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 help 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:
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- The Northern Vietnamese dialect and the English spoken by Anglophone community of
England, America, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, are chosen for contrastive analysis.
- The data are collected by conducting survey questionnaires to examine the ways VNSs and
ENSs use hedges in conveying bad news.
3. Aims of the study
- To find out the similarities and differences in the way VNSs and ENSs give bad news using
hedges as a politeness strategy.
4. Research questions
.What are the major similarities and differences in the ways VNSs and ENSs use hedges in
conveying bad news?
5. Methodology
- Quantitative method in the form of survey questionnaires is much resorted to. To collect
data for analysis, both Metapragmatic Questionnaire (MPQ) and Discourse Completion Task
(DCT) are designed. The collected data will be analyzed in comparing and contrasting
techniques to find out the similarities and differences in the ways VNSs and ENSs perform
the act of giving bad news using hedges as a politeness strategy.
- The questionnaires were delivered to English-speaking people mostly living in Vietnam
(working for Apollo, Language Links, British council) and some abroad (mostly in
Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong). Based on English-speaking informants’ status
parameters, the researcher looked for the Vietnamese subjects of similar parameters in order
to have a symmetrical distribution of informants and data for the study.
- Besides, discussion with the supervisor, colleagues, personal observations, recording from
mass media and data collection from newspapers and magazines are also significant to the
study.
6. Design of the study
The study is composed of three parts. They are:
Part 1 (Introduction) presents the rationale, scope, aims, research questions, and
methodology of the study
Part 2 (Development) consists of three chapters:
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situation of communicating with others from a different culture. This leads to not only
serious misunderstanding, but also communication breakdowns or fatal consequences. For
instance, people from the Anglophone cultures feel normal when saying “thank you” when
offered a compliment on the work. Nevertheless, it is not the common way for many VNSs to
do the same job. Therefore, when contacting each other, a Vietnamese and his Anglophone
counterpart may have unexpectedly negative comments on each other about the same act.
According to Thomas (1995) and Cutting (2003) one of the reasons for communication
failure is that interlocutors may not have a good acquisition of the common language used in
cross-cultural communication.
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All the above disruption can be said to be culture shock, which can lead to the feelings of
estrangement, confusion, anger, hostility, indecision, frustration, etc. That is why one is
advised to know how far one can go as individuals and learn about the culture one is exposed
to.
1.1. Speech Acts
“The inference the hearer makes and takes himself to be intended to make is based
not just on what the speaker says but also mutual contextual beliefs.”
(Bach, 1979: 5)
Naturally, sociolinguistics confirms that the study of language has to go beyond the sentences
that are the principle focuses of descriptive and linguistics. It must bring in social context. It
must deal with the real contexts that make up human communication and social situations in
which they are used. From this viewpoint, Austin discovers that:
“The business of a statement can only be to describe some state of affairs or to state
some fact, which must do either falsely or truly”
(Cf Nguyen Hoa, 2000: 69)
Some sentences, as he realizes, are not intended to do as such, but rather, are to evince
emotion or to prescribe conduct, or to influence it in special ways. In uttering the sentence,
the S is often performing some non-linguistic act such as: daring, promising, resigning,
requesting, and warning and so on. Hence, the theory of speech act originated in Austin’s
observation (1962) in which it is said that sentences are used to report states of affairs and

other employs just roundabout or indirect expressions. The ways of language is employed to
depend largely on what is termed “culture thought patterns” that appear, to various degrees,
different in different cultures.
In the study of 700 essays of international students in the United States, Kaplan (1972: 31)
proposes four discourse structures (otherwise referred to as “cultural thought patterns”) that
contrast with English linearity (figure a). He mainly concentrates on writing and restricts his
study to paragraphs.
Parallel constructions, with the first idea completed in the second part (figure b)
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Circularly, with the topic looked at from different tangents (figure c)
Freedom to digress and to introduce “extraneous” material (figure d)
With different lengths and parenthetical amplifications of subordinate elements (figure e)
They are respectively illustrated by the following diagrams:

(a) (b) (c) (d) (e)
Kaplan’s diagrams
Each diagram represents a certain language or a group of languages. He identifies his
discourse types with genetic language types, respectively:
Figure a with English
Figure b with Semitic
Figure c with Oriental
Figure d with Romance
Figure e with Russian
According to the diagrams, English people often use roundabout and direct patterns whole
the Oriental people in general and the Vietnamese in particular seem to prefer roundabout
and indirect patterns. In the Anglophone main stream culture, the ideal form of
communication includes being direct rather than indirect. Many expressions exemplify this
tendency such as Don’t beat about the bush! Let’s get down to business; Get to the point! etc.
All indicate the importance of dealing directly with issues rather than avoiding them. Let’s
look at the following example:

He proposes the following diagrams first:
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(Vietnamese)
(American English)
1.2.2. Factors affecting directness and indirectness
There are many socio-cultural factors affecting the degrees of directness and indirectness in
communication. Nguyen Quang (1998: 5) proposes twelve factors that, in his argument, may
affect the choice of directness and indirectness in communication.
1. Age: the old tend to be more indirect than the young
2. Sex: the female prefer indirect expression
3. Residence: the rural population tend to use more indirectness than the urban one
4. Mood: While angry, people tend to use more indirectness
5. Occupation: Those who do social sciences tend to be more indirect than those
who do natural sciences
6. Personality: The extroverted tend to use more directness than the introverted
7. Topics: While referring to a subtle topic, a taboo …., people are more inclined to
indirectness
8. Place: When at home, people tend to use more directness than when they stay
elsewhere.
9. Communication environment/ setting: When in an informal climate, people tend
to express themselves in a more direct way.
10. Social distance: Those who are closer tend to talk in a more direct way.
11. Time pressure: When in a hurry, people are likely to use more directness
12. Relative powers: When in a superior position, people tend to be more direct to
their inferiors.
(English version by Ngo Huu Hoang, 1998:14)
1.3. Face, politeness, and politeness strategies
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By the way PurposeSmall talk

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1.3.1.2. Negative face
Negative face, according to Brown and Levinson is “the basic claim to territories, personal
preserves, rights to non-distraction, i.e. to freedom of action and freedom of imposition”. In
other words, “negative face is reflected in the desire not to be impeded or put upon, to have
the freedom to act as one chooses” (Thomas 1995: 169), or “the wants that one’s action be
unimpeded by others” (Eelen 2001: 3), and “the need to be independent, to have freedom of
action, and not to be imposed on by others” (Yule 1996: 61)
1.3.1.3. Face threatening acts (FTAs)
According to Brown and Levinson (1987), certain illocutionary acts are liable to damage or
threaten another person’s face; such acts are known as “face threatening acts” (FTAs) by, for
instance, representing a threat to or damaging the H’s positive face (insulting the addressee
or expressing disapproval of what the H holds valuable or does something) or his/ her
negative face (impinging upon H’s freedom of action in the case when H likes gossiping).
They define FTAs as “those acts that by their nature run contrary to the face wants of the
addressee and/ or of the speaker” (Brown and Levinson 1987: 65). Along the line, Yule
(1996) observes that an FTA occurs when a speaker says something that represents a threat to
another individual’s expectation regarding self-image.
1.3.2. What politeness?
1.3.2.1. Politeness defined
Politeness has received various amounts of attention and controversy from all areas of
linguistics, especially sociolinguistics and pragmatics, throughout the 20
th
century. There
have been so far two main approaches to politeness: politeness as social norms (normative
politeness) or conversational principle and maxims or do’s and don’ts (Lakoff 1973, 1989;
Leech 1983) and face-saving acts or politeness strategies (strategic politeness) (Brown and
Levinson 1978, 1987) (Cf Nguyen Duc Dan 1998, Nguyen Quang 2003).
In her cross-cultural study on politeness, Blum-Kulka (1987: 131) suggests that politeness is
“(i) a function of redressive action with the latter having correlative relationship with

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In this study, the adopted model of politeness, or “polite way of talking” which is seen as
deviations from Grice maxims (for politeness reasons) is that of Brown and Levinson’s due
to the following reasons:
First, putting aside the views of conversational principle and maxims, and conversational
contract, the distinction between normative and strategic politeness is rather loose and
relative in that almost all illocutionary acts should operate within the framework of
interpersonal relationships.
Second, it is the author’s opinion that normative politeness based on social norms is the
departure or foundation of strategic politeness. What require normative politeness to be
realized are interpersonal relationships where interlocutors should follow some certain
politeness norms to save or preserve the other’s face. This, in turn, will more or less make a
twist and impetus to implement strategies.
Third, in interpersonal verbal interaction, no matter whether a dispraise is constructive or not,
every dispraising utterance carries in itself potential damage or threat to the addressee’s
positive and negative face.
Fourth, politeness strategies, both positive and negative, when used, can (i) support and
enhance the addressee’s positive face (positive politeness) and (ii) help avoid transgressing
the addressee’s freedom of action and freedom from imposition (negative face).
Finally, Brown and Levinson’s model is adequate for the interpretation of ongoing verbal
interaction in which participants are reciprocally attending to one another’s face needs (Watts
2003: 101)
1.3.2.2. Politeness principles
This is certainly true that all of the approaches to politeness (Lakoff’s, Leech’s, and Brown &
Levinson’s) are appropriacy-based or conflict-avoidance-based, where politeness is a matter
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of using the right words in the right contexts as determined by conventional rules of
appropriateness.
Lakoff (1973) argues that the majority of conversation is governed by what is termed the
politeness principle. Similar to Grice (but earlier), she claimed that there are three maxims or

hearer dispraise and maximize hearer praise (approbation maxim), minimize self-praise and
maximize self-dispraise (modesty maxim), minimize disagreement and maximize agreement
between oneself and others (agreement maxim) and minimize sympathy between oneself and
others (sympathy maxim).
Brown and Levinson (1987) do not set a rule of politeness principles as Lakoff and Leech
did, but drop a hint by providing the following schema, termed “possible strategies for doing
FTAs”, available to speakers to encounter unavoidable face-threatening acts, to make
appropriate communicative choices and to reduce the possibility of damage and threat to
hearer’s face or to the speaker’s own face. Once a decision has been made, they argue, the
speaker selects the appropriate linguistic means to accomplish the chosen strategy. Their
schema proposes five components of communicative choices: (1) without redressive action
badly, (2) positive politeness, (3) negative politeness, (4) off record and (5) don’t do the FTA
(or refrain from doing the FTA). Each strategy on the schema is numbered 1-5, the general
principle being that the higher the number the more polite the strategy.

1. Without redressive action, badly
On record 2. Positive politeness
Do the FTA With redressive action
4.Off record 3. Negative politeness

5. Don’t do the FTA
Possible strategies for doing FTAs (Brown & Levinson, 1987: 69)
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Based on this model, Brown and Levinson have identified a whole series of linguistic
strategies available to speakers to enable them, if they so wish, to minimize threat to face. If a
speaker chooses to commit an FTA, they can go “on record”, say “badly, without redress”:
- Smarten yourself up
The second way available to go “on record” is to choose to pay attention to face through
redressive action. Thus, they may redress the FTA by choosing positive politeness that
attends to positive face, to enable S to pay attention to H’s positive face by the use of in-

- to an acquaintance (about 5 years younger than you)
Take a chill pill, man!
All of the above ideas of positive politeness are summarized in Nguyen Quang’s definition
which reads:
“Positive politeness is any communicative act which is intentionally and
appropriately meant to show the speaker’s concern to the hearer/ addressee, thus,
enhancing the sense of solidarity between them. Simply put, positive politeness is to
show the speaker’s concern to others. In this case, positive politeness can be called
warm or proximal, intimate politeness”.
(Lecture note on cross-cultural communication, CFL-VNU, 2003: 43)
The kernel thrust of the definition Nguyen Quang contributes to the intracultural and cross-
cultural communication is that he implicitly suggests that positive politeness strategies are
appropriate between those who know each other well, or those who wish to know each other
well, and being polite in the contexts of P, D and R’s operation involves how to express a
range of speech functions in a culturally appropriate way.
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When interacting or getting socialized with other people, what we normally do is to pay
attention to satisfying face needs. When face is threatened in interaction, both aspects of face
come under fire (Mey 1993) or under risk of “losing face”, which motivates the speaker to
adopt linguistically appropriate choices to ‘save face’. In the case of the undesirable state of
threatened face engendered by an FTA, politeness strategies are developed to satisfy the dual
aspects of face or any aspect of an FTA, and then there appear positive and negative
politeness strategies when the speaker goes on-record with redressive action. Therefore, it is
worthy of note that politeness strategies are relevant realizations of redressive action for the
speaker’s choice to go on-record. Brown and Levinson (1987) give multifarious examples to
illustrate the kinds of choices to open to the speaker and posit fifteen sub strategies of
politeness addressed to the hearer’s positive face. According to them, positive politeness
strategies aim to save positive face, or are addressed to H’s positive face and described as
expressions of solidarity, intimacy, informality, and familiarity. Thus, they are developed to
satisfy the positive face of the hearer chiefly in two ways: (i) by indicating similarities

and complain?
- Túi nặng quá em ạ.
- Em biết lắm chứ. Toàn bộ giầy dép của em ở trong ấy mà lị.
(8) Strategy 8: Joke to put the hearer at ease
- A: Great summer we’re having. It’s only rained five times a week on average
- B: Yeah, terrible, isn’t it?
- A: Could I ask you for a favor?
- Các bố ấy không phải là Mike Tyson và vợ các bố ấy không phải là những bịch cát
(9) Strategy 9: Assert and presuppose knowledge of and concern for hearer’s wants
- I know you like marshmallows, so I’ve bought you home a whole box of them. I wonder if I
could ask you for a favor.
- Tớ biết cậu không khoái ba cái trò tiệc tùng bù khú nhưng vì hôm nay có cả sếp của tớ dự
nên cậu đến tiếp hộ tớ nhé.
(10) Strategy 10: Offer, promise
- I’ll take you out to dinner on Saturday if you cook the dinner this evening.
- Này, hôm nào ra Hải Xồm lai rai đi.
(11) Strategy 11: be optimistic that the hearer wants what the speaker wants, i.e. that the
FTA is slight
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- I know you are always glad to get a tip or two on gardening, Fred, so if I were you, I
wouldn’t cut your lawn back so short.
- Trông mời mọc quá nhỉ. Tớ phải thử một miếng để xem tài nấu nướng của cậu tiến bộ đến
đâu rồi.
(12) Strategy 12: Include both S and H in the activity
- I’m feeling really hungry. Let’s stop for a bite.
- Tại sao ta không đi biển nhỉ?
(13) Strategy 13: Give and ask for reasons
- I think you’ve had a bit too much to drink, Jim. Why not stay at our place this evening?
(14) Strategy 14: Assert reciprocal exchange or tit for tat
- Dad, if you help me with my math homework, I’ll mow the lawn after school tomorrow.

called distancing/ cool/ distant politeness”
Briefly, negative politeness strategies, in Brown and Levinson’s (1987) words, conversely
are addressed to H’s negative face and are characterized as expressions of restraint,
formality, and distancing. They are furthermore viewed as more face redressive, i.e. more
polite, than positive strategies, a point which was discussed earlier. Thus, they can be also
expressed in two ways: (i) by saving the interlocutor’s face by mitigating FTAs; or (ii) by
satisfying negative face by showing respect for the addressee’s right not to be imposed on.
Following are the ten strategies addressed to the hearer’s negative face (cited from Watts
2003 and Nguyen Quang 2003)
(1) Strategy 1: Be conventionally indirect
- Could you tell me the time please?
- Anh có thể lấy hộ tôi quyển sách ở trên bàn kia được không?
(2) Strategy 2: Do not assume willingness to comply. Question, hedge
- I wonder whether I could just sort of ask you a little question.
- Nói chí ít ra anh ta cũng kiểu như hơi chậm hiểu.
(3) Strategy 3: Be pessimistic about ability or willingness to comply. Use subjunctive
- If you had a little time to spare for me this afternoon, I’d like to talk about my paper.
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- Nên chăng ta đứng ngoài cuộc thì hơn.
(4) Strategy 4: Minimize the opposition
- Could I talk to you for just a minute?
- Tôi chỉ muốn hỏi anh là tôi có thể mượn ô tô của anh về quê ngày mai được không?
(5) Strategy 5: Give deference
- Excuse me, officer. I think I might have parked in the wrong place.
- Tôi ngu quá đi mất. Nhẽ ra tôi phải hỏi ý kiến anh trước mới phải.
(6) Strategy 6: Apologize
- Sorry to bother you but ……
- Xin lỗi phải ngắt lời anh nhưng đấy không phải là ý tôi muốn nói.
(7) Strategy 7: Impersonalize the speaker and the hearer. Avoid the pronouns I and you
- A: That car is parked in a no-parking area.

The above view can be found in Thomas (1995), Eelen (2003), Watts (2003) and others when
they claim that there exist some cases in Brown and Levinson’s model which is hard to
demarcate even what positive politeness and negative politeness are.
All the theories discussed above are the basic way leading to hedging/ hedges displayed in
chapter 2

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CHAPTER 2: HEDGING BEFORE GIVING BAD NEWS
2.1. Hedging defined
The word “hedge” or “hedging” can be broadly defined as referring to a barrier, limit,
defense or the act or means of protection (see The Oxford English Dictionary vs. hedge and
hedging). The designation “hedge/ hedging” itself was introduced first by G.Lakoff (1972) in
his article: “Hedges: A study in meaning Criteria and the Logic of Fuzzy Concepts”. In his
synchronic, non-contrastive study of the oral and written standard English, Lakoff defines
hedges (from the point of view of language philosophy) as words whose function is to make
meaning fuzzier (e.g. sort of) or less fuzzy. Lakoff argues that the logic of hedges requires
serious semantic analysis for all predicates. Lakoff defines hedges as follows:
“For me, some of the most interesting questions bare raised by the study of words
whose meaning implicitly involves fuzziness-words whose job is to make things
fuzzier or less fuzzy. I will refer to such words as “hedges”’.
However, with the fast development of linguistics, hedging phenomena, seen as a purely
semantic phenomenon, have been attacked from the perspective of pragmatics, thus said to
contribute to the interpersonal function of language, by which we are able to “recognize the
speech function, the type of offer, command, statement, or question, the attitudes and
judgments embodied in it, and the rhetorical features that constitute it as a symbolic act”
(Halliday and Hassan 1989:45, cf. Vartalla 2001)
Although the terms “hedge” and “hedging” have been part of linguistic vocabulary for some
thirty years now, no unified description of the concepts is to be found in literature. As
Hylland (1998) states “straightforward definitions of the notions are rather rare and the
existing characterizations soon reveal that the terms are used in different ways by author”.