TTLA: Comparing English and Vietnamese request actions (from a polite perspective)

1. Full name of the researcher:Nguyen Van Khanh2. Gender: female

3. Date of birth: April 30, 1983 4. Place of birth: Hai Duong

5. Decision on recognition of PhD students No. 2416/2015/QD-XHNV; dated October 13, 2015 of the President of the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, VNU

6. Changes in training process: none

7. Thesis topic name:

Comparing English and Vietnamese request actions (from a polite perspective)

8. Major: Comparative Linguistics 9. Code: 62 22 02 41

10. Scientific instructor:Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nguyen Van Do

11. Summary ofnew resultsof the thesis:

Chapter 1 presents basic knowledge and concepts of speech acts and request speech acts; G. Leech's concept of politeness; ways and means of expressing politeness in request acts according to G. Leech's theory.

Chapter 2 presents two issues: Request strategies in English and Vietnamese and factors influencing the choice of request strategies including: status, familiarity and the level of advantage-disadvantage between the speaker (S) and the listener (H).

First, the thesis classifies and generalizes 6 types of strategies in performing the required speech act in English and Vietnamese:Direct strategy, indirect strategy of declarative speech, indirect strategy of interrogative speech; indirect strategy of innuendo and other strategies.

After comparing and contrasting the classifications, the thesis gives scientific comments on the similarities and differences in the practice of requesting actions, in which the differences between the two languages ​​are notable:

• In Vietnamese, it is almost mandatory to use the second person pronoun at the beginning of imperative sentences, while English speakers do not use it.
• In general, English speakers prefer indirect strategies than Vietnamese.
• English speakers use many non-sentence strategies while Vietnamese speakers hardly use them.

Second, the thesis examines the factors affecting the choice of requesting strategies in English and Vietnamese:Status, familiarity and level of gain and loss.

After comparing and contrasting the analysis results, the thesis gives scientific comments on the similarities and differences in the practice of requesting actions, in which the differences between the two languages ​​are notable:

• In terms of position factor, Vietnamese people, regardless of their position, choose direct strategy more than indirect strategy.
• In terms of familiarity, Vietnamese still choose the indirect strategy more, while English speakers choose the opposite.
• In terms of damage level, English speakers chose the indirect strategy significantly higher than Vietnamese speakers.

Chapter 3 presents two issues:Ways and means of expressing politeness;andLevel of politeness in English and Vietnamese request strategies.

The thesis divides the ways and means of expressing politeness in request strategies into two parts: Linguistic elements inside and elements outside the request content.

• The thesis has summarized 10 linguistic factors.insidecommon in English while Vietnamese only uses 3 elements:Mitigating factors, politeness indicators and sentences with final modal particles.The thesis also initially seeks to explain the incompatibility between English and Vietnamese due to differences in language types.
• The thesis has summarized 6 linguistic factors.outsidecommon in both English and Vietnamese. Among these elements, the form of address, in other words, the use of the system of personal pronouns, kinship nouns in the family and names in the social sphere is very diverse and rich in Vietnamese. This form is considered an important factor to enhance politeness in communication.

12. Practical applicability: the thesis has practical application value in teaching and learning, translation or language comparison between English and Vietnamese.

13. Further research directions: study other speech acts or study the speech act of request with the corpus being the act of request in situational conversation under the light of Leech's politeness.

14. Published works related to the thesis:

1. Nguyen Van Khanh (2018), “Politeness from Leech's perspective”,Military Foreign Language Science Journal(14), pp.3-11.

2. Nguyen Van Khanh (2018), “Action requires looking from the perspective of Benefits and Losses”,Military Foreign Language Science Journal(15), pp.90-96

INFORMATION ON DOCTORAL THESIS

1. Full name:Nguyen Van Khanh2. Sex: female

3. Date of birth: April 30, 1983 4. Place of birth: Hai Duong

5. Admission decision number: 2416/2015/QD-XHNV; Dated: October 13, 2015 by Rector of USSH, VNU

6. Changes in academic process: none

7. Official thesis title:

A contrastive study on requests in English and Vietnamese (in the light of politeness)

8. Major: Comparative – Contrastive Linguistics 9. Code: 62 22 02 41

10. Supervisor:Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nguyen Van Do

11. Summary of thenew findingsof the thesis:

- Established a theoretical framework for the study, namely, theories on requests and politeness with its kernel – Cost-Benefit, options together with numerous means to minimize the cost forCOUGHwhich was developed by Leech were chosen.

- More than 270 English and Vietnamese directives (taken from bilingual English – Vietnamese literature works)

- The writer identifies the structure of a request in both English and Vietnamese requests which consists of two parts: the head act and the modification. The head act is often categorized into the direct or conventional indirect act. It can function independently or together with a number of various modifiers. The modification part plays the role of softening the illocutionary force of a request. These elements can stand before or after the head act. They are vocatives, personal names, titles, openers, grounders, hesitators… However, the success of the thesis does not lie in these formal identifications, but the finding of similarities and differences in the above mentioned areas of the request. For example, (a) there is no similarity in terms of the illocutionary force of the bilingual requests when they are compared and contrasted. To be more exact, while in the English language, the directives, by the criteria developed by Leech, are orders but in Vietnamese they are no longer orders anymore; they are perfect requests. The reason is, the Vietnamese complementary means in turn these orders into requests; (b) there are also differences between the two languages ​​in terms of the modifier of the request.

- Strategies for requests in English and Vietnamese are also described, compared and contrasted in detail. The results allow to make a remark that, it is not easy to state firmly that English people prefer indirect requests in the form of a question and the Vietnamese favor direct requests in the form of an order together with various pragmatic modifiers. Our research revealed, in many cases, particularly in formal and diplomatic situations, there are not really many differences in the use of requests in the form of question between the English and Vietnamese. Even, if we observe when people make requests in everyday life, it is not difficult to find that more and more Vietnamese use indirect requests exactly like English.

- Regarding politeness in requests in English and Vietnamese (based on bilingual data), the author has carefully described, compared and contrasted. In general, the results of the comparison and contrast show that new findings share a lot of similarity with what have been stated in terms of politeness in requests in the two languages. For example, the English people prefer making indirect requests which have interrogative form and negative politeness while the Vietnamese favor direct requests which have imperative form and positive politeness, or politeness marker “please", when being used, especially with rising tone in the end of the sentence, has capability in making a request more polite. Requests can be softened when being complemented by various kinds of internal and external modifiers. In English, grammatical means (moods, aspects, and tenses) play an important role in reducing the imposition derived from the request, equally making the request more polite…

- The findings of our research also revealed some more not less interesting points in the aspects of using lexical means (various kinds of modifiers) by Vietnamese to express politeness shown by grammatical means (moods, aspects, and tenses) in English to make requests, or in exploiting tag-questions to increase the level of tentativeness in the act of requesting in English and its Vietnamese corresponding means used in improving politeness in requests.

12. Practical applicability: the findings of this thesis can be useful in teaching and studying languages, translation work or comparing or contrasting the two languages ​​English and Vietnamese.

13. Further research directions: research on other speech acts or research on requests in situational conversations using the politeness theory of G. Leech.

14. Thesis-related publications:

1. Nguyen Van Khanh (2018), “Politeness from Leech's perspective”,Military Foreign Language Science Journal(14), pp.3-11.

2. Nguyen Van Khanh (2018), “Action requires looking from the perspective of Benefits and Losses”,Military Foreign Language Science Journal(15), pp.90-96