Part A: Introduction
I. Rationale
In order to become competent in a foreign language, it is important for language
learners not only to acquire new vocabularies and a new set of phonological and syntactic
rules but also to learn what Wilson (1986) calls the rules of speaking: the patterns of
sociolinguistic behavior of the target language. The rules of speaking involve us in knowing
when and how it is suitable to open a conversation, what topics are appropriate to particular
speech events, how speech acts are to be given and interpreted. In many cases, this
interpretation goes beyond what the language learners might intend to convey and includes
assessments such as “polite” and “impolite”.
In Vietnam, as the economy grows and international business develops, English
proficiency becomes a master tool for young people to get a job. They encounter foreigners
in everyday settings where communication is necessary. In the modern society, the need for
communication is increasing, especially in the process of globalization, when communication
spreads beyond the boundary of a country. During the last decades, linguistic researchers
have broadened their focus of their interests from the development of grammatical
competence to other areas of target language development, such as discourse and pragmatic
competence, common speech routines, for example, requests, apologies, complaints,
compliments, refusals, and the like have been most frequently studied in cross-cultural and
interlanguage pragmatics. According to Tsui (1994), there seems to be little empirical
research that has been conducted in responses to questions. For a long time, question-
response has been considered one of the most basic structures of conversation (Schegloff,
1974) but as Tsui (1994; p. 160) points out: “responses have been given little attention in the
speech acts literature. Most of the acts characterized and listed in the various taxonomies
are illocutionary acts which are often done by making the function of utterance in discourse,
and as many responding acts do not have a corresponding responding performative verb,
this kind of analysis inevitably neglects responses”
A characterization of utterances (based on observation of real-life discourse) is not
likely to neglect the importance of responses. Let’s consider an example illustrated by Tsui
(1994)
A: What’s the time?

The study will also try to present difficulties as well as some practical recommendations for
the process of teaching and learning English.
II. Aims of the study
In order to distinguish the different ways of replies and responses to questions as well
as different responding strategies in English and Vietnamese, this research aims at:
- describing and analyzing different types of responses to questions in English and
Vietnamese conversation
- investigating how verbal responses to question express cultural values by examining
the relationship between gender, closeness of relationship and status of the interlocutors and
the kinds of responses to questions.
- putting forward some implications for teaching and learning the functions of
responses to questions in everyday conversation.
III. Scope of the study
In this research, we mainly concentrate on some types of responses to seeking-
information questions. The term, “question”, whose illocutionary focus is to elicit
information and knowledge, is defined as a functional or speech act label. A question is asked
when the questioner does not really know the answer and wants the addressee to supply a
piece of information (Tsui, 1994). As we mentioned the name of the study “An investigation
on some types of verbal responses to questions in English and Vietnamese conversation”
above, non-verbal responses such as silence, gestures, movements and the like will be outside
the scope of the study.
IV. Research questions
1. What are the various types of verbal responses to questions in English and
Vietnamese conversations?
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2. What are the differences and similarities in the choice of response patterns to
questions between native speakers of English and Vietnamese?
V. Organization of the study
The study contains three parts. Part A: Introduction establishes the rationale of the
study, the aims, and the scope of the study; the research questions and organization of the

1.2. Conversation structure
When we are talking to each other we are not just pronouncing words. By saying
something we are also doing something. An utterance such as “Could you close the door?”
can function as a request for information or a warning depends on the circumstances. When
we say something, we also expect the addressee to respond in one way or another, by
answering a question, by agreeing or disagreeing to a proposal, by acknowledging receipt of
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information, and so on, in other words by being an active partner. This is what interaction is
about. The term “interaction” could actually apply to a very large number of quite different
social encounters. For example, a teacher talking to a student in a classroom is one kind of
interaction. Others include a boss talking to his assistant at the workplace, a doctor to patient
in a clinic…The basic pattern “I speak – you speak – I speak – you speak” is what
linguists call the structure of conversation. The study of question responding acts in
conversation is necessary. There are two approaches to examine the conversation structure:
conversation analysis and discourse analysis.
1.2.1. Conversation analysis
Many conversational analysis researchers have defined ordinary conversation as the
kind of casual, social talk that routinely occurs between friends and acquaintances, either
face-to-face or on the phone. According to Markee (2000) “conversation analysis concerned
with naturally occurring instances of everyday talk follow still another, separate academic
tradition of inquiry, which concentrates on the actual discourse mechanisms that serve to
allocate turns of speaking, to negotiate changes in focus and to manage and direct the flow
of interaction”. Conversation analysis, like ethnomethodology, focuses on the common,
everyday competencies that make the social interaction possible. It examines oral dialogue to
determine the social and pragmatic principle whereby speakers and hearers negotiate,
structure and interpret conversation. The general strategy in conversation analysis is to
examine actual verbal interactions in order to bring the structural properties of talk. The
descriptive units that the conversation analysis has been using in describing the structure of
conversation are Turn, Adjacency pair and Sequence.
 Turn

patterns are presented by Levinson (1983, p. 336)
First part Second part
Preferred Dispreferred
Assessment Agree Disagree
Invitation/Offer Accept Refuse
Request Accept Refuse
Question Expected answer Unexpected answer or non-answer
Blame Deny Admission
Table 1. Correlation of content and format in adjacency pair
 Sequence
The structure of adjacency pair described so far has been linear: The first pair part
followed by the second pair part. However, there are also cases of embedding: one pair
occurring inside another. Sometimes, either because the listener does not understand or
because he does not want to commit himself until he knows more or because he is simply
stalling, a next speaker produces not a second part but another first pair part. This
conversational fragment is referred to as insertion sequence. Tapes of sequence are illustrated
in <3> and <4>:
<3> Agent: Do you want the early flight? (=Q1)
Client: What time does it arrive? (=Q2)
Agent: Five-fifty (=A2)
Client: Yeah – that’s great (=A1)
(71: 78)
This sequence takes the form of Q1 - Q2 - A2 - A1, A1 is the answer of Q1, and A2 is
the answer of Q2. Therefore, the middle pair Q2 - A2 is called an insertion sequence.
<4> A: Your jewellery looks very nice (Assessment)
B: Which one do you mean exactly? (Question)
A: The necklace (Answer)
B: Well, I don’t think the same (Disagreement)
5
In this conversation, there is pair which consists of making an assessment

available to the passer-by:
<7> Tourist: Can you tell me where New Street station is?
Passer-by: (a) It’s just round the corner.
(b) Do you know where the shopping centre is?
(c) Sorry, I’m a stranger here.
(66: 20)
The illustration shows the passer-by the choice of supporting the utterance or
rejecting it altogether. If he chooses the former, then he has the choice of producing a
response, which supplies the information (7a). Or he may produce another elicitation before
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supplying the information (7b). If the choice is to reject the utterance, he may reject the
assumption that he is able to supply the requested information (7c).
1.3. Conversational principle
1.3.1 Co-operation and implicature
It has become clear from the studies of conversation that conversation proceeds on
the basis that participants are “reasonable” people who can be expected to deal decently with
one another. In considering the suitability of participants’ moves in conversation, Grice
(1975, p. 45) formulates a rough general principle which participants will be expected to
observe as follows: Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the state“
at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you
are engaged. One might label this the cooperative principle .”
Grice has described four categories of special cases of this principle which he called
“Maxims”. These maxims can briefly be characterized in modified form below:
1) Maxim of Quantity: Be brief. Make your contribution as informative as is
required and no more.
2) Maxim of Quality: Be true. Do not say what you believe to be false and do not say
that for which you lack adequate evidence.
3) Maxim of Relation: Be relevant.
4) Maxim of Manner: Be clear. Avoid obscurity and ambiguity.
Grice points out that speaker do not always follow these maxims. They may violate,

In the aspects of politeness, different ways of responses to questions ultimately
influence someone’s behavior or attitude. According to Green (1996), politeness is seen as
trade in commodity called face. Face is defined as consisting of the freedom to act
unimpeded (Negative Face) and the satisfaction of having one’s value approved of (Positive
Face). To maintain face requires the cooperation of others’ actions and value systems, so
interactants trade face, paying face whenever they must perform a face-threatening act in
the course of accomplishing their goals. Brown and Levinson (1987) argues that when
speaker does an act, which he believes may threaten addressee’s face, speaker must calculate
how much he is risking in performing the face – threatening act. Therefore, there are some
factors affecting to this calculation: speaker’s estimates of the social distance assumed to
separate speaker and hearer, the relative social power of speaker and hearer, and the extent to
which the act contemplated is considered to be an imposition in the culture of which speaker
and hearer are members.
1.4. Verbal communication
Communication can be understood as “the exchange of ideas, information, etc.
between two or more persons”. Successful communication should not only send information
to another but also ensure that this information is understood by the receivers in more or less
the way it is intended by the sender.
Communication can take in many different ways. Generally speaking, two categories
of communication can be identified. The first is verbal communication, that is
communication using language and speech to share or exchange information. The second is
non-verbal communication; that is communication without the use of language but
depending rather on other channels such as body language, eye contact, physical appearance,
attitude distance and physical contact. Due to the limitation of the small study, we only
research verbal communication that verbal responses to questions in English and Vietnamese
conversations are specifically taken into the consideration.
2. Speech act theory
The theory of speech act was first discussed in Austin’s book entitled How to do things
with words (1962). In this book, Austin assumes that language not only functions as stating
and describing things but also as performing acts. He examples that an apology or a promise

According to Searle (1976), speech acts are categorized into five types:
• Representatives (Assertives): commit the speaker to something being the case
such as assertions, reports, conclusions, descriptions, etc…
<8> I assert that Nicole’s a mole.
• Directives: the speaker gets the hearer to do something. This class includes order,
request, challenge, invite, etc
<9> I beg you to convey the respectful compliments of myself and Mrs. Veal.
• Commisieves: commit the speaker himself to some future action such as promise,
refusal, threat, swear, etc
<10>They are not rented less gloomy, I promise you.
• Expressives: express feelings and attitudes about a state of affairs such as
apology, compliment, thanks, etc…
9
<11> I thank you for paying me the money.
• Declaratives: change the world via utterance. This includes many of those which
Austin first considered as performatives
<12> I now pronounce you husband and wife.
2.2. Felicity conditions
Felicity conditions are conditions to count an act as having the illocutionary act of one
sort or another. Austin (1962) distinguishes between three main categories on the
conventional procedure and its effect with the appropriate speaker and circumstance, the
completion and correctness of the procedure performance and the speaker’s desires in giving
directives. Accordingly, in Austin’s view, performatives can be assessed as felicity conditions
are met.
Searle (1976) proposes the taxonomy of four kinds of conditions. For a speech act to be
successful (effective, acceptable) it must meet certain criteria (known as felicity conditions):
- Preparatory conditions: The right person and the right situation
- Sincerity condition: You should mean what you say
- Essential conditions: What you say must be consistent with certain beliefs and
behaviors.

in communication, they have to look at a bigger picture than just a single utterance
performing a single speech act.
3. Literature Review of Questions and Responses
Quirk, R & Greenbeam, S (1987) propose that there are three major classes of
questions according to the answer they expect. They are: Yes-No question, Tag-question,
Question Words. Besides these, Lyons (1977) characterizes question as utterance with
particular illocutionary force. The difference between a question and a statement is that the
former contains a feature of doubt; the speaker should not know the answer to his questions.
Robert, D & Collins, C (1984) see questions as requests and directives. They suggest
that the logic form of questions should be “I request that you tell me”, instead of “I ask you”.
Butt (2000) considers questions as a kind of directives on the grounds that a directive is an
instruction to perform something and questions are instructions to make verbal perform. For
example “Tell me the time.” is a directive to make a verbal performance.
However, Tsui (1994) and Lyons (1977) assert that questions are not kind of request.
They also support some examples to illustrate, such as “No” in response to Yes-No
questions:
<16> A: Is the door open?
B: No ← answer to the question whereas “No” to
<17> A: Open the door, please?
B: No ← refusal to do what is requested (66: 80)
In the M.A thesis of linguistic: Comparison of structures of Vietnamese and English
Questions, Tran Chi Mai (2000) propose two main kinds of Vietnamese questions. They are
alternative questions and non-alternative questions according to the purposes in the relation
of responses. According to Hoang Trong Phien (1980), questions are classified into sub-types
basing on the features of questions and responses. He asserts that the speaker mainly makes
questions because of “unobvious” things. This also decides the responses.
 Non-alternative questions
This kind of questions is created in the hope that the hearer gives the responses. In
Vietnamese, we often use interrogative pronouns, such as: ai (who), thÕ nµo (How), ®i ®©u
(where), bao giê (when)…

Utterance like those in (a) and (b) respond to the question and are considered to be
“answer”, whereas utterances like those in (c) to (i) respond to the verb of questioning itself
and are considered to be “replies”. Lakoff (1973) sees them as all appropriate responses,
although some of them do not satisfy the speaker. It is clear that every question is followed
by a set of responses, but the responses are not the answers to the question. For example:
<23> A: Where’s Peter’s office?
B: (a) I don t know.’
(b) I can t tell you.’
(c) That s none of your business.’
(d) It s on the second floor.’
(e) It s over there.’ (37: 60)
Supporting Tsui’s ideas, Dik also illustrates the example above <25>. He sees that all
utterances (a) to (e) are responses, but the utterances (d) and (e) are answers.
In the book “An Introduction to Discourse Analysis”, Coulthard (1985) proposes
every time a speaker asks a question, there is a set of underlying assumptions, all of which
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must be true if he is to receive the answer he seeks. However, some of assumptions
sometimes may not hold while the responses may consist of a challenge or a denial to the
assumption. Coulthard gives his examination about questions and responses in the novel
“Othello”, and sees that there are eight assumptions of questioning and the eight
corresponding challenges and denials to the assumptions that: addressee is listening,
addressee hears the question, speaker questions at an appropriate time, addressee understands
the question, addressee accepts speaker and empowered to ask the question, addressee thinks
the speaker does not know the answer, address is willing to answer, addressee knows the
answer. In Vietnamese, Le Anh Xuan (2000) studies positive and negative responding acts in
form of questions. His studies are on the different types of indirect responses to seeking
information questions. These indirect responses can be in form of a statement, a question, an
exclamation and a special pattern, such as, proverbs, idioms…Le Anh Xuan (2000; p. 127)
also gives the results of the study as follow:
Form of indirect responses No %

is to request a linguistic response- linguistic, although the response may be a non-verbal
surrogate such as a nod or raised hand”. Tsui (1994) characterizes questions as
“elicitations” to avoid the confusion ambiguity with requests or directives. Tsui (1994) also
gives six subclasses of elicitation: Initiating → Elicitations→ information/ confirmation/
agreement/ commitment/ repetition/ clarification.
In characterizing responding acts, Tsui (1994) asserts that not any move following an
initiating move is a responding move. An initiation can be followed by a move, which is
totally unrelated. The question is how do we decide whether a related move is a responding
move? Let’s consider the examples below:
<1> A: What’s the time?
B: (a) Eleven
(b) Time for coffee
(c) I haven t got a watch, sorry’
(d) How hold I know
(e) Ask Jack
(f) You know bloody well what time it is
(g) Why do you ask?
(h) What did you say?
(i) What do you mean? (66: 80)
<2> A: Where’s Peter’s office?
B: (a) I don t know.’
(b) I can t tell you.’
(c) That s none of your business.’
(d) It s on the second floor.’
(e) It s over there’ . (37: 60)
We can see that B’s utterances are all related to A’s initiating move. However, all
these utterances are responding moves? To know the answer of the question, we should
consider the illocutionary intent and pragmatic presuppositions (refer to the background
belief of the speaker; propositions that the speaker takes for granted to be true in making the
utterance) of A’s elicitation.

practical for making an in-depth study in the next chapters.
CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY
This chapter is to illustrate the methodology of the study and the sections which
follow, include:
- Research questions
- Data collection instruments
- Selection of subjects
- Data collection procedures
- Data analysis
1. Research Questions
1. What are the various types of verbal responses to questions in English and
Vietnamese conversations?
2. What are the differences and similarities in the choice of response patterns to
questions between native speakers of English and Vietnamese?
2. Data collection Instruments
As stated in the previous sections, our purpose is to examine the types of verbal
responses to questions in English and Vietnamese, how Vietnamese speakers differ from
English native speakers in their choice of response types to questions.
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In this study, data collection instruments will include two main questionnaires. First,
The Discourse Completion Task (DCT) was designed to elicit some types of question
responses from the set of English Native Speakers in English. Second, the Vietnamese
translated version of the DCT questionnaire was used to collect some types of question
responses from the set of Vietnamese Speakers in Vietnamese.
• Some issues in choosing methods to collect data
In an attempt to answer these questions, a Discourse Completion Task (DCT) was
used. Arguments for the choice of this data collection will be discussed in the following
section.
Several methods have been used in researching speech acts. Ethnographic methods
have been used to collect naturally occurring question responses (or whatever types of speech

information such as, non-verbal features of oral –interaction cannot be recorded.
In brief, every method has its advantages and disadvantages. In this study, in order to
collect sufficient data within the time and resource constrain available, and as discussed in
the previous sections, our purpose is to understand some types of verbal responses to
questions in English and Vietnamese conversations, not non-verbal responses, we will use
DCT to collect data.
• The content of the questionnaire
The situations in the questionnaire were designed to reflect real life situations.
Additional information about the subjects’ personal backgrounds was obtained by a section
at the front page of each questionnaire. The questionnaires are in English and in Vietnamese.
The English Native Speakers were asked to answer the questions in English and the
Vietnamese Speakers were asked to answer the questions in Vietnamese. The questionnaire
was intended to elicit response forms from subjects. It consists of eight situations.
To obtain the data for the study, observation was employed in order to bolster the
results from the questionnaire, as well as to clarify and test the validity of the obtained
information. Observation was paid on some types of English and Vietnamese question
responses in daily-life situations, books, articles, novels, stories, authentic listening
materials.
3. The selection of subjects
The process of collecting data lasted for nearly five months with the help of my
friends who works in offices and in universities where there occur native and non native
speaker interactions. Data was collected from two groups of participants: one group of the
English participants who come from Australia, America, and England; another group consist
of Vietnamese people. All of them are working in RMIT University and American
International College (AIC), World Bank Office of Road Project Management Unit 2
(RPMU2). The subjects in both groups are from 25 plus to below 50 years old; have had high
levels of education. All subjects of the study are classified into two groups: Native Speakers
of English (NSE) and Native Speakers of Vietnamese (NSV).
The characteristics of each group are listed in the following table:
Criteria NSE NSV

pragmatic strategies of responding acts, the situations are designed to investigate socio-
cultural factors including the decision of using different types of question responses in
English and Vietnamese.
5. Data analysis
As mentioned in the previous parts, we collected various kinds of question responses
in English and Vietnamese, bilingual samples, on the basis of their communicative meaning;
the data was classified into groups on the basis of the presented forms for the realization of
responses to questions in each language. Contrastive analysis was employed so that the
similarities and the differences in responses to questions in English and Vietnamese were
found out on the foundations of the findings in each language. The number of overlaps by
both native speakers and non native speakers was codified, counted and compared.
The data was also analyzed according to the pragmatic function of question
responses. It followed the discourse frame work proposed by Tsui (1994). The instruments
for an analysis of the study are adopted in Tsui’s Model: Responding Move; Challenging
Move; Responses and Challenges. According to Tsui (1994), the use of some terms
“question”, “answer” (response) and “challenge” (reaction) is understood as follows:
Question (Q): any eliciting of a response regardless of grammatical form.
Answer (A): any response that fulfills the expectation of the question.
Challenge(C): any response that modifies (clarifies; expands) or rates (negatively) a
previous statement (question; answer; or another reaction)
Fussell & Krauss (2002; p.41) gives an example of a information-seeking question and
its response as follows:
A: Who is president of the United States? (Q)
B: That’s too easy. (C to Q)
A: No it isn’t. (C to C)
B: George Washington. (A to Q)
In this study, we try to isolate some types of responses to questions which have
the illocutionary forces of information and agreement seeking, clarification or confirmation
checking.
CHAPTER 3: SOME TYPES OF VERBAL RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS IN

<1> Q: Is there a gym here?
A: Yes, Madam, it’s on the third floor. (60: 51)
<2> Q: The Ham sandwich. How much is that?
A: $5.95. (60: 57)
<3> Q: And how long have you been married?
A: Oh, for twenty-two years now. (48: 234)
<4> Q: Who was your first girl friend?
A: Well, that’s easy. It was Emma. (60: 122)
Similarly, in Vietnamese, the direct responses also give a proper answer.
<5> Q: Ch¸u mÊy tuæi råi?
A: Ch¸u ba tuổi ạ. (10: 70)
<6> Q: Chó b¾t ë ®©u mµ nhiÒu c¸ r« thÕ?
A: ë ngo i à đồng. (7: 135)
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<7> Q: Bao gi em i?
A: Ti nay. (7: 135)
1.1.2. Agreeing Q s assumption
According to Levinson (1983) illocutionary intent of elicit agreement is that the
addressee agrees with the speakers assumption that the expressed proposition is self-
evidently true.
English conversation <8> Q: Did he go to the concert?
A: He went. (52: 101)
<9> Q: Did she feel lonely?
A: Very lonely. (50: 122)
Vietnamese conversation:
<10> Q: Con thích bánh n y chứ?
A: Con thích. (6: 39)
<11> Q: Ai đấy? út Thơng hả?
A: út Thơng đây. (2: 317)
<12> Q: Vợ T Năng đâu?

A: Em về trên đơn vị có chút việc.
Q: Việc gì? Hay là cô lên thăm chồng hay thăm ngời yêu?
A: Em đi thăm ngời yêu. (25: 234)
<22> Q: Anh Tánh hả? Thiệt anh Tánh hả?
A: Tánh đây. Tao đây.
Q: Mình diệt nó hết rôì hả anh?
A: ờ diệt hết rồi, trận đánh xong rồi. (25: 116)
The above samples collected reveal the significant similarities of direct response
patterns to questions in English and Vietnamese conversations. In English, the expressions,
such as Right; That s right ; Sure ; Yes, sure; Exactly, Me tooare regularly used
in direct responses while in Vietnamese, we often use some direct response patterns as:
Vâng; Đúng ; Chính xác; Phải; ừ; Chắc chắn and so on.
In any verbal English and Vietnamese conversations, a speaker who poses a
question is assumed to be answered in a cooperative, sincere and information way. Normal
conversation proceeds so smoothly because we cooperate in them. According to Grice
(1975), we are able to converse with one another because we recognize common goals in
conversation and specific ways of achieve these goals. Grice (1975) also states the overriding
principle in conversation is the cooperative principle that is developed by maxims (Quantity;
Quality; Relation; Manner). However, the speakers do not always follow these maxims.
When a speaker gives responses to questions, (s)/he can make the observance of the maxims
or non-observance of the maxims as the following examples:
<23> Husband: Where are the car keys?
Wife: Theyre on the table in the hall. (61: 64)
The wife has answered clearly (Manner), truthfully (Quality), has just given the
right amount of information (Quantity), has directly addressed her husbands goal in asking
the question (Relation). She has said precisely what she meant, no more or no less and has
generated no implicature. (i.e. there is no distinction to be made here between what she says
and what she means; there is no additional level of meaning)
Grice (1975) acknowledges that people may fail to observe a maxim because they
are incapable for speaking clearly or because they deliberately choose to lie. In addition, we

By confirming that he has a daughter called Katherina, but omitting any mention
to her fairness or virtue, Baptista implies that she does not possess these qualities to any
marked degree.
<25> Doobie: Did you invite Bella and Cathy?
Mary: I invited Bella. (71: 40)
Mary did not mention Cathy in her response. Mary gives indirect response to Doobie
with implicature that Mary did not invite Cathy in the party.
<26> Q: Where’s my shirt?
A: Is it in the drawer?
Indirect responses can be a statement, or a question. In (26) A’s question
implicates her husband’s might be in the drawer.
<27> A is asking B about a mutual friend’s new boyfriend:
A: Is he nice?
B: She seems to like him. (61: 66)
B could simply have replied: “No” – this would give the maximum amount of
information possible in the situation. In stead, B gives a much weaker and less informative
response. B cannot say for certain whether the new boyfriend is nice or not, and speaks only
22
on the basis of evidence he has. In (27), there is a clash of non-observance of the maxim of
Quantity and Quality.
A great number of similar cases are available in Vietnamese. These patterns of
responses are rich, flexible and diversified.
<27> Q: Ngàn báo thầy Đức và thầy Hà đi họp cha?
A: Em báo cho thầy Đức rồi. (17: 135)
<28> Q: Con muốn bố mua quần bò và áo thun.
A: Bố đã mua cái quần bò này. (17: 134)
<29> Q: Anh biết anh Dịu chứ?
A: Ông Thiếu uý lò gạch ấy à? (25: 129)
<30> Q: Chị đẹp lắm phải không?
A: Có lẽ phải đem năm bảy chị phụ nữ khác nén lại may ra mới bằng đợc chị.

accept a lift to the campsite if the drive was going in that direction anyway.
In Vietnamese, indirect responses that exploit the maxims of Relation are
various. Consider the following:
<36> Q: Anh C dạo này khoẻ không?
A: Nó sắp đi Văn Điển rồi. (17: 201)
<37> Q: Sao? Thế gặp mụ Bọ Muỗm cha?
A: Nó đánh tôi gấy mất một càng rồi. (6: 44)
<38> Q: Anh có muốn chết không?
A: Anh này hỏi mới dở chứ. (6: 98)
In (36), the speaker gives indirect response sắp đi Văn Điển implying that Mr.
C is seriously ill, close to death. While in (37), the speaker implies his injury, a broken leg,
to the questioner that he met his enemy. In (38), the speaker who violates the maxim of
Relevance implies that no one want to die, and so does he.
In both English and Vietnamese, the speaker often uses some rhetorical
questions: Do chickens have lips?/ Who understands Piaget?/ Why is the sky blue? or
some expressions, such as War is War/ Boy is Boy, Woman is Woman, Fact is Fact
as indirect responses to questions. Consider the followings:
<39> Bert: Do you like ice-cream?
Ernie: Is the Pope Catholic? (71: 43)
<40> Bert: Do vegetarians eat hamburgers?
Ernie: Do chickens have lips? (71: 44)
In the example (39) above, Ernies response does not provide a Yes or No
answer. Ernies response also implicates that the answer to the question is Obviously, yes.
In (40), Ernie gives indirect response by implicating that the answer is Of course not!
<41> Q: Cậu có cho rằng nó sẽ thi vào đợc đại học không?
A: Thế cậu đã thấy chó có váy lĩnh bao giờ cha? (16: 387)
<42> Q: Tay Cán dạo này thế nào?
A: Cán vẫn là Cán thôi. (16: 132)
<43> Q: Chị nhà dạo này nói nhiều nữa không?
A: Đàn bà vẫn là đàn bà. (2: 140)

sensitive to the kind of face-threatening responses to questions. They often use hedges,
excuses or apologies for the failure to advance questioners goal.
<50> Q: Nó đang tán tỉnh con nào? Con kia ngời ngợm ra sao? Mặt mũi thế nào?
A: Em không biết nữa, Hình nh cha có ai cả. (2: 82)
<51> Q: Tại sao anh không bắn tôi?
A: Tôitôi không rõ. (2: 57)
<52> Q: Đến nhà hộ sinh có phải xuất trình giấy giá thú không?
A: Em chịu thôi. (7: 136)
The above illustrations of challenges are not significantly between English and
Vietnamese. The English often use some expressions, such as I don t know , I m really not
sure , I couldn t tell you , I can t remember , I have no idea , Sorry, I am a stranger
here or some hesitations responding Well, let me see , Well, let me think , Where should
I start? to give a declaration of ignorance; or a declaration of unwillingness to supply
information, the lack of information. Meanwhile, the Vietnamese also have corresponding
types, such as Không rõ lắm , Không biết , Không thấy gì , Chịu/ Chịu thôi to give
their inability to supply information that the speaker needs.
2.2. Evasion in supplying information
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