theorical background of above linguistic philosophers, in particular, the writer would find out about the utterances containing implicatures in English and Vietnamese culture in terms of funny stories Although there are a lot of works on this topic, almost of them have not to mention the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese implicature yet Some works focused on humor mechanism of Vietnamese funny stories, “Cơ chế tạo hàm ý hội thoại truyện cười dân gian Việt Nam” by Pham Minh Luan B.A Degree (2012), for example Hoang Thi Yen - 1271A06 (2012 - 2016) Graduation Paper 2.3.2 Similarities between English and Vietnamese implicatures Through the study of implicatures, the writer can draw out some similarities between English and Vietnamese implicatures First of all, through the funny stories, both English and Vietnamese share roughly the same humor mechanism based onflouting or violation of maxims onconversational implicature Conversational implicature is realized through the four maxims under general principle of conversation The first maxim of quantity requires the speaker to give the right amount of information when he/she speaks, which means not to be too brief or to give more information than the situation requires The second one is flouting maxim of quality occurs when speaker’s contribution is not true that is violated by overstatement, understatement, irony and hyperbole or showing off.Flouting the maxim of relevance occurs when the speaker’s contribution is not relevance Then flouting the maxim of manner occurs when speaker’s contribution is not perspicuous and it may be obscure, ambiguous and not reasonable direct Another similarity between English and Vietnamese implicatures is that language ambiguity phenomenon In other words, according to pragmatics, that is the maxim of manner violated the most in both English and Vietnamese funny stories This maxim is broken in order to create humor by portraying the characters as odd and stupid because of their obscure and ambiguous utterances The hearers/readers can easily realize the funny situations or events thanks to “language ambiguity” combining with their background knowledge and their own approach to language The humor of funny stories is created by language ambiguity in several levels: lexicon, syntax and pragmatics Hoang Thi Yen - 1271A06 (2012 - 2016) 43 Graduation Paper Further more, English and Vietnamese implicatures have something in common in terms of structural forms They have the same mode of structure: mode of combinition making the extraordinary semantic Đậu phụ làng cắn đậu phụ chùa Sư cụ xơi thịt chó Chú tiểu biết hỏi: - Bạch cụ, cụ xơi ạ? - Tao ăn đậu phụ Vừa lúc ấy, tiếng chó sủa ầm ĩ cổng, sư cụ hỏi: - Cái ầm ĩ thế? - Bạch cụ, đậu phụ làng cắn đậu phụ chùa (Trương Chính – Phong Châu, 133) The monk in this story told alie to conceal an evil deed of the Buddhist temple which was eating dog’s meat He used “soya curd” instead of dog’s meat; however, the novice was so smart He made the extraordinary semantic basing on the monk’s utterance to create an implicature By the way, the monk’s deed was exposed As an above-mentioned English funny story “Your horse called last night”(2.1.2 Violating the Maxim of Quality), the wife exposed that her husband told a lie about Marylou She made an extraordinary meaning even if she knows obvious that the horse cannot call the telephone Her utterance containing implicature is the humor factor in this story Hoang Thi Yen - 1271A06 (2012 - 2016) 44 Graduation Paper Finally, in both English and Vietnamese funny stories, implicatures bring hearer/reader to see the unpredictable factor and then bring out the laughter and meaningful morals 2.3.3 Differences between English and Vietnamese implicatures Each of language has numerous differences in some fields along with a variety of differences in implicatures mechanism In terms of sociology, language and cultural or historical characteristics have an intimate relationship The cultural differences give us more misunderstanding on the conversations Moreover, the social background knowledge also has a massive effect on understanding implicit meaning of the utterances The background knowledge is something that joketellers often rely on for a successful operation of a joke Background knowledge of a joke includes a wide range of information from geographical names, historical events, famous people, patriotic lore, values and customs, and so on In other words, the utterances containing implicatures depend much on their own culture and background knowledge Therefore, understanding implicature perhaps demands the most culture specific information For instance, let’s consider a Vietnamese folktale: Kiêng chữ Một thầy có tính hay kiêng, hôm nhỏ theo hầu vào kinh thi Chú có khan vắt vai, dọc đường gió thổi mạnh khăn rớt xuống đất hoài Hoang Thi Yen - 1271A06 (2012 - 2016) 45 Graduation Paper Chú cáu nói: - Sao lại rớt hoài vậy? Thầy nghe mắng: - Đi thi sợ tiếng “rớt” mà mày nói “rớt” bất lợi Chú nhỏ làm thinh Đi lúc, khăn lại rơi xuống đất, lần tức lắm, nhặt buộc chặt lên đầu nói: - Phen tao trói chặt mày vào đây, có tới kinh không “đậu” nữa! In this Vietnamese story, the author described a common situation in the Vietnamese traditional society There was a man walked with his gossoon to the capital to take the big exam That examinee always wants to avoid the unfortunate events; therefore, when the gossoon unintentionally said a word “rớt” (which means “fail” in English) that man was so angry and got a scolding for his carelessness After that, the gossoon’s scaft fell off again However, he did not dare to repeat the word “rớt”, he used a phrase “không đậu” (which means “not pass”) instead This story criticizes superstition for Vietnamese society Until now, that culture is still in being in several Vietnamese classes In terms of linguistic, the Vietnamese deixis system is more complex than English one.Deixis is a technical term (from Greek) for one of the most basic things we with utterances, which means “pointing via language” The Hoang Thi Yen - 1271A06 (2012 - 2016) 46 Graduation Paper Vietnamese lexicon about family and social relationships are diversified and contain a large meaning.Thus, their implicatures are also profound.For example, in Vietnamese language, the words “tôi, tao, mình, em, con, cháu, and so forth” can translate to English language by only a word “I” In constrast, person deixis in English are almost limited Another example, “Today he is not on the drink”; the time deixis “Today” implicated that he is always drunk except today Further more, there is not the same “semantic module” or equivalent to homonyms and polysemys.In English language, with only an article, the utterance can be understood in other way “I saw him go out with a woman yesterday”, for example “A”in that situation implied that the woman is not his wife/girlfriend In terms of structural form, Vietnamese funny stories tend to use the mode of word-play (using homonym, spoonerism, synonym phenomenon) more than English In terms of breaking maxims, there is a big difference between English and Vietnamese funny stories According to the chart 1, there are a lot of English funny stories violating maxim of relation, about 26% (21 stories) compared with 6% (5 stories) of Vietnamese funny stories In constrast, the proportion of English funny stories violating maxim of quantity accounts for 9% (7 stories); meanwhile, the percentage one of Vietnamese funny stories reaches 19% (15 stories) In short, Vietnamese language does not tend to violate the maxim of relation in conversational implicatures and the maxim of quantity for English language so Hoang Thi Yen - 1271A06 (2012 - 2016) 47 Graduation Paper 2.3.4 Summary Overall, there are so many differences and similarities between English and Vietnamese The data analysis reveals that both English and Vietnamese funny stories have the same implicature mechanism.They are also violating or flouting maxims to creat the implicature in some selected funny stories Moreover, using language ambiguity phenomenon is the most popular method in the both languages However, Vietnamese and English implicatures have a variety of differences in terms of aspects: sociology, linguistic, structural form, breaking maxims From that point, Vietnamese learners of English can understand particular characteristics of implicature, simply to compare and contrast two languages Hoang Thi Yen - 1271A06 (2012 - 2016) 48 Graduation Paper CHAPTER III SUGGESTION SOME STRATEGIES TO TRANSLATE THE UTTERANCES CONTAINING IMPLICATURES Translation is an operation performed on language It is an across-theboard skill which helps improve learners’ language proficiency Its essence is transference from the source text to the target text how to make an equivalency between two texts Cao Xuan Hao (2005) discussed translation that includes four steps He also considered that conversational implicature contains illocutionary meaning, but hearer/translators still recover the meaning and understand immediately when approaching to the source texts According to John Lyons (1995, p.286), the differences between languages about conventional implicature are “extremely difficult to translate an appropriate translation from source language to target language” and“ cannot replace an utterance to the other in the same context but not exchange their implicatures” Moreover, the difference between their cultures is a big challenge toward translator or English learners In order to become good translator or interpreter, it is of great necessity for learners to acquire certain accumulation of linguistic and cultural knowledge in both foreign language and their mothertongue Choosing a suitable method of translation with particular utterance and situation need be noticed carefully • Translation with preservation of implicatue Almost of the conversational implicatures are preserved in translation Translators would use a semantic approach to restore the accurate meaning of Hoang Thi Yen - 1271A06 (2012 - 2016) 49 Graduation Paper original text However, there are some utterances be exchanged surface structure; in other word, this approach does not ensure the equivalent form but their implicature is guaranteed • Translation with adaptation of implicature Conventional implicature is very difficult to translate accurately from source language to target language However, almost of the utterances which are translated, in general, implicature has a few changeable senses Which means the readers can be affected more or less Conversational impliciature in some cases are changed by translator Language form plays an important role in target language, so translator can add some equivalent lexicon to expose the meaning To make the translation familiar with Vietnamese style, translator can insert modal verbs, grammatical words, and so forth • Translation without implicature Translator does not translate the implicature of source text by explanation of its meaning This method is the lowest rate in three methods of translation In particular, researching on implicature of funny story, implicature makes the laughter at the end part of story If translator translates all of the meaning, reader cannot understand by themselves Hence, function of implicature is not useful In general, in the process of translation, translator must pay attention to factors: aim, object, context of utterance and translator’s ability Translation with adaptation of implicature may be contrast to the aims of author on the source Hoang Thi Yen - 1271A06 (2012 - 2016) 50 Graduation Paper texts Translation without implicature can produce a rude text Therefore, learners need to notice to choose a suitable method to the different discourse Hoang Thi Yen - 1271A06 (2012 - 2016) 51 Graduation Paper PART C: CONCLUSION Generally, there are a lot of concepts of implicture and related notions In this study, in short, an imlicature is a proposition that is implied by the utterance of a sentence in a context even though that proposition is not a part of nor an entailment of what was actually said.Conversational implicature is usally created basing on violating the CP and the conversational maxims In contrast, Conventional implicature is independent of the cooperative principle and its four maxims, but it depends on the units of languages In English, conjunction, modal particles and syntactic forms as tense are used to express Conventional implicature The study shows that maxims are important for writers in order to evoke feelings and reactions in their readers The writers adhere to different maxims in order to get the intended meaning from one speaker to another In order to create humor as well as to bring out different characteristics and personality traits in the different character, it is necessary to break the maxims However, working out the implicature of native funny stories is not an easy task for non-native speakers The study indicates that in order to properly understand funny stories, the readers are required to have a considerable background knowledge In summary, Grice’s maxims and the CP are used not only to understand how we communicate but also why and when we are uncooperative Funny stories bring out a variety of values and aspect of life Funny stories were born and had developed with human development at the same time In our life, we can laugh because of different reasons such as the illogical events or Hoang Thi Yen - 1271A06 (2012 - 2016) 52 Graduation Paper contradiction The funny stories bring out not only the happy laughter but also the laughter of sadness They also reflect, criticise and satirise the bad habits in the society They can be used as a means of weapon to fight against the negative things in the society.Therefore, funny stories would be important sources to help non-native speakers be aware of the native country For instance, understanding English funny story can help learners to broaden knowledge about English culture We have more understanding about English sense of humor, seeing what and who English laugh at, learners can get some sense of English characters and English values This factor plays an important role to bridge the cultural gap between English and Vietnamese, which may minimize the possibility of miscommunication when members of the two groups interact Furthermore, funny stories with implicature can be used as a meaningful vehicle to explain and illustrate complex linguistic notions Funny story can deal with hyponymy, polysemy, metaphor and metonymy, etc Violation of maxims of implicature based on linguistics categories is rather common The learners are expected to learn these linguistic categories better because they can see how they operate in every day situations where the language is played with The implication of the study is to help Vietnamese learners of English realize and avoid making themselves funny or non-sense All the above things, this contrastive study has presented some similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese implicatures, analysed humor mechanism for help Vietnamese learners of English enrich more background knowledge, improving language proficiency Furthermore, the writer only focuses on the humor mechanism basing on maxims in English and Vietnamese funny stories, this study has just touched a small aspect of short funny stories Hoang Thi Yen - 1271A06 (2012 - 2016) 53 Graduation Paper The thesis has been completely with the greatest efforts of the writer However, shortcomings and mistakes are unavoidable Therefore, the writer with sincere gratitude would be grateful for comments and criticisms of the readers so that the writer could improve it Hoang Thi Yen - 1271A06 (2012 - 2016) 54 Graduation Paper REFERENCES English materials Brown, Gillian & Yule, George (1983) Discourse Analysis Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Carl James (1980) Contrastive Analysis London: Longman Cook, Guy (1989) Discourse Oxford: Oxford University Press Cook, G (1992) The Discourse of Advertising London Routlegde Crystal, D (1992) Introducing lingluistics Harlow: Penguin Deirdre Wilson and Dan Sperber (1995) Relevance Theory Oxford: Blackwell.607-632 Handbook of Pragmatics Gazdar, Gerald (1979) Pragmatics, Implicature, Presupposition and LogicalForm Florida Academis Press INC Geoffrey N Leech (1983) Principles of Pragmatics London: Longman George Lakoff (1992) The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor Cambridge University Press 10.George Lakoff (1993) How Metaphor Structures Dreams: The Theory of Conceptual Metaphor Applied to Dream Analysis Dreaming 11.Grice, H P (1975) Logic and Conversation New York: Academic Press 12.Halliday, M.A.K & R Hasan (1976) Cohesion in English London: Longman 13.Levinson, S C.(1983) Pragmatic Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 14.Levinson, S C (1983) Pragmatics, Cambridge University Press Hoang Thi Yen - 1271A06 (2012 - 2016) Graduation Paper 15.Levinson, S C (2000) Presumptive meanings: The theory of generalized conversational implicature Cambridge: MIT press 16.Lyons, J (1994) Language and Linguistics An Introduction, Cambridge University Press 17.Lyons J (1995) Linguistic Semantics AnIntroduction, Cambridge University Press 18.L’Hill.English Funny Stories 19.Nunan, David (1992) Research Methods in Language Learning, UK: CUP 25 Nunan, David (1993) Introducing Discourse Analysis, London: Penguin Group 20.Yao Xiaosu (2009) Conversational Implicature Analysis of Humor in American Situation Comedy “Friends” University Gent 21.Yule George (1996) Pragmatics Oxford University Press Vietnamese materials 22.Cao Xuân Hạo (1998) Tiếng Việt – Mấy vấn đề ngữ âm, ngữ pháp ngữ nghĩa Hà Nội: Nhà xuất Giáo dục 23.Đỗ Thị Kim Liên (?) Những vấn đề chung ngữ dụng học: Những phương thức cấu tạo hàm ngôn hội thoại ĐHSP Vinh 24.Hùng Danh (2000) 1001 truyện cười dân gian xưa nay.(st & bs) Nxb Thanh Niên 25.Nguyễn Đức Dân (1998) Logic tiếng Việt Nxb Giáo dục 26.Nguyễn Đức Dân (2000) Ngữ dụng học, tập Giáo dục 27.Nguyễn Thiện Giáp (2000) Dụng học Việt ngữ H., Nxb ĐHQG, 237 tr Hoang Thi Yen - 1271A06 (2012 - 2016) Graduation Paper 28.Nguyễn Thiện Giáp (2014).Nghĩa câu nghĩa phát ngôn Tạp chí Khoa học ĐHQGHN: Nghiên cứu Nước ngoài, Tập 30, Số (2014) 16 29.Phạm Minh Luận (2012) Cơ chế tạo hàm ý hội thoại truyện cười dân gian Việt Nam B.A Degree 30.Trần Thủy Vinh (2015) Các kiểu loại truyện cười góc đọ mơ hồ ngôn ngữ Tạp chí phát triển KH&CN, tập 18, số X2 31.Trương Chính – Phong Châu (1986) Truyện cười dân gian Việt Nam Nxb KHXH, Hà Nội Sources from Internet 32.http://kilopad.com/Tieu-thuyet-truyen-cuoi-c198/doc-sach-truc-tuyentruyen-cuoi-quoc-te-b4917 33.http://www.moralstories.org/ 34.http://ngonngu.net/index.php?p=145 35.http://www.truyencuoi.vn/the-loai-truyen/truyen-cuoi-dan-gian Hoang Thi Yen - 1271A06 (2012 - 2016) [...]... Graduation Paper Contrastive analysis is defined, according to James (1980), as a form of interlanguage study and a central concern of applied linguistics As a matter of fact, C .A has had much to offer not only to practical language teaching, but also to translation theory, the description of particular languages, language typology and the study of language universals In relation to bilingualism, C .A. .. of the text conversion; error analysis; and contrastive analysis – these last two having as the object of enquiry the means whereby a monolingual learns to be bilingual Among these branches of linguistics, C .A seems to be the most effective way in comparing between the first language and the second language as well as a pairs of languages foreign language learners are learning Hoang Thi Yen - 127 1A0 6... Utterance meaning Utterance meaning is defined as what a speaker means when he makes an utterance in a certain situation In other words, utterance meaning is contextdependent and the meaning of an utterance is determined by the context in which it is used According Austin, there are two kinds of utterances: constative and performative utterance A performative utterance is one that actually describes the. .. users In terms of pragmatics, implicatures play an important role in communication In particular, implicature is quite popular in conversational language It has appeared since language was used as means of communication and has become the interest notion of the world-wide linguists However, implicature is also a challenge for Vietnamese learners of English who need understand the conversational language... separating from all of the events, the other brings another meaning (illocutionary meaning) when it is used in a particular event.” The notion of propositional and illocutionary meaning of Cao Xuan Hao is quite similar with the notion of explicature and implicature of Nguyen Duc Dan (1998) The illocutionary meanings/ implicaturesare supposed the meaning of speech Grice divides implicature into conventional... communicate, the listener must be aware of not only the explicit meaning drawn from the literal meaning of the words and the structures of the utterance, but the implicit meaning inferred from what is said Related to conversational implicature and its reasons, Cao Xuan Hao raised a question why people avoid saying explicitly or indicating literal meaning instead of saying implicitly, which sometimes challenges... performative According to Nguyen Thien Giap (2014), the utterance meaning refers to what the speaker means in a particular context of situation.According to speech Hoang Thi Yen - 127 1A0 6 (2012 - 2016) 10 Graduation Paper act theories, every utterance has two types of meaning: propositional meaning and illocutionary meaning In summary, aconversational utterance is considered containing implicatures. .. it includes: • The explicit meaning (Literal sense) based on the words in sentence • The implicit meaning (Figurative sense) based on the concrete context 1.3 Contrastive analysis Contrastive analysis (C .A. ) dates back to the 1950s when it was first developed and practiced as an application of structural linguistics to language teaching As regards its definition James, C (1980, p.3) declares: Contrastive. .. Analysis is a linguistics enterprise aimed at producing inverted (i.e contrastive, not comparative) two-valued typologies (a C .A is always concerned with a pair of language), and founded on the assumption that languages can be compared.” James also claims that there are three branches of two-valued (two languages are involved) interlingual linguistics: translation theory – which is concerned with the. .. the speaker has to include all the information that the addressee requires to understand what the speaker means If the speaker leaves out a crucial piece of information, the addressee will not understand what the speaker is trying to say The meaning of this maxim is that the speaker should avoid including unnecessary, redundant information in his contribution 1.4.4.2 The Maxim of Quality Try to make your