4

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

FFA
Face Flattering Act
FGA
Face Giving Act
FTA
Face Threatening Act
F
Female
H
Hearer
M
Male
S
SIT

Speaker
Situation


6

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Declaration i
Acknowledgements ii
Abstract iii
List of abbreviations iv
List of tables v

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1
1. Rationale and the statement of the problem 1
2. Aims of the study 3
3. Significance of the study 3
4. Scope of the study 4
5. Method of the study 4

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 5
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 5
1.1. Speech acts and classification of speech acts 5
1.2. Requesting as a speech act 7
1.3. Redundancy and classification of redundancy 9
1.3.1. Redundancy 9
1.3.2. Classification of redundancy 10
1.3.2.1. Modality redundancy 10
1.3.2.2. Habitual redundancy 11
1.3.2.3. Insufficient redundancy 11
1.4. Economicality and classification of economicality 11
1.4.1. Economicality 11
1.4.2. Classification of economicality 11
1.4.2.1. Modality economicality 11

3. Suggestions for further study 42
REFERENCES 43
APPENDIX I

8

PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale and the statement of the problem
The emergence of English as a global language has presented a solution to language barrier
and brought people closer together and its contribution towards such fields as economy,
culture, education, science, technology etc, is undeniable. Mastering a good competence of
English not only brings benefits in business, cultural exchanges, education and
development to nation-states but can benefit individuals as they will have greater career
opportunities. In the contemporary context of international integration and economic
globalization, the role of using English in communication has never been so important to
people worldwide, including the Vietnamese. The open door policy has brought the
contrasting effects (both threats and opportunities) to national economic climate with the
strong performance of foreign companies and the significant changes in employment
market, which is accompanied by the increasing demand of skilled and English –fluent
speaking workforce. In order to meet such requirements, English teaching programs in
Vietnam have shifted from a focus on the linguistic competence to the communicative
competence.
According to Hymes (1976), the communicative competence includes not only knowledge
of the linguistic forms of a language but the knowledge of when, how and to whom it is
appropriate to use these forms as well. In another word, when communicating, people do
not only attempt to produce grammatically correct sentences, but also try to apply them in
the right combination of context. What is more, language is also intimately bound up with

sensitive speech acts such as requesting, apologizing, etc. Requesting – one of the most
sensitive illocutionary acts in English and Vietnamese – has been the topic of so many
researches whose major findings mainly point out the basic differences between
Vietnamese and English when using politeness, directness or indirectness strategies in
requesting. However, little is known about request segments which can be seen as
redundancy and whether the redundant language elements constituting a request such as
“just a tiny bit” in English or “một chút xíu” in Vietnamese should be considered as a
politeness strategy or just a language marker by people from different cultures. More
importantly, how these redundant elements or terminologically known as “ lexico modal
marker’ or “modality markers” are linked to the addresser‟s/ addressee‟s gender and
relative age in both cultures requires a further clarification. All the reasons above motivate
me to conduct a research on economicality and redundancy in requesting in English and
Vietnamese culture with the hope of discovering answers to the uncertainty and promoting
awareness of cross-cultural differences in English and Vietnamese culture.
10

2. Aims of the study
The aims of the study are;
- To explore the popularity of redundant and economical factors in making requests
in the specific situations, under certain variables such as age, the addresser‟s/
addressee‟s gender and relative age in English and Vietnamese
- To compare and contrast the range of lexico modal markers or modality markers
constituting the redundancy and economicality in requesting in order to clarify the
similarities and differences in the way Vietnamese and English – speaking people
request in their own language and culture.
- To contribute to promoting cross-cultural awareness among foreign language
teachers and learners was well as other potential interactants in cross-cultural
communication.
In brief, this paper aimed to address three following research questions:
1. Is economicality or redundancy preferred by the Vietnamese and English people

5. Method of the study
The research method used in the study is the survey research – a kind of quantitative one.
All the considerations, remarks, comments and assumptions given in the thesis are based
largely on the analysis of statistic data with due reference to publication.
The practical approaches are
- Studying relevant publications
- Conducting survey questionnaires
- Analyzing the collected data
- Resorting to personal observations and experience
- Consulting the supervisor
- Discussing with Vietnamese and foreign colleagues 12

PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter provides a brief overview of the literature review on the research topic for the
aim of laying theoretical foundation for the whole paper. Initially, key terms like “speech
acts”, “requesting”, “economicality and redundancy”, “lexico modal markers or
modality markers” are explained. Afterwards, some issues related to this research,
specifically gender and politeness strategies are also reviewed to contextualize the research
paper as well as show the gaps in the literature and how this paper could fit in. In brief, the
researchers have no ambition to review all aspects in making requests in the two
languages; this study‟s literature review only covers issues connected to using redundant
factors in requesting and the influence of the addresser‟s/ addressee‟s gender and relative
age on the use of these factors.
1.1. Speech acts and classification of speech acts
Modern linguistics has been referred to as the study of language as a system of human
communication. A main observation is that la

finally, perlocutionary acts are the effects of the utterance on the listener. Depending on the
circumstances, S will utter “Could you open the door, please?” on the assumption that H
will recognize the effect S intended. Once the S‟s intention is recognized by H, the act is
generally known as having the perlocutionary effect.
According to Yule, G. (1996, p.49), of these three dimensions, illocutionary force is most
frequently discussed. Indeed, the term “speech act” is generally interpreted as the
illocutionary force of an utterance. For example, the utterance “It’s stuffy here” can
represent different illocutionary forces such as a request, a complaint, a warning, etc.
However, which illocutionary act is performed depends on how the utterance fits into the
particular circumstances.
Speech acts may be conveniently classified by their illocutionary type, such as asserting,
requesting, promising, and apologizing, for which we have familiar verbs. These difference
types may in turn be distinguished by the type of attitude S expresses. As a result, there are
thousands of possible illocutionary acts. However, such classifications are difficult because
S‟s intentions are not always clear.
According to Searle (1969), there are five types of speech acts based on S‟s intentions.
They are declaratives, representatives, expressive, directives, and commissives.
14

A declarative is speech act, where the speaker brings about some state of affairs by the
mere performance of the speech act (declare, bequeath, appoint, excommunicate). For
example, “The paper for the Busan conference is accepted”. Representatives are those
kinds of speech acts that state what S believes to be the case or not. For example, “The
earth moves around the sun”. An expressive is a speech act, the purpose of which is to
express the speaker‟s attitude to some state of affairs (thank, congratulate, apologize,
condole, deplore, welcome). For example, “I like the ideas presented in this conference”.
Directives are those kinds of speech acts that S uses to get H to do something. They
express what S wants. They are commands, orders, requests, etc. For example, “Could you
open the door, please?. Commissives are those kinds of speech acts that S uses to commit
themselves to some future actions. They express what S intends. They are promises,

asking the listener to pass us the salt.
Searle (1969:66) offer this description of a request: a directive speech act which counts an
attempt to get H to do an act which S wants H to do, and which S believes that H is able to
do; and which it is not obvious that H will do in the normal course of events or of H‟s own
accord. This notion of an “act” may include the purely verbal acts of giving information, or
granting permission.
As other communication processes, requesting is composed of, at least, three factors: the
speaker, the hearer, and their language. The speaker is directed to the final goal, when
he/she has a request in her/his mind. As “the generator of meanings” (Leech, 1985), the
speaker makes some utterances in order to achieve the goals. On the other hand, the hearer,
“the interpreter of meaning”, is expected to reconstruct the communicative intention of the
speaker. We must bear in mind that achieving the goal depends mainly on the hearer, not
on the speaker. It is because if the hearer fails to interpret the communicative intention of
the speaker, it cannot be regarded as requesting. The speaker‟s violation of the
Conversational Maxim (Grice, 1975) will help the hearer‟s interpretation.
A request may vary in strategy type and level of directness. Three levels of directness for
requests have been identified (cf. Blum-Kulka, House & Kasper 1989). The first is
“direct”. This includes forms that convey requestive force by purely syntactic means, such
as grammatical mood or an explicit performative verb. The second level is “conventionally
direct”. This comprises indirect formulas that are conventionalized in the language as a
means of requesting. The last level is “non-conventionally indirect”. This refers to hints,
indirect request forms that are not conventionalized in the language, and hence require
more inference by the hearer in order to derive the speaker‟s requestive intent. Although it
16

may not so overt at times, cultures have been found to differ as to which factors count
more than others, and languages vary in the extent to which they switch directness levels
by situation (Blum-Kulka et al., 1989). Some of the social/situational factors include:
- Relative dominance of the requester in relation to the hearer.
- Relative social distance (familiarity) between the interlocutors

be described as the difference between the possible and actual information in a message.
This difference may be repetition or other encoding beyond the real essential information,
for example, “Could you please repeat it again?”. In this example, “again” is a redundant
word because it is a repetition of “repeat”. Redundancy in language is a popular
phenomenon across different cultures, Vietnam included. Some previous studies revealed
that Vietnamese is different from native speakers of English in terms of thought patterns.
When making request members of Vietnamese culture tend to be much more indirect than
people from English culture. As a result, when examining Vietnamese requests, we find out
more redundant factors than in English, for example
“
Làm ơn cho em biết bưu điện ở đâu
ấy nhỉ?.
1.3.2. Classification of redundancy
Prof. Nguyen Quang also categorized redundancy into three main types: Modality
redundancy, habitual redundancy, insufficient redundancy.
1.3.2.1. Modality redundancy
Modality redundancy is considered as the repetition of a word or phrase. In fact, it can
create rhetorical effectiveness for the text and the speech. Modality redundancy is created
in order to emphasize the meaning, create sound impression or produce the rhythm in
literature.
For example, in English “
Thousands of innocent people were killed
in New Yorkby
bombing that was leaded by, was done by, was sponsored, was supported by Bin Laden”.
In this example, the verb “was” and passive structure are repeated in order to emphasize on
the devastating effects and cruelty caused by Bin Laden‟s terrorist attack. In Vietnamese,
especially poetry, modality redundancy is mainly applied as a way of producing the
rhythm.
Ta muốn riết mây đưa và gió lượn
Ta muốn say cánh bướm vơí tình yêu

1.4.2.1. Modality economicality
Modality economicality is seen as the contraction of words or phrases of least importance
in conveying meanings of a message. The hearer needs to put the utterances in the context
so that she/he can understand what they really mean.
For example, in English “
Much have I had lots of dreams a
nd many nice angels seen” and
in Vietnamese “Giá mà cứ như thế này mãi thì thích nhỉ!”
Actually this is related to an adversarial pair of dimension: high context and low context.
In low context cultures, people rely heavily on the context to understand the intended
meaning from contracted language, for example: Yes, I do for the request Do you mind
opening the door ? or Me, too for the exclamation I can’t stand him any more.
19

1.4.2.2. Habitual economicality
Habitual economicality is common in both English and Vietnamese. Habitual redundancy/
economicality refers to non-conventional discourse structures, for example “(Tôi) nói khí
không phải”/ “Năm thì mười hoạ” or “In my opinion/Frankly (Frankly speaking)” both
(either) grammatically and (or) lexically contracted… They can be idiomatic expressions
like “Dã man” (terrible) for “Cậu thật quá đáng” (You are so wicked) or non-idiomatic or
habitual/ colloquial expressions like „nói cho vuông’, „thẳng toẹt ra là’ (frankly)
1.4.2.3. Insufficient economicality
Insufficient economicality is commonly seen among these who have poor ability to express
ideas or among small children. For example,
In English: In Vietnamese
I go to market Mẹ ơi, Nam muốn cơm
I not want eat Bố mẹ đi ông bà ngoại

The definition of redundancy and economicality, especially their classification suggested
by Prof. Nguyen Quang serve as a basis for the researcher to carry out this study. However,

utterance.
E.g. “Tell me the why if you could”
“Nếu có thể bác cho cháu biết lý do anh ấy làm như vậy.’
4. Downtoners: Elements which S modulates the impact of the utterance on the H to
express tentativeness of emphasizing factors.
E.g. “Would you be able perhaps to stop littering now?
“Có lẽ việc dừng vứt rác không khó gì với chị chứ ạ?
5. Intesnsifiers: Elements by means of which the S over-presents the reality denoted in the
proposition.
E.g. “Tell me where the Post Office is. The map is so confusing
“Bảo cho em đường đến bưu điện với. Nhìn bản đồ rối rắm quá”
6. Subjectivisers: Elements which show S‟s opinion, attitude, etc, towards the proposition
21

E.g. “I know it’s not easy to speak out, but could you tell me the reason?”
“Cháu biết nói ra không dễ gì. Nhưng bác có thể cho cháu biết lý do ko?
7. Commitment upgraders: elements which express the commitment to the proposition
(sure, certain, positive…)
E.g. “I’m sure you know the way to the city center, don’t you?”
“Chị chắc em biết đường đến bưu điện, phải không?
8. Cajolers: consists of gambits functioning at interpersonal level of discourse to
harmonize the relationship between two communicative partners (you know, you see )
E.g. “Come on, stop littering for the health of others.”
“Thôi nào, em hãy dừng vứt rác vì sức khỏe của người khác với chứ”
9. Appealers: elements to appeal the response from H, usually with approval and
agreement (Ok, right, don’t you think…)
E.g. “You‟ll stop littering, right?
“Anh sẽ không vứt rác nữa, được chứ?”
10. Politeness markers: elements which show difference to H or mitigate face-threats of
the utterance like “please”, “dạ”, “ạ”…

(1998), each community of practice will develop a range of linguistic behaviors which
function in slightly different ways from other communities of practice. And men and
women in each community of practice will also have different linguistic behaviours. They
naturally develop their own characteristics of language. Thus it is said that there is a
relationship between language and gender. A vast majority of studies on language and
genders have been devoted to identifying, and trying to explain differences in the speech
styles between men and women. And one of the main differences has been found in the
area of linguistic politeness. There are different views on this issue.
According to Holmes (1995), women‟s speech is more polite than men‟s. He states that
women are more likely than men to express positive politeness and to use mitigating
strategies to avoid or minimize threatening their interlocutors‟ face. For example, women
tend to interrupt less in conversation and “to be more attentive listeners, concerned to
23

ensure others get a chance to contribute” than men (Holmes, 1995, p.67). They also
interpret and use certain speech acts differently to men. For instance, not only do women
use more apologies than men but their apologies serve more often than men‟s “as remedies
for space and talk offences – areas of interaction where women are particularly vulnerable
and where they may have developed a gender sensitivity” (Holmes, 1995, p.185).
On the contrary, Cameron (1998) and Mills (2002), in their social constructionist research
of gender, have a more flexible approach to the study of gender and linguistic politeness.
Such an approach both avoids oversimplifications resulting from viewing men and women
as dichotomous and homogenous groups and regards gender and linguistic politeness as
constructs that interact in complex ways with factors such as culture, age, race, and specific
communities of practice. To put it in another way, apart from gender, the relationship
between addresser‟s and addressee‟s relative status known as communicative partners‟
parameters are the main factors that affect the use of language style. In her MA thesis, Do
Thi Mai Thanh (2000) indicated that age power and social power can also determine what
politeness strategy to use for the Vietnamese, because of greater distance between
interactants, groups of greater age and social power are often received with higher
CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY
25

In the literature review, a brief overview of the research topic for the aim of laying
theoretical foundation for the whole paper had been conducted. In this chapter, the study
was carried out with justified methods of data collection and analysis in order to maximize
its validity and reliability. Specifically, discussions in detail about the participants, the
instruments as well as the procedure of data collection and analysis were raised in the
chapter.
2.1. Research design
This research is a survey research and questionnaires were used to collect data. Based on
the essence of survey research, the researcher chose the quantitative approach in collecting,
classifying, and analyzing the figures. This method is suitable to this study because the
quantitative method helps the researcher “achieve gathered data at high level of reliability
due to mass surveys” (Balseley, 1970). Moreover, with quantitative approach, the
researcher can follow “resolutely the original set of research goals, arrive at more
objective conclusions, test hypothesis, determine the issues of causality and eliminate or
minimize subjectivity of judgment” (Kealey & Protheroe, 1996).
2.2. Participants
A total of 100 university students (50 from Vietnam and 50 from English-speaking
countries) participated in this study. In order to ensure compatibility, the number of males
and females were evenly distributed. All of the students study in the same university.

(Nguyen, 2009, p.17)
The survey was conducted with both Vietnamese and English native speakers in order to
find out what types of lexico modal makers in requesting they would apply for different
communicative partners in 3 different situations:
Situation 1: asking the way to the Post Office
Situation 2: Requesting for giving reasons
Situation 3: Requesting to stop littering
Regarding the questionnaire in detail, a brief introduction about the study‟s topic was
firstly provided. Afterwards, in order to make it convenient to collect data and analyze, as
many as 3 situations were given corresponding to the research questions‟ content. To be
specific, in each situation, 15 ways of requesting were designed, among which 14 included
redundant factors (lexico modal markers) and 1 belonged to economicality. Participants
were required to put a tick on the communicative partner (same sex but younger, same sex
but older, opposite sex but younger, opposite sex but older) that reflected their viewpoints
27

on the situation given. However, because of Vietnamese complicated addressing system,
Vietnamese students were also required to circle appropriate kinship terms for their choice
in each situation.
2.4. Data collection procedures.
The process of data collection experienced the following phases.
Initially, survey questionnaire had been designed. Afterwards, the researcher came to the
step of piloting questionnaire for both Vietnamese and English students, which was carried
out with voluntary respondents for questionnaire. Not only did that step help figure out
problems with content, wordings of the questionnaire but it familiarized researcher with
how to respond to possible situations when carrying out in reality. Based on the result of
the experiment, the researcher considered and gave the final version of the questionnaire.
The set of questionnaires with clear instructions to minimize misunderstandings was
delivered directly to Vietnamese students and soft copies were sent via email to some
friends in Australia who helped to collect data from English- speaking students. Besides,
CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION