Luận Văn A comparative study on rejecting invitation in English and Vietnamese

Khóa luận tốt nghiệp
Đề tài: A comparative study on rejecting invitation in English and Vietnamese

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgement
Abbreviation
Tables
Page
PART I: INTRODUCTION . 1
1. Rationale of the study 1
2. Aims of the study 1
3. Scope of the study . 1
4. Method of the study . 1
5. Comments on the survey questionnaires . 2
6. Design of the study 3
PART II: DEVELOPMENT 4
CHAPTER I: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 4
1. What is speech acts? 4
1.1. Speech acts 4
1.2. Classification of speech acts . 7
2. . W
hat is invitation? . 11
3. Rejecting invitation . 12
CHAPTER II: WAYS OF REJECTING INVITATION IN
ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE 16
1. Directly rejecting invitation in English 16
1.1. Directly rejecting invitation in English 16
1.2. Directly rejecting invitation in Vietnamese . 16
2. Indirectly rejecting invitation . 17
9
2.1. Indirectly rejecting invitation . 17
2.1.1. Regret + Reason (R+r) . 17
2.1.2. Dilemma (D) . 19
2.1.3. Reason + Suggestion (r+S) . 20
2.1.4. Reason (r) . 20
2.1.5. Alternative Suggestion (AS) 20
2.1.6. Hesitation 21
2.1.7. Avoiding Conflicts . 22
2.2. Indirectly rejecting invitation in Vietnamese . 23
2.2.1. Reason (r) . 23
2.2.2. Negative Presupposition (-PRES) 23
2.2.3. Suggestion + Reason (S+r) . 24
2.2.4. Alternative Suggestion (AS) 25
3. The similarities and differences in rejecting invitation in English
and Vietnamese . 25
3.1. Similarities . 25
3.2. Differences . 30
CHAPTER III: THE DATA COLLECTION AND DATA
ANALYSIS . 31
1. Data collection 31
2. Data analysis . 32
2.1. English finding . 32
2.2. Vietnamese finding . 33
3. Tips for rejecting invitation 33
PART III: CONCLUSION 36
1. Summary . 36
2. Suggestion for further study . 36
REFERENCES 37


PART I: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale
In everyday social life, people are sometimes invited to go somewhere or
to do something. Accepting an invitation is a delicate matter although it is
much easier than rejecting as the latter is a face- threatening act. However,
there are situations in which invitations cannot avoid refusal. For these
reasons, I have decided to choose the subject: “A comparative study on
rejecting invitation in English and Vietnamese” to enhance the efficiency of
the teaching and learning of this speech act in English and Vietnamese, create
the tactfulness and flexibility in language use for both Vietnamese learner of
English and English-speaking learners of Vietnam with the maxim declared in
a Vietnamese proverb: “You don‟t have to buy words, so don‟t let them hurt
the feelings of others.”
2. Aims of the study
This study aims at:
- Defining invitation in English and Vietnamese.
- Defining rejecting invitation in English and Vietnamese.
- Finding out the similarities and differences in rejecting invitation
between English and Vietnamese
3. Scope of the study
- When rejecting invitation, we have both of direct and indirect rejecting.
To avoid face-threatening act when giving rejecting invitation so this study
much focuses on indirect rejecting invitation.
- This study discusses some ways of rejecting invitation in English and
Vietnamese to find out some similarities and differences on theory.
- In this research, the writer interviews 10 foreigners and conducts survey
questionnaire to 50 Vietnamese people to find out how English and
Vietnamese reject invitation and gives some recommendations.
13
4. Method of the study
The practical approaches are:
- Comparative and contrastive analysis
- Studying relevant publications
- Consulting with the supervisor
- Conducting survey questionnaires and interviewing
5. Comments on the survey questionnaire
Because of restricted geographic position so the survey is just conducted
to fifty Vietnamese informants and interviewed ten foreigners. There are two
groups of informants. The first group who administered the questionnaire in
Vietnamese consists of the Vietnamese all living in Northern Vietnam. The
second group who administered in English includes American and English
native speakers. The information about the informants is quite necessary for
data analysis, so the informants were requested to provide the following
parameters:
- Age
- Gender
Below is the table which shows the number of informants with their
status parameters.
6. Design of the study
The study is divided into three parts:
Part I: “Introduction” includes rationale, aims, scope, comments and design of
the study.
Part II: “Development” includes 3 chapters:
Chapter I: “The theoretical background”
Chapter II: “The ways of rejecting invitation in English and Vietnamese”
Chapter III: “The Data collection and Data analysis”
Part III: “Conclusion” giving the summary of whole the study


PART II: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER I: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
1. What is speech acts?
1.1. Speech acts
In many ways of expressing themselves, “ people do not only produce
utterances containing grammartical structures and words, they perform
actions via those utterances” (Yule, 1996: 47). If you work in a situation
where a boss has a great deal of power, then his utterance of expression, “You
are fired”, is more than just a statement. This utterance can be used to
perform the act of ending your employment. However, the actions performed
by utterances do not have to be as unpleasant as in the one above. Actions can
be quite pleasant, as in the acknowledgement of thanks:“You‟re welcome”, or
the expression of surprise:“Who‟d have thought it?”, or in Vietnamese“ Ai
mà nghĩ thế?”.
Making a statement may be the paradigmatic use of language, but there
are all sorts of other things we can do with words. We can make requests, ask
questions, give orders, make promises, give thanks, offer apologies, and so
on. Moreover, almost any speech act is really the performance of several acts
at once, distinguished by different aspects of the speaker's intention: there is
the act of saying something, what one does in saying it, such as requesting or
promising, and how one is trying to affect one's audience.
The theory of speech acts is partly taxonomic and partly explanatory. It
must systematically classify types of speech acts and the ways in which they
can succeed or fail. It must reckon with the fact that the relationship bet ween
the words being used and the force of their utterance is often oblique. For
example, the sentence “This is a pig sty” might be used nonliterally to state
that a certain room is messy and filthy and, further, to demand indirectly that
it be straightened out and cleaned up. Even when this sentence is used literally
and directly, say to describe a certain area of a barnyard, the content of its


REFERENCES
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1.1. English
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[2] Brown, P. and Levinson, S. (1987), Politeness: Some Universals in
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49
[14] Nguyễn Thiện Văn, Lương Vĩnh Kim (b iên dịch) (2003), 120 Humorous
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1.2. Vietnamese
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50
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2. Websites
[31] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_act
[32] http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~kbach/spchacts.html
[33] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/speech-acts/
[34] http://lifestyle.iloveindia.com/lounge/how-to-decline-an-invitation-5432.html
[35] http://www.letterexpert.co.uk/DecliningAnInvitation.html
[36] http://www.thesoko.com/thesoko/article831.html
[37] http://forum.showbiz.vn/speaking-skill/9380-making-acceptingdeclining-invitations.html
[38] http://www.couplescompany.com/features/Coffee/decline.htm
[39] http://vanhoc.xitrum.net
[40] http://vnthuquan.net/truyen