ABSTRACT This thesis takes as its main objective the description of the native perception and realization of the speech act of disagreeing in English and Vietnamese within the theoretical frameworks of pragmatics and conversation analysis and the help of SPSS, version 11.5, a software program for social sciences. It aims at yielding insights into such issues as politeness, its notions and relations with indirectness, strategies and linguistic devices used to express disagreement tokens in the English and Vietnamese languages and cultures. Linguistic politeness is carefully examined in its unity of discernment and volition on the basis of the data obtained from elicited written questionnaires, folk expressions, interviews and naturally occurring interactions. The meticulous and miraculous methods offered by conversation analysis are of great help in describing and exploring the structural organization of disagreement responses in preferred and dispreferred format, the relationships between disagreements and the constraint systems, and negotiation of disagreements by native speakers. The findings exhibit that the differences in choosing politeness strategies to perform disagreements by speakers of English in North America and speakers of Vietnamese in Hanoi result from the differences in their assessment of socio-cultural parameters and social situations. Although indirectness might be used in some contexts as a means to express politeness, there is no absolute correlation between politeness and indirectness in the two languages and cultures under investigation. Despite the English general preference for direct strategies and the Vietnamese tendency to indirect strategies, the former may be indirect in some contexts and the latter are prone to be direct or even very direct from time to time. Consequently, the study of politeness should be conducted in close relation to the study of the speakers’ wider socio-cultural milieus with systems of local norms, beliefs and values. In proffering disagreements to the prior evaluations or ideas, native speakers not only deploy individually volitional strategies but also observe socially determined norms of behavior, especially in the choice of formulaic expressions, speech levels, address terms, deference markers etc. Therefore, the deployment of the normative-volitional approach to politeness study is appropriate and reasonable. Conversation analysis sheds light on disagreements as dispreferred seconds to first assessments and opinions, and as preferred seconds to self-deprecations. English and Vietnamese speakers adopt the same strategies in regards to preference organization, compliment responses and negotiation of disagreements. On the whole, disagreements are inclined to be hedged or delayed by a variety of softeners and/or other devices. However, they tend to be overtly stated in responses to self-denigrations. It is of interest to explore the conflicting effects caused by the correlation between preference organization and self-compliment avoidance in responses to compliments. The English informants show a trend towards compliment acceptance and appreciation, while the Vietnamese prefer to refuse and negate prior complimentary tokens in spite of their similar strategies in adopting mid-positions. The accounts for this phenomenon can be found in the Vietnamese community-based solidarity and the Anglophone individualistic satisfaction. Conversation analytic tools help highlight the use of address terms (in Vietnamese), intensifiers (in English and Vietnamese) and other supportive means. By and large, the combined pragmatics and conversation analysis perspective is strongly recommended to speech act study as this integration maximizes the strengths and minimizes the weaknesses of each approach. TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I ABSTRACT III TABLE OF CONTENTS V LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS X ABBREVIATIONS AND CONVENTIONS XIII INTRODUCTION 1 1. RATIONALE 1 1.1. NECESSITY OF THE STUDY 1 1.1.1. Problem statement 1 1.1.2. Society, culture and language 2 1.2. MERITS OF THE STUDY 3 1.2.1. Academic merits 3 1.2.2. Practical merits 4 2. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 4 3. RESEARCH QUESTION AND HYPOTHESES OF THE STUDY 6 3.1. RESEARCH QUESTION 6 3.2. GROUNDS FOR RESEARCH HYPOTHESES 6 3.2. RESEARCH HYPOTHESES 6 4. SCOPE OF THE STUDY 7 5. METHODOLOGY 9 5.1. METHODS 9 5.2. PRAGMATICS AND CONVERSATION ANALYSIS 10 5.2.1. Choice of conversation analysis 10 5.2.2. Combination of pragmatics and conversation analysis 10 5.2.3. Combination of pragmatics and CA in other studies 11 6. CREATIVITY 12 6.1. SYNTHETIC APPROACH – PRAGMATICS AND CONVERSATION ANALYSIS 12 6.2. DATA FROM QUESTIONNAIRES AND NATURALLY OCCURRING CONVERSATION 12 6.3. SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES IN DISAGREEING 12 7. ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY 13 CHAPTER ONE 14 DISAGREEING – A COMMUNICATIVE ILLOCUTIONARY AND SOCIAL ACT 14 1.1. THEORETICAL PRELIMINARIES 14 1.1.1. Speech Act Theory 14 1.1.1.1. Speech acts and speech events 14 1.1.1.2. Three-dimension speech acts 15 1.1.1.3. Classification of speech acts 16 1.1.1.4. Disagreeing – a communicative illocutionary act 18 1.1.2. Conversation Analysis 20 1.1.2.1. Historical background 20 1.1.2.2. Co-text and context 22 1.1.2.3. Turn – turn taking and adjacency pairs 24 1.1.2.4. Disagreeing – a social act 27 1.1.3. Summary 29 1.2. EMPIRICAL STUDY 29 1.2.1. Aims and methodology 29 1.2.1.1. Aims 29 1.2.1.2. Data collection methods and respondents 30 1.2.2. Assessment of socio-cultural parameters by respondents 37 1.2.2.1. Data results 37 1.2.2.2. Comments 43 1.2.3. Assessment of situations by respondents 44 1.2.3.1. Data results 44 1.2.3.2. Comments 48 1.2.4. Summary 50 1.3. CONCLUDING REMARKS 51 CHAPTER TWO 52 POLITENESS IN DISAGREEING 52 2.1. THEORETICAL PRELIMINARIES 52 2.1.1. Notion of Politeness 53 2.1.2. Volitional Approach 55 2.1.2.1. Grice’s principle 55 2.1.2.2. Lakoff’s rules and Leech’s maxims 56 2.1.2.3. Brown & Levinson’s model 58 2.1.3. Normative Approach 60 2.1.3.1. Chinese research 60 2.1.3.2. Japanese research 62 2.1.3.3. Other non-Anglophone research 63 2.1.4. Normative-Volitional Approach 64 2.1.4.1. Literature by Vietnamese researchers 64 2.1.4.2. Literature by other researchers 68 2.1.5 Summary 69 2.2. EMPIRICAL STUDY 70 2.2.1. Aims and Methodology 70 2.2.1.1. Aims 70 2.2.1.2. Data collection methods and respondents 70 2.2.2. Politeness Level Rated by Respondents 71 2.2.2.1. Data results 71 2.2.2.2. Comments 80 2.2.3. Summary 81 2.3. CONCLUDING REMARKS 81 CHAPTER THREE 83 STRATEGIES OF POLITENESS IN DISAGREEING 83 3.1. THEORETICAL PRELIMINARIES 83 3.1.1. Brown & Levinson’s Model of Strategies 83 3.1.2. Manipulation of Strategies 84 3.1.2.1. Bald-on-record strategies 84 3.1.2.2. On-record strategies 86 3.1.2.3. Off-record strategies 89 3.1.2.4. No FTA 94 3.1.3. Indirectness in Disagreeing 95 3.1.3.1. Notion of indirectness 95 3.1.3.2. Factors governing indirectness 97 3.1.3.3. Indirectness and politeness 98 3.1.4. Summary 102 3.2. EMPIRICAL STUDY 103 3.2.1. Aims and Methodology 103 3.2.1.1. Aims 103 3.2.1.2. Data collection methods and respondents 103 3.2.2. Choice of Strategies by Respondents 104 3.2.2.1. Data results 104 3.2.2.2. Comments 115 3.2.3. Summary 115 3.3. CONCLUDING REMARKS 116 CHAPTER FOUR 118 STRATEGIES CONCERNING PREFERENCE ORGANIZATION 118 4.1. THEORETICAL PRELIMINARIES 118 4.1.1. Preferred Second Turns 118 4.1.1.1. Markedness 118 4.1.1.2. Structural organization 119 4.1.1.3. Dispreferred second turns in disagreeing 121 4.1.2. Preferred Sequences 125 4.1.2.1. Repair apparatus 125 4.1.2.2. Repair apparatus in disagreeing 130 4.1.3. Summary 133 4.2. EMPIRICAL STUDY 134 4.2.1. Aims and Methodology 134 4.2.1.1. Aims 134 4.2.1.2. Data collection methods and respondents 134 4.2.2. Strategies for Disagreements as Dispreferred Seconds 137 4.2.2.1. English corpus 137 4.2.2.2. Vietnamese corpus 141 4.2.2.3. Comments 148 4.2.3. Strategies for Disagreements as Preferred Seconds 149 4.2.3.1. English corpus 149 4.2.3.2. Vietnamese corpus 151 4.2.3.3. Comments 157 4.2.4. Summary 157 4.3. CONCLUDING REMARKS 158 CHAPTER FIVE 160 STRATEGIES FOR CONSTRAINT SYSTEMS AND NEGOTIATION OF DISAGREEMENTS 160 5.1. THEORETICAL PRELIMINARIES 160 5.1.1. Constraint Systems 160 5.1.2. Negotiation of Disagreements 161 5.1.2.1. Insertion sequences 162 5.1.2.2. Summons-answer sequences 162 5.1.2.3. Pre-sequences 163 5.1.2.4. Sequences in disagreeing 166 5.1.3. Some Frequently Used Devices in Disagreements 168 5.1.3.1. Intensifiers 168 5.1.3.2. Person referring terms 170 5.1.4. Summary 174 5.2. EMPIRICAL STUDY 175 5.2.1. Aims and Methodology 175 5.2.1.1. Aims 175 5.2.1.2. Data collection methods and respondents 175 5.2.2. Strategies for Constraint Systems 176 5.2.2.1. English corpus 176 5.2.2.2. Vietnamese corpus 178 5.2.3. Strategies for Negotiation of Disagreements 181 5.2.3.1. English corpus 181 5.2.3.2. Vietnamese corpus 184 5.2.4. Summary 190 5.3. CONCLUDING REMARKS 192 CONCLUSION 193 1. MAJOR FINDINGS 193 1.1. POLITENESS STRATEGIES IN DISAGREEING 193 1.2. NORMATIVE-VOLITIONAL POLITENESS AND INDIRECTNESS 194 1.3. STRATEGIES CONCERNING PREFERENCE ORGANIZATION 195 1.4. STRATEGIES FOR NEGOTIATION OF DISAGREEMENTS AND CONSTRAINT SYSTEMS 196 2. IMPLICATIONS 197 2.1. EFL & VFL IMPLICATIONS 197 2.2. PRAGMATICS AND CA PERSPECTIVE IN SPEECH ACT STUDY 198 3. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH 200 APPENDIXES I APPENDIX 1 I TRANSCRIPTION CONVENTIONS I APPENDIX 2 III SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRES III BIBLIOGRAPHY XIII ENGLISH XIII VIETNAMESE XXVIII
