VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF
LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF
POST GRADUATE STUDIES
***
NGÔ THỊ PHƯƠNG LÊ Face-Saving Strategies in Teachers’ Oral

Feedback in the English Classrooms: A
Vietnamese- American cross-cultural study

Table of Contents

Acknowledgement …………………………………………………………… …………. ……… i
Declaration …………………………………………………………… … ii
Table of Contents ………………………….…………………………………………………… iii
List of Abbreviations ………………… ………………………………………………………… v
List of Tables .…………………………………………… vii
List of Figures and Charts ……………… ………………………………………………………viii
Abstract …………………………………………………………………………………………….ix
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION 1

I. Rationale 1

II. Aims of the study 2

III. Scope of the study 2

IV. Method of the study 2

V. Organization of the study 3

CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW 4



III. Populations and Sampling: Participants 31

IV. Data Collection 32

IV.1. The Discourse Completion Tasks 32

IV.2. Data Collection Instruments 33

IV.3. The Administration of the Questionnaires 35

IV.4. Participants 35

IV.5. Data Analysis 36

CHAPTER IV DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSIONS 39

I. Results and Discussions of the MPQ 39

I.1. Result of HaF 39

I.2. Result of HoF 43

I.3. Remarks 46

I.3.1. HaF 48 I.3.2. HoF 47


II.2.7. Apologize 55 II.2.8. Impersonalize the S and the H 55 II.2.9. State the FTA as a general rule 56
vi II.2.10. Go on record as incurring a debt, or as not indebting 56 II.2.11. Off - record 56 II.3. Use of Strategies as Seen from Types of Feedback 57 II.3.1. Corrective Feedback 58 II.3.2. Evaluative Feedback 63 II.3.3. Strategic Feedback 68



Adv Advisable ATs American
te
achers
CF Corrective Feedback
D Social Distance
DCT Discourse Completion Task EF Evaluative Feedback
FTA Face-threatening Act
FSA Face-saving Act
FSS Face-saving Strategy H The hearer HaF Hit-all Feedback
HoF Hit-one Feedback
HAdv Highly Adv
i
sable
InAdv Inadvisable
MPQ Metapragmatic Questionnaire

Sig. Significance level Sit. Situation Str1 On-record strategy Str2 Give advice and suggestions Str3 Make joke Str4 Include both S and H in the activity Str5 Encourage Str6 Be conventionally indirect Str7 Apologize Str8 Impersona
lize


38

Table 3

Independent Sample t test

39

Table 4

Categories of Feedback

40 Table 5
Assessment on Advisability of Situations for HaF by Vietnamese and American

41

Teachers

Table 6
Assessment on Advisability of Situations for HoF by Vietnamese and
44

American Teachers

Table 16 Group statistics for strategies used by VTs and ATs for HoF in EF Category 68 Table 17 Group statistics for strategies used by VTs for HaF in SF Category 69 Table 18 Group statistics for strategies used by ATs for HaF in SF Category 70 Table 19 Group statistics for strategies used by VTs & ATs for HaF in SF Category 70 Table 20 Group statistics for strategies used by VTs & ATs for HoF in SF Category 72
x LIST OF FIGURES AND
CHARTS
Figure 1
Selection of a strategy following an FTA, (Brown and Levinson, 1987)
10

Chart 5 Choice of FSSs by VTs and ATs for HaF in SF Category 71 Chart 6 Choice of FSSs by VTs and ATs for HoF in SF Category 72
1

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION I. Rationale

It has long been realized that the forms and uses of a given language reflect
the cultural values of the society in which the language is spoken. Linguistic
competence alone is not enough for learners of a language to be competent in that
language (Krasner, 1999). Therefore, together with learning and using a foreign
language, language users should deepen their understanding of its culture in order to
communicate successfully and appropriately.
It can be said that “politeness” is one of the most important categories in
communication and pragmatics study, especially in cross-cultural
communication/pragmatics. Politeness strategies are applied consciously and
unconsciously in communication in everyday social interaction. These strategies help
to make participants feel satisfied because their “face” is respected. This fact is much
truer in such high context culture as Vietnam.

Towards successful communication in the real world, some cross-cultural
studies such as requesting, refusing, thanking, apologizing have been conducted so far


The study deals with verbal aspects of the act of giving feedback. The
Paralinguistic and non-verbal factors in communication are beyond the scope of this
study. Feedback itself can be given in the oral or written form. As it is a study on
face-to-face communication, the study focuses on oral form only. Besides, feedback
can be seen in the light of linguistics or teaching methodology; however, in this study,
only linguistics aspects are taken into account. Another point to be noticed is that a
feedback can be a positive or a negative evaluation on students‟ performance. Yet, in
this study, only feedbacks for negative performance, seen as obvious FTA, are
targeted. Last but not the least, only oral feedbacks produced by teachers in speaking
and writing sessions are examined in this study as they are considered as productive
skills while reading and listening are perceptive, thus, there are not many chances for
the diversification of feedback.

In short, the study especially focuses on face-saving strategies used by
teachers in giving oral feedback across Vietnamese and American languages and
cultures.

IV. Methodology

The research is conducted via quantitative and qualitative, descriptive and
comparative methods. The data was collected via questionnaires termed Discourse
Completion Tasks (DCT), which was logically and empirically validated before it is
used as a data collection instrument. The instrument used to construct validation of
the situations designed for the DCT is Metapragmatic Questionnaire (MPQ). Then
data will be analyzed using Independent Samples t-test and other functions of SPSS
15.0. (Methodology will be further detailed in Chapter III).
3
Main points and contents of the study are summarized based on the results of
the study. Implications of the study and recommendations for further research are
presented.
4 CHAPTER II. LITERATURE REVIEW
I. Speech Acts
We perform speech acts when we offer an apology, greeting, request,

complaint, invitation, compliment, or refusal. A speech act is an utterance that serves
a function in communication. A speech act might contain just one word, as in "Sorry!"
to perform an apology, or several words or sentences: "I‟m sorry I forgot your
birthday. I just let it slip my mind." Speech acts include real-life interactions and
require not only knowledge of the language but also appropriate use of that language
within a given culture.

After Austin‟s initiation of speech acts theory in “How to do things with
words” (1962), it has attracted the interest of so many linguists such as Hymes
(1964), Searle (1969), Leech (1983), Schmidt and Richards (1983), Yule (1996).
Austin‟s main contribution to speech acts theory is the axiom that by saying
something, we often perform an act or do something. Thus, a speech act is a unit of
speaking and performs different functions in communication. Austin (1962) believes
that a speech act involves three kinds of separate but related act, which are
locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary.

When a person produces an utterance with a particular form and a more or less


 Exercitives

 Commisives

 Behabitives

 Expositives

Searle sees some weaknesses in Austin‟s classification that it is lack of clear
and consistent principles of each category “a great deal of overlap from one category
to another and a great deal of heterogeneity within some of the categories”, (Searle,
1979:10). Searle proposes a five-way classification of illucotionary act, which
includes:

 Declarations: statements that attempt to change the world by

“representing it as having been changed”.

 Representatives: statements that may be judged true or false because they
aim to describe a state of affairs in the world.

 Expressives: statements that express the “sincerity condition of the speech
act”.

 Directives: statements that attempt to make the other person's actions fit
the propositional content.

 Commisives: statements that commit the speaker to a course of action as
described by the propositional content.

Yule (1996) is much conscious of the difficulty in proposing an umbrella
definition for the notion „polite‟. Therefore, he sticks the notion „polite‟ with the
notion „face‟. According to Yule, politeness, in an interaction, can be defined as “the
means employed to show awareness of another person‟s face.”, (1996:60). In this
sense, politeness can be accomplished in situations of social distance or closeness.
Brown and Levinson (1987:55) seem to share this view with Yule. They view
politeness as “a complex system for softening face-threatening acts”, and politeness
theory offers “a tool for describing the quality of social relationships”.

The common factor in Lakoff‟s (1975), Leech‟s (1980), Yule‟s (1996) and
Brown and Levinson‟s (1987) approach is that they all claim, explicitly or implicitly,
the universality of their principles for their linguistic politeness. The general idea is to
7 understand various strategies for interactive behaviors based on the fact that people
engage in rational behaviors to achieve the satisfaction of certain wants.

II.2.The notion of face

Face is a crucially important consideration in human interaction of all kinds.
“Face” is “something that is emotionally invested, and that can be lost, maintained, or
enhanced and must be constantly attended to in interaction”, (Brown and Levinson,
1987:66). Thus, Brown and Levinson (1987) take “face” as “the public self-image that
every member wants to claim for himself”, (1987:66), that is, emotional and social
sense of self that everyone has and expects everyone else to recognize. Brown and
Levinson (1987) categorize the concept of “face” into “positive face” and “negative

Lakoff connects politeness with Grice‟s Cooperative Principle (1975) in which
she adds a set of “rules of politeness”. Grice‟s theory rests on the assumption that
“interactants aim at establishing communicative behavior”, (Watts, 2003:203), and
that people are intrinsically cooperative and aim to be as informative as possible in
communication, (Eelen, 2001:2). Grice (1975) proposes a set of four maxims which
characteries the Cooperative Principle:

 The maxim of Quantity: be appropriately informative

 The maxim of Quality: be truthful

 The maxim of Relation: be relevant

 The maxim of Manner: be orderly and clear

In normal communication, it is difficult to strictly follow these above maxims, or
in other words, Grice‟s maxims are potentially violated. Therefore, Lakoff (1973)
proposes a set of rules of politeness:

1. Don‟t impose

2. Give options

3. Make A feel good, be friendly

These rules manifests Lakoff‟s suggestions on types of politeness, ranging
from formal politeness (don‟t impose), through informal politeness (give options) to
intimate politeness (Make A feel good, be friendly). When these rules are followed,
the effects of impolite utterances are minimized while the effects of polite illocutions
are maximized.

more important than Generosity and Modesty maxim as he believes that politeness is
more oriented to the other than the self (Locher, 2004:64). Leech (1983) claims that
Politeness Principle is necessary to “rescue the cooperative principle”(Mey, 1993:81)
of Grice and that Politeness Principle is intended to operate alongside the Cooperative
Principle.

The theory of politeness by Brown and Levinson first appeared in 1987, which
is then often referred to as “face-saving” theory of politeness, as it builds on
Goffman‟s notion of „face‟ (as discussed in II.2). When communicating, people may
give a threat to another individual‟s self image, or create a “face-threatening act”
(FTA), (Brown and Levinson, 1987). This act impedes the freedom of actions
(negative face), or the desire to be praised or approved of (positive face). The
following figure shows macro-strategies that are chosen when a speaker does an FTA
to a listener. According to Brown and Levinson (1987), the lower the number
preceding the strategies, the higher chance of face threat.
10 Figure 1. Selection of a strategy following an FTA, (Brown and Levinson, 1987)

For universal validity, Nguyen Quang (1999: 129) proposes another one:


Macro-strategy 3: Negative politeness

This strategy presumes that the speaker will be imposing on the hearer though
the speaker recognizes that the hearer wants to be respected. For example: “I don‟t
want to bother you but could you please call me when you are home?”

Macro-strategy 4: Off- record

This strategy uses indirect language and removes the speaker from the
potential to being imposing. For example, a speaker using the indirect strategy might
merely say “wow, it‟s getting cold in here” insinuating that it would be nice if the
listener would get up and turn up the thermostat without directly asking the listener to
do so. Linguistics realizations of off-record strategies include metaphor and irony,
rhetorical questions, understatements and all kinds of hints. Doing an act badly and
without redress involves doing it in the most direct, clear, unambiguous and concise
way. Normally, a FTA is done in this way only if S does not fear of threatening H‟s
face.

The following part will go further into FSSs, including PPSs and NPSs, which
will be useful for the analysis of teachers‟ oral feedback in classroom discourse in the
latter chapters of the study.

II. 4. Face-Saving Strategies
12

II.4.1. Positive Politeness Strategies


1. S‟s compliments on admiration towards H

2. S‟s relations, sympathy towards H

3. S‟s acceptance of H‟s bad news or failures

For example: (1) Goodness, a beautiful hairstyle! (After a while) Oh, by the way, can

I borrow your bike?

This strategy is also used in case the action, the change, the idea or the
properties are considered negative and/or inappropriate by both S and H. S, on one
13 hand shows that he/she attends to that, on the other hand, considers it as normal and
he/she may do the same thing.

For example: (2) My mom often scolds at me like that!

Strategy 2. Exaggerate (interest, approval, sympathy with H)

Ss tend to exaggerate their interests, appreciation or approval towards Hs.
For example: (3) My God? You made this cake? It‟s incredible!
Intensifiers such as “really, terribly, extremely, perfectly, badly” are mostly
used in this strategy. Reduplication is also common.

For example: Instead of saying “The professor said he couldn‟t believe you could do
such a good job”, we say:

(6) The professor said “Oh, I couldn‟t believe that he could do such a good job”.

4. Exaggerate facts

For example: (7) Hey don‟t cry for him. Millions of men out there want to be with
you.

Strategy 4. Use in-group identity markers

By using a number of ways to convey in-group membership, S can implicitly
claim the common ground with H. This strategy includes the followings sub-
strategies:

1. Use address forms

In general, personal names and generic names are often used as in-group identity
markers for solidarity semantic.

For example: (8) Come over here, honey!

2. Use dialect or in-group language

S may use different types of code-switching in this strategy:



1/Safe topics

The notion of “safe” is quite vague and hard to define due to the differences in
cultures between countries. For example, a man wants to invite his female colleague
to a New Year party with him, and he knows that she is very much interested in
fashion. When seeing her at the office, he can start the invitation by saying: (11)
Wow, how beautiful you are today! You look so stylish in this dress! If I could go to
the New Year party with you tonight, it‟d be my great pleasure.

2/Repetition

S repeats partially or fully what his/her communicator has just uttered. This strategy is
often used to enhance relationship rather than giving information.

For example: (12) A: I went to Venice last week.

B: What? Venice? Oh God, that‟s great!

3/ Minimal encouragers

S uses minimal encouragers to express his/her agreement or encouragement to his/her
communicator. For example: (13) Definitely, absolutely, That‟s true, Nothing truer,
etc.

Strategy 6. Avoid disagreement

It is a common practice in most cultures to avoid disagreement in
communication as it is considered as a strong FTA.


For example: (15) I‟ll see you on Saturday, then.

3/ White lies

In many situations, S rather tells lie rather than damage H‟s positive face. Both
S and H may know that it is not true, but the addressee still wants to receive a FSA or
a FFA (Nguyen, 2003). In English, S often uses lead-in or gambit before telling white
lies to claim disagreement.

For example: (16) A: Would you please go to the cinema with me this Saturday
evening?
B: I‟d love to. But what a pity, I am visiting my grandmother this
weekend. [Actually, B has not got any plan yet.]
4/ Hedging

In this strategy, S often uses hedges to make his/her opinions vague, so as not
to be seen as disagreement. Hedges may also be used to soften FTAs of criticizing, by
blurring S‟s intention.

For example: (17) I sort of don‟t like the shirt!

Strategy 7. Presuppose, praise, assert common ground

1/ Small talk

This strategy can be demonstrated as follows.
17


For example: (19) He (said) says he (had enjoyed) enjoys the party enormously.

c/ Spatial deixis inversion

In this sub-strategy, proximal demonstratives such as “here, right here, this, like this”
or distal demonstratives such as “there, over there, that, like that” are used. When S
wants to express his/her emotion and closeness, proximal can be used instead of distal
demonstratives.

According to Brown and Levinson (1987), proximal demonstratives or spatial
metaphors of closeness can be used to make the utterances more polite or impolite.

For example:

To make the utterance more polite: (20) Here! You must come in and have
some tea.