Part One: Introduction
I. Rationale:
Many studies in recent years (Bouton, 1996; Kulka-Blum, 1989, etc.) have
shown that the practice and development of communication skills, particularly
speaking and listening, must come with advanced knowledge of social language if
the learner wants to enhance the ability to acquire these skills. According to the
research done by Blum-Kulka et al (1989), Kasper (1995) and some other scholars,
in daily communication, the indirect illocutionary act, is done more often than the
direct illocutionary act. Therefore, in addition to the difficulties of grammar,
structure, or pronunciation, foreign language learners also get difficulty in using
language appropriately related to the idioms and cultural differences, or to express
indirectness. According to Gumperz (1982, cited by Tam, 2005) “People in
different cultures may communicate in different ways. Differences in culture can
cause problems leading to failure in communication”. According to a study on
greeting of the American group by Eisenstein and colleagues conducted in 1996,
foreigners often apply some salutations not be suitable for native speakers, and this,
in some cases, causes people to be vulnerable, and may lead to congestion in
communication. One of the reasons is due to the influences or transfers from
Vietnamese.
When people approach the other party, they are entering his personal space.
Hence, this action causes a face-threatening action, which is proposed by Brown
Levinson. Therefore, people need a greeting to smoothen the interrelationship.
Based on the theory of politeness proposed by Brown & Levinson (1987), this study
is designed to investigate greetings by Vietnamese learners of English.
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II. Aims of the study
The purpose of this study was to investigate the strategies of greeting used by
the 3
rd
year students of Foreign Language Department in Haiphong University in
order to answer three questions below:

can be perceived as a two-way process in which there is an exchange and
progression of thoughts, feelings or ideas towards a mutually accepted goal or
direction.
1.1.2. Communication competence
Communicative competence is a linguistic term which refers, in this study, to
a learner's L2 ability. It not only refers to a learner's ability to apply and use
grammatical rules, but also to form correct utterances, and know how to use these
utterances appropriately. The term underlies the view of language learning implicit
in the communicative approach to language teaching.
The term was coined by Dell Hymes in 1966, reacting against the perceived
inadequacy of Noam Chomsky's (1965) distinction between competence and
performance. Hymes' ideas about communicative competence were originally
research-based rather than pedagogical. Specifically, to address Chomsky's abstract
notion of competence, Hymes (1972; 1977; 1994) discussed the ethnographic-
oriented exploration of communicative competence that included 'communicative
form and function in integral relation to each other. His research-oriented ideas
have undergone an epistemic transformation: from empirically oriented questions to
an idealized pedagogic doctrine' (Leung, 2005).
Chomsky's view of linguistic competence, however, was not intended to
inform pedagogy, but serve as part of developing a theory of the linguistic system
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itself, idealized as the abstract language knowledge of the monolingual adult native
speaker, and distinct from how they happen to use and experience language.
Hymes, rather than Chomsky,0 developed a theory of education and learning.
Canale and Swain (1980) defined communicative competence in terms of
four components:
1. Grammatical competence: words and rules
2. Sociolinguistic competence: appropriateness
3. Discourse competence: cohesion and coherence
4. Strategic competence: appropriate use of communication strategies

(Searle, 1990a, p351). Based on the purposes of acts Searle (1990a, p351) identifies
five illocutionary points namely assertive, comissive, directive, declarative, and
expressive. Thus, requests such as “Hi, there!”, “Hello!” or “Good morning sir!” all
have directive illocutionary point. However, they are different in illocutionary
forces. While the first and second examples are considered as less formal greeting,
the third is a formal one. A distinction is made between the illocutionary point and
illocutionary forces of an act which claims that “while the illocutionary point of
informal/less formal/ formal greeting: all are attempts to get hearers to know the
speaker is greeting, their illocutionary forces are different” (Searle, 1990a, p.351).
In his terminology, force is equal to strength. For instance, in comparing “I suggest
we go to the movies” with “I insist that we go to the movies”, Searle argues that
they have the same illocutionary point, i.e. an attempt to get the interlocutor to go to
the movies, but the same illocutionary point, i.e. an attempt to get the interlocutor to
go to the movies, but the same illocutionary point is presented with different
strength or force. The force of an utterance is related to the status or position of the
Speaker and Hearer. Also it reflects the assumption or the presupposition about the
Speaker’s relative power over the Hearer in the communicative context.
Searle argues that each type of illocutionary act requires certain conditions
for the successful and effective performance of that act and these he calls felicity
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conditions. Searle identifies four different kind of felicity conditions. These
conditions relate, on the one hand, to the beliefs and attitudes of the speaker and the
hearer, and, on the other, to their mutual understanding of the use of the linguistic
devices for communication.
All things considered, the Speaker has to choose among his repertoire of
linguistic forms the form which s/he could successfully use to get the Hearer to
know his/her action. Thus, s/he has to decide whether to say it using the on-record
or off-record strategy and/or what kind of redress would best serve his purpose etc.
In speech act theory, direct speech acts and indirect speech acts are
distinguished from each other. Indirectness is defined as “those cases in which one

manager are considered as having different power and status. Imposing on someone
means impeding one’s desire to act as s/he pleases, refraining from imposing on
someone means not to impede these desires. Therefore, a speaker who wishes to be
polite according to this rule will avoid imposition, but mitigate, or ask permission or
apologize for making the addressee do anything, which s/he does not want to do.
Not imposing means not giving or seeking personal problems, habits, and the like.
More particularly, not imposing means avoiding earthly, slangy, emotional
language, and also topics which are taboo, considered too personal to discuss in
public. Thus, love, sex, politics, religion, economic difficulties, the human body etc.
are inappropriate to discuss in public.
The second rule, offer options, is a more formal politeness one which is
appropriate to situations in which the participants have approximately equal status
and power, but are not socially close, for example, the relationship between a
businessperson and a new client, two strangers sharing a compartment on a train.
It is believed that utterances in English are phrased in a pragmatically
ambiguous way so as to give H a graceful out if s/he prefers not to do the act
comply with this rule of politeness.
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The third rule, encourage feeling of camaraderie, for friendly or intimate
politeness, is appropriate to intimates or close friends. In intimate politeness, almost
any topic of conversation is fair game, assuming that with a close friend; one should
be able to discuss anything. Concerning this rule, Green explains very clearly that to
speak indirectly means that interlocutors do not know each other well enough,
implying that intimate politeness is not appropriate because they do not have close
relationship. On the contrary, informal politeness not only shows S’s interest in the
other by asking personal questions and making personal remarks but also trusts and
regard by being open about one’s own experiences and feelings.
Regarding politeness issue, Grice’s concept of CP (Cooperative Principle)
has also been amply documented in literature. However, this position has been
claimed to be insufficient as an explanation of the relation between sense and force.

For instance, he goes on explaining that in making a greeting for a second hearer in
English, it is slightly more polite if H’s role as potential benefactory is suppressed,
thus “Good morning sir, how can I help you?” is more polite than “Hello, what do
you need?” In this instance, the Generosity maxim appears to be effective and is
supported by the observation that an impositive can be softened, and thereby made
it more polite, by omission of reference to the cost to H.
The following section will discuss the social factors that most influence the
choice of politeness strategies in speech.
As has been discussed earlier, politeness strategies are viewed as ways to
perform FTAs to appropriately attend to H’s face through the assessment of these
factors. The choice of appropriate polite expressions in a given context depends on
a number of factors, which Brown & Levinson (1987) have subsumed into a simple
formula. They postulate three independent variables that have a systematic effect on
the choice of polite strategies: the relative power (P) between the Speaker and the
Hearer, the social distance (D) between them and the absolute ranking (R) of the
imposition in the particular culture. Each of these has an independent effect on the
strategic choice of polite expressions. The weightiness of an FTA is related to these
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variables. While they are not the only factors affecting speech act formulation,
Brown & Levinson claim that they subsume all others (egg. status, authority,
occupation, ethnic identity, friendship, situational factors, etc.)
The power (P) variable in Brown & Levinson’s (1987, p.77) terms is an
asymmetrical social dimension of relative power. The relative power (P) that the
speaker has over the hearer is defined as the degree to which the speaker can
impose his or her own plans and his self-evaluation (face) at the expense of the
hearer’s plans and self-evaluation. These are two sources of P, either of which may
be authorized or unauthorized: material control (over economic distribution and
physical force) and metaphysical control (over the actions of others, by virtue of
metaphysical forces subscribed to by those others). Searle (1990a, p. 354) argues
that “some acts require extra-linguistic institutions for their performance and some

gang, or a neighborhood) and in relation to another member with whom he/she is
currently interacting. Thus one’s relative status is high in a conversation with a
subordinate and low in a conversation with a superior, but one’s absolute status is
the same in both conversations.”
We assume that people implicitly weigh many personal and social factors to
estimate their own and others’ status. Different hierarchies probably use different
weights. For example, among the students and faculty of an academic department,
we would expect age, academic rank (egg. freshman, advanced graduate students,
full professor), academic degree, and knowledge and expertise in that field to be
important determinants, whereas physical size and ancestry might be less important
than in some other settings.”
Clearly, Cansler and Stiles’ (1981) interpretation of power is different from
the other two pairs of authors. While Cansler and Stiles focus on social rank, others
emphasize control of another person’s behavior.
The dimension “distance” or “ social distance” has been referred to
differently by different authors. For instance, Brown & Gilman (1972) use
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solidarity, Brown Levinson (1978) use distance to refer to the dimension, while
Slugoski &Turnbull (1988) and Trosborg (1987) use the term intimacy to refer to
the same dimension. Different researchers conceptualize the ‘horizontal’ dimension
of interlocutor’s relations in slightly different ways. Similar to power, researchers
have been criticized for not giving explicit interpretation of the term they use.
Wierzbicka (1991, p.70) makers the following point: “… researchers in cross-
cultural pragmatics try to explain differences in the ways of speaking in terms of
values such as ‘directness’ or ‘indirectness’, ‘solidarity’… ‘intimacy’, ‘self-
expression’, and so on, without explaining what they mean by these terms, and
using them as if they were self-explanatory. But if one compares the ways in which
different writers use these terms, it becomes obvious that they don’t mean the same
thing for everyone.” In her review of the term ‘distance’ used in various research,
Spencer-Oatey (p.3) concludes that “in fact, only two of them discuss it in

Directness or indirectness is calculated on the basis of the assessment of the
three parameters: P, D, R. This means that the amount of ‘face-work’, or in this case
the degree of indirectness needed to be achieved in the production of any face-
threatening act, depends on the Speaker’s assessment of the three parameters
discussed in the previous section viz.: power differential between speaker and
interlocutor; social distance between speaker and interlocutor; and the degree of
imposition represented by the face-threatening act including obligations and degree
of compliance on the part of the hearer. And the choice of redress is made
accordingly.
However, Leech’s (1983, p.108) argues that one can increase the degree of
politeness by increasing the degree of indirectness of the illocution while keeping
the same propositional content. He claims “indirect illocutions tend to be more
polite (a) because they increase the degree of optionality, and (b) because the more
indirect an illocution is, the more diminished and tentative its force tends to be”.
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Thus, in Leech’s (1983) view the more optionality that the Speaker allows for the
Hearer the more polite the Speaker sounds.
For instance in asking about the time, one can say:
(1) “Tell me the time!”
(1) “ Can you tell me the time?”
In Brown and Levinson’s terminology (1) is a bald on record strategy and
(2) is termed on record with redress. In Leech’s terms, in saying (1) the Speaker
does not allow that the Hearer has any choice in the matter, no options for the
hearer. According to Brown and Levinson, (2) is on-record with redress because it
asks the Hearer to do A, but in an indirect way, by asking superficially about the
Hearer’s ability to do A. According to Leech, (2) provides more optionality because
by asking about the Hearer’s ability to do A it gives the Hearer and ‘out’. Which
means that the Hearer can refuse “to do A on the grounds of being unable to do so”
(Leech, 1983). In other words, it gives the Hearer a way to justify himself by
saying, “ unless I am able to do A, I cannot be responsible for failing to bring it

(1992) argues that the “framing” of the utterance to reflect the addressee’s versus
the speaker’s perspective is one of several ways in which the deictic system is used
to convey politeness. Further, Koike (1992, p.71) maintains that in English “the
shift in focus from the deictic center in time frame and person reference are
strategies commonly used to convey degrees of politeness”.
1.6. Eisenstein’s research
In their research, Eisenstein and colleagues have found the communicators
do not always use the greeting formulas. Results of the study showed that greeting
may be divided into some kinds of strategy as follows:
1. Greetings on the run
2. Speedy greeting
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3. The chat
4. The long greeting
5. The intimate greeting
6. The all-business greeting
7. The introductory greeting
8. The re-greeting
As can be seen in table below:
STT Strategy Example in English
Example in
Vietnamese
1 Greetings on the run A: Hi, how is
everything today?
B: Hi! It’ OK. Gotta
run, I’m late for a
dating. See you!
A: Hà, đâu đấy
B: Ừ chào. Tớ đi đằng
này có chút việc. Gặp

good.
Oh, found my rings.
Left in the bath
room. I thought I had
lost it.
A: Wow! That’s
great. That’s pretty
good
B:Look, I’ll see you
later.
A:Okay. Bye.
thấy khuyên tai rồi, để
ở nhà tắm. Tưởng mất
rồi cơ cuối cùng cũng
tìm được.
A: Thế hả? Tốt quá.
B: Thôi chết mấy giờ
rồi? Gặp nhau sau
nhé.
A: Ừ đi cẩn thận
4 The long greeting A. Cẩm!
B. Dung!
A. Where’ve you
been? I haven’t seen
you around. B. I was
away together with
my family. We just
got back. What’s
new with you?
What’s up to you

detail)
A. Well, I’m glad
you’re back. It’s so
nice to see you. I
have many things to
tell you.
B. Aw. Well, we’re
back! How have you
been doing?
5 The intimate
greeting
A. Well?
B. Good!
A. Great. What will
you do next?
…………
A. Thế nào?
B. Cũng được.
A. Hay đấy. tiếp theo
là gì?
………………
6 The all-business
greeting
Client: Mr. Matone?
Joe Matone: Yes?
Clien: I want to talk
to you about Puerto
Rico
Joe Matone: Oh?
Come in. What about

anh ạ.
Thủ trưởng: Ừ, đi đi.
À mà này cho mình
gửi lời hỏi thăm bà cụ
nhé.
Nhân viên: Vâng
7 The introductory
greeting
A: Eh. Hà? Where
are you from?
B: Yes. Vĩnh Phúc.
and you?
A: Uh, My name
Hoa. Hải Phòng. B:
…….
A: ………
A. Này. Nghe nói bạn
tên Hà? Quê ở đâu
thế?
B. Ừ. Vĩnh Phúc. Bạn
ở …?
A. Mình tên Hoa. Hải
Phòng.
B.………………
A………………
8 The re-greeting A: Hey, feel better?
B: A little hurt.
…….
A: Đỡ chưa?
B: Vẫn thấy hơi đau

Language Acquisition
Excellent Good Fair Poor
33.3% 66.7% 10.0% 46.7% 33.3% 10.0%
Table 2.1. Participants distribution on gender and language acquisition
2.3. Data collection methods
2.3.1. Data collection procedure
Step 1 (Pilot): Questionnaires (in both English and Vietnamese) are delivered
to a small group of Vietnamese students. And then the questionnaires are checked
again depending on the pilot’s results and revised.
Step 2 (Official): Open ended questions were designed in English and
Vietnamese. Sixty sheets (50% in Vietnamese and 50% in English) were delivered
to 30 students (33.3% male, 66.7% female) and 60 sheets received back by e-mail.
Participants will complete 2 surveys; survey one three days before survey
two in order to ensure truthfulness, consistency and accuracy in the surveys.
2.3.2. Data analytic methods:
Finding frequency distribution as seen from parameters by using quantitative
method.
Qualitative method is used to review the strategies sections.
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Once the findings are available, a hypothesis is formulated, and then is tested
against the facts through an oral interview.
2.4. Situations used in the study
Situations used in English:
Sit 1: Assuming that you and your friend(s) suddenly see each other when you
are in hurry, both of you would say (in case: power and distance are zero).
Sit 2: You and your friend(s) see each other when both are on the way to an
appointment but not in hurry, you have some time to have small talk to your
friend(s), both of you would say (in case: power and distance are zero)
Sit 3: You are invited to your friend(s)’ party at his/her house. Your friend(s)
open the door, both of you would say (in case: power and distance are zero)

for. The distribution can be seen in the following table:
Total Male Female Total Male Female
Total
30 10 20 30 10 20
St1
9 5 4 7 5 2
St2
15 3 12 16 3 13
St3
4 1 3 4 1 3
St4
2 1 1 3 1 2
St5 0 0 0 0 0 0
St6 0 0 0 0 0 0
St7 0 0 0 0 0 0
St8 0 0 0 0 0 0
Strategy
Sur in En
Sur in Vn
In order to test the findings, a hypothesis is formulated. All utterances were audio-
recorded using portable Panasonic RN 202 micro cassette recorder. Recordings were made
onto SONY MC-60 cassette tapes. The micro cassette was placed approximately 20.32 to
30.48 centimeters in front of the informants to make the recordings clearer and accurate.
Because of the limited time, transcriptions became impossible, however, recordings are
well-kept.
3.1.1. General view
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Table 3.1. Vietnamese students’s choice of strategies
The chart below shows the frequency of which third year students of
Department for English Languages and Literature at Haiphong University greet