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Download Luận văn A Vietnamese-English cross-cultural study of the use of hedging before giving bad news
PART 1: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale
It goes without saying that language plays an important part not only in recording and understanding culture but also in communication among people who share or do not share the same nationality, social or ethnic origin, gender, age, occupation. What is more, “language is closely related to the way we think and to the way we behave and influence the behavior of others” (Karmic 1998:79). Hence, culture can be well-understood or grasped with the Giúp of language and culture exchanges (i.e. cross-cultural or intercultural communication). To support this point of view, Durant (1997: 332) claims that “to have a culture means to have communication and to have communication means to have access to a language.”
Although well aware of the ultimate objective of learning a foreign language toward successful communication, many Vietnamese learners of English hold that a good command of a foreign language or success in foreign language learning lies only in mastering grammar rules and accumulating as much vocabulary as possible. As a result, even possibly producing grammatically well-formed utterances, they may experience unwanted culture shock, and communication breakdown when running into a real and particular context of situation. This unexpected incidence occurs due to their insufficient knowledge and awareness of social norms and values, roles and relationships between individuals, especially those from the target culture.
It is worth noting that different languages and cultures have different expressions of behavior and different realizations of speech acts by language users. This has suggested a considerable number of researchers, both local and foreign to conduct their studies on cross-cultural pragmatics and/ or communication such as thanking, requesting, complementing, etc. However, little attention has been paid to the speech act of giving bad news using hedges. In daily life, no one likes to give their relatives or friends bad news because rarely does he/ she find it easy to reduce listeners’ feeling of sadness, to lessen the hurt, but sometimes even the best, brightest and most talented, the informers are left with no choice. Nevertheless, to convey bad news such as informing the death of the husband in an accident to his wife if the speaker goes straight to the point with:
“Your husband died in the accident.”
he/ she may cause such a sudden shock to the wife (the hearer) that she can hardly stand it. Conversely, the wife in the above case will feel less painful if the news is given this way:
“As you know, among 212 passengers, only two survived. And I regret to inform you that your husband is not among the lucky two”
2.6.2. Hedging as a device
As Brown and Levinson (1987) illustrate, hedging can also be used to tone down the force of for example request, as in “Give me a hand, if you can”. In such cases, one might even say that the reservation included in the hedge may be seen as a way out for the addressee in case he or she in fact is not in a position to help, the hedge thus signaling the conditions under which the request may be disregarded by the addressee. As work by Stubbs (1986) and Markkanen and Schroder (1982) illustrate, hedging may be taken to involve lexical items, propositions and illocutionary forces. While distinguishing between hedges of these three types is illuminating in theoretical terms, it seems that the distinction between them is not always clear-cut.
G.Lakoff who drew attention to the theoretical importance of the phenomenon also reports R. Lakoff’s observation that certain verbs and syntactic construction convey hedged performative that is, they modify the force of speech act. They can also be studied as Hedges on illocutionary force. It is performative hedges in particular that are most important linguistic means of satisfying the S’s wants. Such hedges may be analyzed as adverbs on performative verbs that present the illocutionary force of the sentence.
In the first place, operations are syntactically done in English with tags or with expressions like: “I wonder”. These markers are called “Appealers” by N.Quang
It was cold, wasn’t it?
Do me a favor, will you?
I wonder if (you know whether)…….
Sometimes performative hedges are encoded on words or particles which may also hedge propositional content.
He really did run that way
I tell you sincerely he ran that way
I tell you he certainly ran that way
These examples above illustrate that adverbs on higher performatives may be lowered into an embedded position in their complement sentences, hence the ambiguity as to what is being modified.
Brown and Levinson (1987) divided particles which hedge illocutionary force into “strengthener” those that mainly act as emphatic hedges: “exactly”, “precisely”, “emphatically” and “weakeners” those that soften or tentativize what they modify. Nevertheless, the author only investigates weakeners mentioned above in the scope of the study because of the suitability to the topic of the thesis “Hedging before giving bad news”.
Weakening particles is to use adverbs as: “really, sincerely, and just”
Sincerely, the more I hear about your husband, the less I like him.
That’s just true.
The tentativizers: “perhaps, maybe, I wonder” which seem often to indicate the presence of an implicature are ways of avoiding FTAs.
It looks good, but maybe, this job does not suit you.
Có vẻ tốt lắm nhưng có lẽ công việc này không phù hợp với anh đâu.
Dubitative particles: “I guess/ I think/ I suppose …..” suspend the felicity condition on assertions that the S knows what he says to be true: “You are sad, I guess”.
As we can see above, the felicity condition dubitative particles suspend is the sincerity condition so that S is not claiming to be doing the speech act he appears to be doing or doesn’t take responsibility for the truth of his assertion.
In the second place, Heringer (1972:55) describes a set of illocutionary force hedges that consist of the expression of a felicity condition in an “if clause”
Catch me if you can
“If you can” in the above example pragmatically functions as hedges on the force of the speech act. Here comes the other phrases of “if clause”.
I wonder if/ I wonder whether ……..
…………if I may ask you?
…………if you don’t mind?
…………if you want/ you can?
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PART 1: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale
It goes without saying that language plays an important part not only in recording and understanding culture but also in communication among people who share or do not share the same nationality, social or ethnic origin, gender, age, occupation. What is more, “language is closely related to the way we think and to the way we behave and influence the behavior of others” (Karmic 1998:79). Hence, culture can be well-understood or grasped with the Giúp of language and culture exchanges (i.e. cross-cultural or intercultural communication). To support this point of view, Durant (1997: 332) claims that “to have a culture means to have communication and to have communication means to have access to a language.”
Although well aware of the ultimate objective of learning a foreign language toward successful communication, many Vietnamese learners of English hold that a good command of a foreign language or success in foreign language learning lies only in mastering grammar rules and accumulating as much vocabulary as possible. As a result, even possibly producing grammatically well-formed utterances, they may experience unwanted culture shock, and communication breakdown when running into a real and particular context of situation. This unexpected incidence occurs due to their insufficient knowledge and awareness of social norms and values, roles and relationships between individuals, especially those from the target culture.
It is worth noting that different languages and cultures have different expressions of behavior and different realizations of speech acts by language users. This has suggested a considerable number of researchers, both local and foreign to conduct their studies on cross-cultural pragmatics and/ or communication such as thanking, requesting, complementing, etc. However, little attention has been paid to the speech act of giving bad news using hedges. In daily life, no one likes to give their relatives or friends bad news because rarely does he/ she find it easy to reduce listeners’ feeling of sadness, to lessen the hurt, but sometimes even the best, brightest and most talented, the informers are left with no choice. Nevertheless, to convey bad news such as informing the death of the husband in an accident to his wife if the speaker goes straight to the point with:
“Your husband died in the accident.”
he/ she may cause such a sudden shock to the wife (the hearer) that she can hardly stand it. Conversely, the wife in the above case will feel less painful if the news is given this way:
“As you know, among 212 passengers, only two survived. And I regret to inform you that your husband is not among the lucky two”
2.6.2. Hedging as a device
As Brown and Levinson (1987) illustrate, hedging can also be used to tone down the force of for example request, as in “Give me a hand, if you can”. In such cases, one might even say that the reservation included in the hedge may be seen as a way out for the addressee in case he or she in fact is not in a position to help, the hedge thus signaling the conditions under which the request may be disregarded by the addressee. As work by Stubbs (1986) and Markkanen and Schroder (1982) illustrate, hedging may be taken to involve lexical items, propositions and illocutionary forces. While distinguishing between hedges of these three types is illuminating in theoretical terms, it seems that the distinction between them is not always clear-cut.
G.Lakoff who drew attention to the theoretical importance of the phenomenon also reports R. Lakoff’s observation that certain verbs and syntactic construction convey hedged performative that is, they modify the force of speech act. They can also be studied as Hedges on illocutionary force. It is performative hedges in particular that are most important linguistic means of satisfying the S’s wants. Such hedges may be analyzed as adverbs on performative verbs that present the illocutionary force of the sentence.
In the first place, operations are syntactically done in English with tags or with expressions like: “I wonder”. These markers are called “Appealers” by N.Quang
It was cold, wasn’t it?
Do me a favor, will you?
I wonder if (you know whether)…….
Sometimes performative hedges are encoded on words or particles which may also hedge propositional content.
He really did run that way
I tell you sincerely he ran that way
I tell you he certainly ran that way
These examples above illustrate that adverbs on higher performatives may be lowered into an embedded position in their complement sentences, hence the ambiguity as to what is being modified.
Brown and Levinson (1987) divided particles which hedge illocutionary force into “strengthener” those that mainly act as emphatic hedges: “exactly”, “precisely”, “emphatically” and “weakeners” those that soften or tentativize what they modify. Nevertheless, the author only investigates weakeners mentioned above in the scope of the study because of the suitability to the topic of the thesis “Hedging before giving bad news”.
Weakening particles is to use adverbs as: “really, sincerely, and just”
Sincerely, the more I hear about your husband, the less I like him.
That’s just true.
The tentativizers: “perhaps, maybe, I wonder” which seem often to indicate the presence of an implicature are ways of avoiding FTAs.
It looks good, but maybe, this job does not suit you.
Có vẻ tốt lắm nhưng có lẽ công việc này không phù hợp với anh đâu.
Dubitative particles: “I guess/ I think/ I suppose …..” suspend the felicity condition on assertions that the S knows what he says to be true: “You are sad, I guess”.
As we can see above, the felicity condition dubitative particles suspend is the sincerity condition so that S is not claiming to be doing the speech act he appears to be doing or doesn’t take responsibility for the truth of his assertion.
In the second place, Heringer (1972:55) describes a set of illocutionary force hedges that consist of the expression of a felicity condition in an “if clause”
Catch me if you can
“If you can” in the above example pragmatically functions as hedges on the force of the speech act. Here comes the other phrases of “if clause”.
I wonder if/ I wonder whether ……..
…………if I may ask you?
…………if you don’t mind?
…………if you want/ you can?
Do Drive thay đổi chính sách, nên một số link cũ yêu cầu duyệt download. các bạn chỉ cần làm theo hướng dẫn.
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