MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HANOI OPEN UNVERSITY

NINH THỊ THU HÀ

A STUDY ON REFUSING AN INVITATION
IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE
(TỪ CHỐI LỜI MỜI TRONG
TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT)

M.A. THESIS
Field: English Language
Code: 60220201

Hanoi, 2015


MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HANOI OPEN UNVERSITY

NINH THỊ THU HÀ

A STUDY ON REFUSING AN INVITATION
IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE
(TỪ CHỐI LỜI MỜI TRONG
TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT)

M.A. THESIS

Field: English Language
Code: 60220201

advisor and a mentor, you introduced and inspired me to do this research.
My professional development has been growing increasingly with your
precious guidance and continuous motivation.
My special thanks go to all my lectures in Post-graduate
Department of Ha Noi Open University for their precious assistance,
knowledge and enthusiasm.
I own my parents for their constant source of love, support and
encouragement. I am immensely grateful to them for standing behind me
whenever I needed them especially in times of difficulties.
I would also want to extend a special shout-out to all the research
participants. Without your valuable opinions and ideas on the
questionnaire, the project would not have been accomplished.
Finally, my special thanks go to all my dear friends for their
understanding and assistance during the process of preparing this
research. I count each of you as my special blessings.
While I am greatly indebted to all of these people for their tireless
help to my completion of this thesis, I myself remain responsible for any
inadequacies that are found in this work.
Ninh Thi Thu Ha

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ABSTRACT

It’s really difficult to refuse someone when he or she offers you
something or to do something, especially when you’re busy or you don’t
want to do. You want to refuse but you don’t know how to say let your
friends or your listeners feel satisfied and contented. Or when your boss
offers you a promotion but you feel you have no ability, how can you

Table 1: Typical order of semantic formulas in refusals of invitations
Refuser status = lower
Table 2: Typical order of semantic formulas in refusals of invitations
Refuser status = equal
Table 3: Typical order of semantic formulas in refusals of invitations
Refuser status = higher

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Certificate of originality…………………………………………………….i.
Acknowledgement…………………………………………...………….….ii.
Abstract…………………………………………………………………....iii.
List of tables and abbreviations …………...…………......………..……...iv.
Table of contents ……………………………………………………….….v.
CHAPTER 1 : INTRODUCTION
1.1. Rational…………………………………………………..………...…..1.
1.2. Aims of the study ............................................................................…2.
1.3. Objectives of the study ........................................................................2.
1.4. Scope of the study ...............................................................................2.
1.5. Significance of the study .................................................................…3.
1.6. Structure of the study ..........................................................................3.
CHAPTER 2 : LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Review the previous study ..................................................................5.
2.1.1 Review of previous studies overseas………….………………..…....5.
2.1.2 Review of previous studies in Vietnam………………………………7.
2.2 Review the theoretical background ......................................................8.
2.2.1 Speech acts........................................................................................8.
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4.4 Implication ......................................................................................47.
4.5. Summary……………………………………………………………49.
CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION
5.1 Recapitulation. ................................................................................50.
5.2 Concluding remarks. .......................................................................51.
5.3 Limitation of the research ...............................................................52.
5.4Suggestions for further studies .........................................................53.
REFERENCES…………………………………………………………54.
APPENDIX: SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRES

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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1.

RATIONALE
Human communication is a combination of cooperation and

understanding. Success in communication depends greatly on the ability to
recognize speakers’ communicative intentions and pragmatic meaning of
their utterances. Actually, those who may be regarded as fluent in a second
language owing to their phonetic, syntactic and semantic knowledge of that
language may still be unable to produce language that is socially and
culturally appropriate.
In everyday social life, people are sometimes invited to go
somewhere or to do something. Accepting an invitation is a delicate matter
although it is much easier than refusing as the latter is a face-threatening act.
Many people devalue the importance of refusal strategies for invitations

described as follows:
- Pointing outthe ways people refuse an invitation in English and
Vietnamese.
- Finding outthe similarities and differences of the ways that English and
Vietnamese people refuse an invitation.
- Suggesting some implications for teaching and learning the ways that
English people refuse an invitation.
1.4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY
- In this paper, the similarities and differences in refusal strategies between
English and Vietnamese will be discussed under three circumstances, which
are:
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a, When the invitee is at a lower status
b, when the invitee is at an equal status
c, when the invitee is at a higher status.
- This study discusses some ways of refusing invitation in English and
Vietnamese to find out some similarities and differences on theory.
- In this research, the writer interviews 25 foreigners and conducts survey
questionnaire to 25 Vietnamese people to find out how English and
Vietnamese people refuse invitations and gives some recommendations.
1.5. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
With some objectives above, the study primarily contributes to
understand the English and Vietnamese communicating styles from crosscultural points of view. The paper shows how people receive the invitation
and which ways they should choose to decline it. The paper can to some
extent, help learners of English understand the cultures of the two nations
and the polite ways to refuse invitation in certain contexts.
1.6. STRUCTURE OF THE STUDY
The thesis consists of five main chapters.

Refusal is characterized as a response to one of the speech acts,
request, invitation, offer and suggestion, rather than as an initiating act. It is
a speech by which a speaker denies to engage in an action proposed by the
interlocutor (Chen, Ye and Zhang, 1995)
The speech act of refusal occurs when a speaker directly or
indirectly say no to a request or invitation. Refusal is a face-threatening act
to listener/requestor, inviter, because it contradicts his or her expectations,
and it’s often realized through indirect strategies. Thus it requires a high
level of pragmatic competence (Chen, 1996).
Beebe ad Takahashi (1990), focusing on the effect of status on the
performance of face-threatening acts of refusals by the Japanese learners of
English, have found that Japanese informants tends to shift their styles more
according to interlocutors status than speakers of American English.
Japanese tend to express regrets or apologies more frequently to people with
higher status but less frequently to those with lower social status. They start
refusal with an apology or statement of regret, followed by an excuse, while
American almost always start with an expression of positive opinion such as
“I would like to:, and followed by expressing regret and giving excuse.
Moreover, Japanese excuses are often, much less specific than American
ones and in general, the Japanese refusals often sound more formal.
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There have also been studies of refusals in intercultural and non
native contexts. Beckers (1999) also found that Americans still employed
their refusal strategies according to social status whereas Germans varied
their strategies according to social distance (stranger acquaintance and
intimate). Germans also employed fewer semantic formulate than did
Americans, which are the combination of three variables of social distance,
social status and gender.

languages. There are some differences between Anglophone and
Vietnamese when refusing. Comparing the degree of directness and
indirectness of refusals extended by two groups of informants, all the
Anglophone informants were more direct than Vietnamese ones.
In general, as all the other speech acts, refusal occurs in all
languages. However, people coming from different cultures speaking
different language refuse in different ways. Among all the studies on
refusals, in terms of language examined, English have been by far the most
commonly investigated languages of comparison for studies on native and
non-native refusals, followed by Japanese as a first or second language.
Other languages such as Chinese, Spanish, Mexican, German are also
examined. Vietnamese studies on speech acts of refusal are still limited.
Moreover, compared among studies of Vietnam speech acts by far, refusals
of requests or apologies received more attention than refusals of invitations.
Until now, there have been some works studying refusals. Nguyen
Phuong Chi studied some ways of refusals: nonverbal like shaking head,
brushing something aside, having a dirty look… and verbal. Pham Thi Van
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Quyen studied the refusals of requesting in Vietnamese in comparison with
English basing on some available situations. Nguyen Thi Hai studied the
refusals in conversations with such speech acts as“requesting”, “asking,
“begging”, “advising”, “inviting”, “ thanking”, “ complimenting”, “
congratulating” …in Vietnamese.
In this thesis, I will give some examples of the English and
Vietnamese refusals of invitation in different situations. The refusals of
invitation are of two types: directly and indirectly. Then some similarities,
differences as well as some tips for refusing an invitation in English and
Vietnamese will be presented.

make requests, to give warnings, or to give advice. They called these speech
acts. Thus people do things with words in much the same way as they
perform physical actions.
Paltridge (2000) defined a speech act:
A Speech Act is an utterance that serves a function in communication.
Some examples are an apology, greeting, request, complaint, invitation,
compliment or refusal. A speech act might contain just one word such as
‘No’ to perform a refusal or several words or sentences such as: “I’m sorry,
I can’t, I have a prior engagement”. It is important to mention that 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.
Socio-cultural variables like authority, social distance, and situational
setting influence the appropriateness and effectiveness of politeness
strategies used to realize directive speech acts such as requests.

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In many ways of expressing themselves, “people do not only
produce utterance containing grammatical structures and words, they
perform actions via those utterances.” (Yule, 1996:47). If you work in this
situation where a boss has a great deal of power, then his utterances of
expression, “Youare fired”, is more than just a statement. This utterance can
be used to perform the act of ending your employment. However, the
actions performed by utterances do not have to be as unpleasant as in the
one above. Actions can be quiet pleasant, as in the acknowledment of
thanks: “You’re welcome”, or in the espression of surprise: “Who’d have
thought it?”, or in Vietnamese “Ai mà nghĩ thế?”.
Making a statement may be the paradigmatic use of language, but
there are all sorts of other things we can do with words. We can make


utterance.

These

circumstances are called the speech event.
In many ways, it is nature of the speech event that determines the
interpretation of an utterance as performing a particular speech act. For
example, in the wintry day the speaker takes a cup of coffee but it is too
iced, and produces the utterance which is likely to be interpreted as a
complaint: “This coffee is really cold!. Changing the circumstance to a
really hot summer day and the speaker, being given a glass of iced coffee
and producing the utterance, it is likely to be interpreted as a praise. “It
means that there is more to the interpretation of speech act than can be
found in the utterance alone.” (Yule, 1996:48).
Here are some examples of speech acts we use or hear every day:
Greeting: "Hi, Eric. How are things going?"
Request: "Could you pass me the mashed potatoes, please?"
Complaint: "I’ve already been waiting three weeks for the computer, and I
was told it would be delivered within a week."
Invitation: "We’re having some people over Saturday evening and wanted
to know if you’d like to join us."
Compliment: "Hey, I really like your tie!"
Refusal: "Oh, I’d love to see that movie with you but this Friday just isn’t
going to work."
Speech acts are difficult to perform in a second language because
learners may not know the idiomatic expressions or cultural norms in the
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perlocutionary acts.
Pretheoretically, we

think

of

an

act

of

communication, a

linguistic communication, or otherwise, an act of expressing oneself. This
rather vague idea can be made more precise if we get more specific about
what is being expressed. The perlocutionary act is a matter of trying to
get the hearer to form some correlative attitude and in some cases to act
in a certain way. For example, a statement expresses a belief and normally
has the further purpose of getting addressee form the same belief. A
request expresses a desire for the addressee to do a certain thing and
normally aims at the addressee to intend and, actually do that thing. A
promise expresses the speaker's firm intention to do something, together
with the belief that by his utterance he is obligated to do it, and normally
aims further at the addressee to expect, and to feel entitled to expect, the
speaker to do it.
Austin (1962) takes the initial role in formulating the theory of
speech acts. In accordance to his study, all utterances should be considered
as actions of speakers, stating or describing is only one function of

speech

acts

including:

Declarations,

Representatives,

Expressives,

Directives, Commissives.
+ Declarations:

change states of affair, comprising naming, firing,

appointment, etc.
+ Representatives: state what the speaker believes to be the casemor not,
including assertion, description, report, statement, etc.
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+ Expressives: state what the speaker feels; express psychological states
orattitude. They can be apologizing, compliment, greeting, thanking,
accepting, condoling and congratulating.
+ Directives: attempt to get the hearer to do something and express what the
speaker wants.
dismissing,


Words change the
world
Make words fit the
world
Make words fit the
world
Make the world fit
words
Make the world fit
words

S causes X
S believes X
S feels X
S wants X
S intends X

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Table 1: The five general functions of speech acts (following G.Yule
1996)
2.2.3 What is invitation?
Inviting is mostly a social habit. It is one of the most sensitive and
communicative acts to strengthen the relation or intimacy.
Inviting, like thanking, complementing, requesting, etc., is regarded
as one of the most sensitive illocutionary acts in communication (Tank
2002). According to Nguyen Van Lap (1989,3): “Inviting Act is one of the
politerequest forms. The situation, participants, relationship and objective
ofcommunication greatly influence the structure of invitation formulae.