A politeness strategy in expressing sympathy by
american and vietnamese speakers Tạ Thị Thanh Hiền Trường Đại học Ngoại Ngữ
Luận văn ThS. Chuyên ngành:Linguitics; Mã Số: 60 22 15
Người hướng dẫn: Prof. Assoc. Tran Huu Manh, PhD
Năm bảo vệ: 2010
Abstract: This study investigates the politeness strategies employed by American and
Vietnamese native speakers expressing sympathy. It attempts to seek what politeness strategies
Vietnamese and American speakers use in expressing sympathy, and then how Vietnamese
teachers and learners should acquire politeness strategy. The data was analyzed using a
Discourse Completion Test (DCT) and basing on the models proposed by Blum-Kulka, et al
(1989) including three dimensions: the Head Act, the Internal modifications and External
modifications.The findings show that the American speakers used more external modifications.
Differently, Vietnamese people were more indirect and used many different types of external
modifications. Also it was found that a variety of internal modifications were exploited by
American speakers from the interrogative, modals, intensifier, subjectivizers to downtoner,
commitment upgrader while Vietnamese people used more external modifications with
explanations or advice. On the basis of the findings, certain implications for the teaching and
learning language functions were proposed, limitations were pointed out, and further research
was suggested.

Keywords: Tiếng Anh; Người mỹ; Người Việt


3.3. Research design…………………………… 19
3.3. 1. Selection of subjects………. 19
3.3.2. Data collection instruments…… 20
3.3.3. Data collection procedure…. 23
3.4. Analytical framewor………………………… 24
3.4.1. Internal modification………. 24
3.4.2. External modifications……. 25 6
3.4.3. The Head Act formula……. 26

CHAPTER 4: ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION 29
4.1. The choice of strategy………………………. 29
4.2. The choice of External modification or Supportive Moves 30
4.3. The internal modifications……………………… ………….31
4.4. The realization of sympathy expression……… 32
4.5. Summary of major findings…………………. 33
4.6. Discussion of findings……………………… 34

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS 37
5.1. Conclusion…………………………………… 37
5.2. Implications…………………………………………………………… 38
5.3. Suggestions for further study……………… 39

REFERENCES 40

APPENDIX A I

APPENDIX B IV

usage of such speech acts as thanking (Tam, 1990), offering (Lan, 2000), apology (Van,
2000), inviting (Hien, 2002), prohibiting (Thuc, 2001), etc. Those studies have shown
similarities and differences in the selection of the strategies and the distribution of
linguistic element.
Further, Vang’s study (1990) in requests raises some significant concerns in
cross- cultural issues relating to request. His study shows that there are potential
differences in perspective and the use of politeness strategies in making requests
between Vietnamese subjects and Australian ones which are relevant to Vietnamese
learners of English. 10
Similarly, in a study on complaining; Hanh (2003) pointed out the similarities
and differences in formulation of the speech act of complaint with respect to the use of
complaint strategies, directive acts and external modifiers. IT also showed a variety of
differences between Vietnamese speakers and Australian speakers. It concludes that
complaints can be realized in a great variety of forms depending on a particular context.
These studies have provided some significant insights in to both the problems
Vietnamese learners of English as well as area where Vietnamese learners have fewer
difficulties.
However, to date a study on politeness strategies of sympathy expressions in
American and Vietnamese has not yet been adequately investigated. Therefore, the aim
of this study is to compare the realization of the speech act of sympathy by Vietnamese
native speakers and the American speakers in order to fill in the gap in research in this
area.
This study concentrates on answering the following questions:
1. What politeness strategies do Vietnamese speakers use in expressing sympathy
in the contexts studied?
2. What politeness strategies do American speakers use in expressing sympathy in
the contexts studied?
48
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