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

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

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

5. Decision on the admission of doctoral students No. 2416/2015/QD-XHNV; dated October 13, 2015, by the Rector of the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, VNU Hanoi

6. Changes in the training process: none

7. Thesis title:

Comparing English-Vietnamese requests and actions (from a polite perspective)

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

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

11. Summarize thenew resultsof the thesis:

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

Chapter 2 presents two issues: Request strategies in English and Vietnamese and factors influencing the selection of request strategies, including: position, familiarity, and the level of benefit/loss between the speaker (S) and the listener (H).

Firstly, the thesis classifies and generalizes six types of strategies in performing request speech acts in English and Vietnamese:Direct strategy, indirect narrative strategy, indirect questioning strategy; indirect allusions and other strategies.

After comparing and contrasting the classifications, the thesis provides scientific observations on the similarities and differences in the practice of request actions, in which the differences between the two languages ​​are noteworthy:

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

Secondly, the thesis examines the factors influencing the choice of request strategy in English and Vietnamese:Position, level of familiarity, and the degree of advantage or disadvantage.

After comparing and contrasting the analytical results, the thesis provides scientific observations on the similarities and differences in the practice of request actions, with the differences between the two languages ​​being noteworthy:

• In terms of position, Vietnamese people, regardless of their position, tend to choose direct strategies far more often than indirect strategies.
• In terms of familiarity, Vietnamese speakers still prefer indirect strategies, while English speakers choose the opposite.
• In terms of the level of damage inflicted, English speakers opted for indirect strategies significantly more often than Vietnamese speakers.

Chapter 3 presents two issues:Ways and means of expressing politeness;andThe level of politeness in strategies requires both English and Vietnamese.

The thesis divides the methods and means of expressing politeness in request strategies into two parts: internal linguistic elements and external elements outside the request content.

• The thesis has summarized 10 linguistic elements.insideIt is common in English, while Vietnamese only uses 3 elements:The language element is softened, only politeness is used, and sentences have modal particles at the end.The thesis also initially seeks to explain the incompatibility between English and Vietnamese due to differences in linguistic types.
• The thesis has summarized six linguistic factors.outsideCommon in both English and Vietnamese, among these elements, the form of address—in other words, the use of personal pronouns, kinship terms within the family, and names within society—is a very diverse and rich feature of the Vietnamese language. This form is considered an important factor in enhancing politeness in communication.

12. Practical applications: The thesis has practical applications in teaching and learning, translation, or linguistic comparison between English and Vietnamese.

13. Further research directions: studying other speech acts or studying requesting speech acts with requesting acts as data in situational conversations in light of Leech's politeness.

14. Published works related to the thesis:

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

2. Nguyen Van Khanh (2018), “Action requires viewing from the perspective of Benefit - Loss”,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 sensationsof 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 viewed from Leech's perspective”,Military Foreign Language Science Journal(14), pp.3-11.

2. Nguyen Van Khanh (2018), “Action requires viewing from the perspective of Benefit - Loss”,Military Foreign Language Science Journal(15), pp. 90-96