THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY
SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

TRAN THI THUY AN

AN INVESTIGATION ON PRAGMATIC TRANSFER IN
VIETNAMESE EFL REFUSALS
(Nghiên cứu sự chuyển đổi về ngữ dụng học
trong cách nói từ chối của sinh viên Việt Nam)

M.A. THESIS

Field: English Linguistics
Code: 8220201

THAI NGUYEN – 2018


THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY
SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

TRAN THI THUY AN

AN INVESTIGATION ON PRAGMATIC TRANSFER IN
VIETNAMESE EFL REFUSALS
(Nghiên cứu sự chuyển đổi về ngữ dụng học
trong cách nói từ chối của sinh viên Việt Nam)

M.A. THESIS
(APPLICATION ORIENTATION)


An Investigation on Pragmatic Transfer in Vietnamese EFL Refusals
is the result of my own research for the Degree of Master of Arts at the School
of Foreign Languages - Thai Nguyen University and this thesis is in total fulfillment
of the requirements for the Degree Master of Arts. This thesis has not been submitted
for any degree and any other university or institution.

Signed

Date

ii


ABSTRACT

This study is an attempt to investigate similarities and differences in the speech
acts of refusals among native Vietnamese speakers (NVs), Australian native speakers
of English (NEs), and Vietnamese learners of English (VEs). The Written DCT
(Discourse Completion Test) was used for data collection. Research subjects included
90 people in three groups: 30 native Vietnamese speakers, 30 Vietnamese English
learners, and 30 Australian native English speakers. The performance of three groups
were compared to find out the differences in semantic formulae of refusals made by
Vietnamese, Vietnamese English learners and native English speakers, the
characteristics of pragmatic transfer in EFL learners. The responses were coded
according to the classification of refusal strategies as outlined by Beebe et al., (1990).
The findings reveal that pragmatic transfer exists in choice and content of semantic
formulae. Native speakers liked to use more direct refusal strategies and positive
feelings than Vietnamese speakers and the pragmatic transfer occurred in Vietnamese
EFL learners.


Native English

NNSs:

Non-native Speakers

NSs:

Native Speakers

NV:

Native Vietnamese

VE:

Vietnamese EFL learners

iv


LIST OF TABLES

Table

Page

Table 3.1: Classification of DCT ..........................................................................19
Table 3.2


TABLE OF CONTENTS .................................................................................. vi
CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION ................................................................... 1
1.1. Rationale for the study.......................................................................... 1
1.2. Aims of the study.................................................................................. 2
1.3. Research Questions............................................................................... 2
1.4. Significance of the study ...................................................................... 2
1.5. Scope of the study................................................................................. 2
1.6. Outline of the study .............................................................................. 3
CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW...................................................... 4
2.1. Pragmatic Transfer ............................................................................... 4
2.2 Factors affecting pragmatic transfer ...................................................... 5
2.3 Speech Acts ........................................................................................... 6
2.4 Refusal as a Speech Act ........................................................................ 8
2.5 Classification of Speech Acts ................................................................ 9
2.6 Studies on the Speech Act of Refusals ................................................ 12
CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY ............................................................. 17
3.1. Research approach .............................................................................. 17
3.2. Subjects of the study ........................................................................... 17
3.3. Instrument ........................................................................................... 17
3.4. Data collection procedure and analysis .............................................. 19
3.4.1 Data collection procedure ................................................................. 20
3.4.2 Data Analysis .................................................................................... 20
CHAPTER IV: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION ........................................ 22
4.1 Refusals to requests ............................................................................. 23
vi


4.1.1 Refusal to a request of salary payment (higher) ............................... 23
4.1.2 Refusal to a request of staying late (lower) ...................................... 25
4.2 Refusals to invitations ......................................................................... 26


CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION

1.1. Rationale for the study
Language is the carrier of culture and culture the substance of language: The two
cannot exist separately (Romaine, 2000). To succeed in communicating with others, one
must be aware of the culture behind the language used in communication (Tanck, 2004).
When speaking a foreign language, the issue of culture becomes critical. English as
Foreign language (EFL) learners, especially those with languages different and distant
from English psychologically, culturally, phonologically, and syntactically, may struggle
when attempting to communicate in English. Non-proficient language learners are not
only jeopardized by their imperfect language knowledge but obstructed by their
inadequate knowledge of culture.
To compensate for their lack of knowledge, EFL learners may fall back on
their own linguistic cultural reservoir, translating utterances from their mother tongue
and applying their own cultural rules when communicating in English (Al-Eryani,
2007; Lauper, 1997). This might lead to pragmatic errors that could result in
misunderstanding and embarrassment or pragma-linguistic failure (Riley, 1989;
Thomas, 1983; Umale, 2011).
This is especially important nowadays as “cross-cultural communication is
becoming an integral part of life, with globalization and rapid advances in new
technology” (Umale, 2011, p. 19). In addition, employment opportunities in the local
and global market increasingly demand good language proficiency and
communicative ability. Therefore, teaching pragmatic rules in a way that they would
involve communication strategies and speech acts will give students the English
knowledge and communicative competence that will secure good job placements
after graduation.
The phenomenon of pragmatic transfer and their motivating factors have been
investigated in several speech acts in different languages, such as English, Hebrew,
Spanish, French, German, Danish, Arabic and Portuguese (Byon, 2004). Several

This study will only focus on investigating the pragmatic transfer used in
refusals of students Thai Nguyen University. The native Vietnamese students will
come from College of Education, native English students will come from University

2


of Wollongong, Australia and non-native EFL students will come from School of
Foreign Languages – Thai Nguyen University.
1.6. Outline of the study
This paper’s contents were arranged in an order which reveals information
from theoretical to empirical.
Chapter I: INTRODUCTION, gives an overview of the study. More
particularly, it includes statement of the problem, the main reasons leading to this
research, intentional aims, objectives as well as brief description of scope and
significance, methods, and design of the inquiry.
Chapter II: LITERATURE REVIEW, clarifies theoretical background and
related preceding studies relevant for the research. Both positive impacts and
disadvantages will be exposed in this section.
Chapter III: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY, focuses on eliciting
research questions, research methods, data collection procedure and data analysis.
Chapter IV: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION, helps to examine the
semantic formulae for the speech act of refusals used by native speakers of
Vietnamese, native English and Vietnamese EFL learners then find out the pragmatic
transfer which exist in the semantic formulae used in refusals of Vietnamese EFL
learners.
Chapter V: CONCLUSION, briefly summaries the main points of the paper,
provides essential findings, displays existing limitations together with implications
and gives suggestions for further studies.
Finally, REFERENCES and APPENDICES are also listed sufficiently at the

equivalent of the L1 and L2 pair of a request strategy in terms of contextual
appropriateness. Based on the two above criteria, she proposed a pragmatic
transferability scale, which posits that strategies rated high for contextual
appropriateness and viewed as contextual equivalents are more transferable, whereas

4


those that are rated low for appropriateness and considered contextually different are
less transferable.
2.2 Factors affecting pragmatic transfer
Occurrences of pragmatic transfer may be influenced by various factors
including L2 learners’ perception of language distance between their L1 and L2 (e.g.
Takahashi, 1996), learning context (e.g. Takahashi & Beebe, 1987), instructional
effect (e.g. Bardovi-Harlig, 2001; Kasper, 1982), L2 proficiency (e.g. Olshtain &
Cohen, 1989; Takahashi & Beebe, 1987), and length of time in the L2 community
(e.g., Félix-Bradsefer, 2004). The study by Robinson (1992) suggests that L2 learners
may be more prone to transfer their pragmatic L1 knowledge when they hold a
universalist view. More specifically, these studies demonstrated that L2 learners may
not transfer L1 pragmatic features to the L2 if they perceive them as language
specific.
Recently, Phan (2001) listed twelve socio-cultural factors that, in his point of
view, may affect the choice of directness and indirectness in communication:
1. Age: the old tend to be more indirect than the young.
2. Sex: females prefer indirect expression.
3. Residence: the rural population tends to use more indirectness than the urban.
4. Mood: while angry, people tend to use more indirectness.
5. Occupation: those who study social sciences tend to use more indirectness
than those who study natural sciences.
6. Personality: the extroverted tend to use more directness than the introverted.

the same thing expecting some actions to be taken such as opening a window or
turning on an air-conditioning unit to lower the room temperature, then s/he is
performing an illocutionary act. The opening of the window or turning on the airconditioning then is the effect of the utterance, which is a perlocutionary act.
Vaezi (2011) also defined speech act as a functional unit in communication.
It is an act that speakers implement when making utterances. All languages have
almost unique ways of performing speech acts. Although speech acts are universals,
the method used in performing speech acts is dissimilar in different cultures (Vaezi,
2011).
To put it more succinctly, a speech act is an action performed by an utterance
(Belza, 2008; Bruti, 2006). The utterance usually carries an attitude, and this attitude

6


corresponds to the speech act being performed (Bach, 2007). The listener’s
understanding of the attitude leads to understanding the speech act.
Since the intended meaning of speech acts or illocutionary acts is a vital
component of speech acts, Austin (1962) presented a classification of illocutionary
acts based on the function of the verbs used. However, because of “the ungrounded
nature, unclarity, and overlap of these classes” several researchers have proposed
different taxonomies of illocutionary acts (Horn & Ward, 2004, p. 64). For example,
Searle (1976) proposed five classifications for illocutionary acts, which are defined
in the following manner.
• Representatives (or Assertives) are speech acts in which a speaker commits
to the truth of the expressed statements (e.g., describing something).
• Commissives are speech acts in which a speaker commits some future actions
(e.g., promising, guaranteeing, and swearing).
• Directives are speech acts in which a speaker requests the hearer to perform
a particular action (e.g., commanding, requesting).
• Expressives are speech acts in which a speaker expresses his/her feelings

Among recent studies that have been carried out on the refusal speech act,
Beebe, Takahashi and Uliss-Weltz (1990) found that Japanese refuse differently
according to the status of interlocutors, while Americans are more affected by the
degree of familiarity or the social distance between interlocutors. Japanese display a
different frequency of semantic formulae between higher and lower status requesters,
while Americans do not. These studies are cross-cultural – in other words,
comparative-cultural – rather than intercultural.
Gass & Houck (1999) also defined refusals as speech acts that occur as
negative responses to other acts such as requests, invitations, offers, and suggestions.
While some researchers view refusals as Commissive speech acts (e.g., FélixBrasdefer, 2004; García, 2007), refusals may not always fall into this category as they
are not always rejections and sometimes involve negotiation in which the participants
do not even know what the final outcome will be. In addition, Farnia and Wu (2012)
investigated the refusals to invitation by use of a written discourse completion test
and an immediate structured interview aimed to examine their perception concerning
their cognition and language of thought in the process of refusing. The findings
showed that both groups used similar types of refusal strategies, but they differed in
8


the frequency of the refusals. In addition, the most frequent refusal strategies were
found to be statements of regret, excuses, reasons and explanation and expression of
negative ability and willingness.
2.5 Classification of Speech Acts
Austin (1975) establishes five categories of speech act based on broad classes
of illocutionary force. They are as follows. Verdictives are acts in which a verdict or
appraisal is given, usually by someone in a position of power to give that appraisal.
Exercitives involve the exercise “of powers, rights, or influence.” Austin’s examples
of exercitives include “appointing…urging… warning” Commissives commit the
speaker to an action or intention; they include promises as well as mental
commitments like taking one side of an argument (Austin, 1975).

and holds to them. However, the application of these principles to his categories is
not without fault.
This study assumes that there is the possibility that the norms of the L2
might turn to be at work when using one’s L1 in producing different speech
acts. Therefore, Beebe et al. (1990, as cited in Farnia & Wu, 2012, p. 174)
classification which offers the refusal strategies, consisting of Direct Refusals,
Indirect Refusals and Adjuncts to Refusals seems suitable to this study as follows:
1. Direct
A. Performative (e.g., “I refuse”)
B. Nonperformative statement
1. “No”
2. Negative willingness/ability (e.g., “I can’t.” “I won’t.” “I don’t think
so.”)
2. Indirect
A. Statement of regret (e.g., “I’m sorry ...”; “I feel terrible ...”)
B. Wish (e.g., “I wish I could help you ...”)
C. Excuse, reason, explanation (e.g., “My children will be home that night.”;
“I have a headache.”)
D. Statement of alternative
1. I can do X instead of Y (e.g., “I’d rather ...”; “I’d prefer ...”)
2. Why don’t you do X instead of Y (e.g., “If you had asked me earlier,
I would have ...”)
E. Set condition for future or past acceptance (e.g., “If you had asked me
earlier, I would have ...”)
10


F. Promise of future acceptance (e.g., “I’ll do it next time”; “I promise I’ll ...”
or “Next time I’ll ...” -- using “will” of promise or “promise”)
G. Statement of principle (e.g., “I never do business with friends.”)

“I’d love to...”)
Adj2. Statement of empathy (e.g. “I realize you are in a difficult situation.”)
Adj3. Pause fillers (e.g. “uhh”; “well”; “oh”; “uhm”)
Adj4. Statement of gratitude or appreciation (e.g. “thanks”; “I really appreciate it”).
2.6 Studies on the Speech Act of Refusals
The cross-cultural studies reveal the difference between the same acts in a
variety of cultures. These studies allow for identifying potential pragmatic failures
committed by non-native speakers and finding ways to teach pragmatics that would
prevent these failures. Beebe, Takahashi and UlissWeltz’s (1990) groundbreaking
work in cross-cultural studies of refusals has contributed to the development of the
methodology and the taxonomy that are frequently utilized in other studies.
In their taxonomy, refusal strategies fall into two broad categories: Semantic
formulas and Adjuncts. A semantic formula, or a strategy, is a set of expressions,
which could be a word(s), a phrase(s) or a sentence(s), and can function as a refusal.
An adjunct is a set of expressions that supplement a refusal, but by itself cannot
function as a refusal. Semantic formulas are further divided into direct and indirect
realization of refusals.
Among those studies focusing on the refusals of L2 learners, some examined
how the L1 sociocultural norm has affected the L2 learner’s refusal performance, i.e.,
pragmatic transfer. Beebe et al. (1990) found that Japanese learners of English
resemble native speakers of Japanese, and differ from native speakers of English in
their refusals, indicating the existence of pragmatic transfer phenomenon. While
Japanese were more affected by the status of the interlocutors, Americans refused
differently according to the degree of familiarity with the interlocutors. With regard
to the content of semantic formulas, the researchers found that the excuses the
American-English group used tended to be more specific than those of the JapaneseJapanese and Japanese-English groups. Similar tendencies were found by Beebe and
Cummings (1985, 1996).

12


13


traditional Vietnamese culture is still preserved while accumulating and localizing
foreign cultural influences (Ngo 2001; Tran 1998).
Vietnamese society is no longer as agriculturally dominated as it once was (Do
2002). It has become industrialized and is subject to increasing globalization. A large
percentage of the population has to conform to the norms and patterns of industrial
life, with changing lifestyles and ways of thinking. in the Vietnamese culture, when
asking such questions as “Are you married ?”, “How old are you ?”, “How much do
you earn a month?”, people simply want to show their concern for others, with no
motive other than facilitating and making the distance between communicators closer
and friendlier, thus enhancing solidarity. These questions, on the other hand, are
considered intrusive to privacy in non-Confucian societies. Marital status, age,
income, and religion are matters that people usually refrain from discussing when
they are engaged in everyday social conversation, especially with someone that they
do not know well enough.
With regard to politeness strategies in refusals, according to Phuong (2006),
Vietnamese have some social norms that require conversants to be able to refuse
in a polite manner. This fact has modified the thinking and behaviours of VEs.
Some have successfully become very fluent in English. Nonetheless, when
resorting to different ways of refusing, they tend to be more indirect than their
English-speaking counterparts. This study aims to explore this pragmatic transfer
in English language refusals.
Research on the Vietnamese speech act of refusal specifically restricted to
directness/indirectness, includes a study on some cross-cultural differences in
refusing a request in English and in Vietnamese (Phan, 2001). She found out that both
Anglophone and Vietnamese informants tend to use more indirect refusals than direct
ones. Comparing the degree of directness and indirectness of refusals by Anglophone
and Vietnamese informants, all the Anglophone informants are more direct than the

partners is relevant: both AEs and VEs used more statements of regret when they
refused people of opposite gender than of the same gender: opposite-gender refusals
require more elaboration and more care.
In sum, although the literature on refusals is abundant, most studies, as
mentioned before, have been conducted between English and languages
such as Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and so on. As far as the present researcher’s
15


smattering knowledge is concerned, however, no systematic study has been done to
compare the speech act of refusals between English and Vietnamese. Therefore, the
researcher intended to hopefully fill this gap in the literature.

16