MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

M.A THESIS
HEDGING STRATEGIES AND HOW TO REALIZE THEM IN ENGLISH
AND VIETNAMESE
(CÁC CHIẾN LƯỢC RÀO ĐÓN VÀ CÁCH THỨC THỰC HIỆN CHÚNG TRONG TIẾNG
ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT)

NGUYỄN THỊ ÁNH TUYẾT
Field: English Linguistics
Code: 60220201

Hanoi, 2017


MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY
....................o0o.....................

M.A THESIS

HEDGING STRATEGIES AND HOW TO REALIZE THEM IN ENGLISH
AND VIETNAMESE
(CÁC CHIẾN LƯỢC RÀO ĐÓN VÀ CÁCH THỨC THỰC HIỆN CHÚNG TRONG TIẾNG
ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT)

NGUYỄN THỊ ÁNH TUYẾT
Field: English Linguistics
Code: 60220201


Vietnamese.
Secondly, I am also indebted to many teachers of postgraduates Studies Department
who have supported and given the knowledge to my M.A. Course through their
lectures.
Thirdly, many thanks to Le Quy Don High School for the gifted in Lai Chau Province
to give me a chance to find out the actual status on learning English in this school for
me to fulfill my thesis with the situation here.
Last but not least, I would also like to thank my family and friends who helped me a lot
in finalizing this thesis within the limited time frame.

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ABSTRACT
This thesis is to show the hedging before giving bad news in English and
Vietnamese to express the similarities and the differences between using hedging
before bad news in English and Vietnamese.
Moreover, the thesis gives the system of literature review of speech acts,
directness and indirectness, the definition and features of the face, politeness and
politeness strategies. Furthermore, this thesis provide the definition of hedging, giving
the framework of hedging before giving bad news, then analysis the similarities and the
difference in English and Vietnamese on this issue.
Next, the thesis also makes the application on the situation in using this on the
actual status in some context.
Last but not least, the thesis also mentions some suggestions for teachers and
learners to import the language.
The thesis also provides the suggestion for further study.

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Chau...............................................................................................................................51

v


TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...................................................................................................................... ii
ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................................. iii
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS .................................................................................................................. iv
LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES ......................................................................................................... v
TABLE OF CONTENTS ......................................................................................................................... vi
Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................1
1.1.

Rationale for the study ..............................................................................................................1

1.2.

Aims and objectives of the study ..............................................................................................2

1.3.

Research questions ....................................................................................................................2

1.4. Methods of the study ......................................................................................................................2
1.5.

Scope of the study .....................................................................................................................3

3.2.1. Vietnamese equivalents for the English hedges in using hedging before giving bad news . 39
Table 12: The adverbs of modal..................................................................................................... 41
3.2.2. Differences between English and Vietnamese Equivalents in using hedging before giving
bad news......................................................................................................................................... 41
3.3. Hedging strategies in giving bad news........................................................................................ 43
3.4. Summary ..................................................................................................................................... 48
Chapter 4: APPLICATION OF HEDGING STRATEGIES IN TEACHING AND LEARNING ........ 49
4.1. The actual status of teaching English in Le Quy Don high school for the gifted in Lai Chau
Province ............................................................................................................................................. 49
4.2. Suggestions ................................................................................................................................. 57
4.2.1. Suggestion for teachers ........................................................................................................ 57
4.2.2. Suggestions for students....................................................................................................... 57
4.3. Answering for the Research question ......................................................................................... 58
4.4. Summary ..................................................................................................................................... 58
Chapter 5: CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................... 59
5.1 Concluding remarks ..................................................................................................................... 59
5.1.1. Main similarities................................................................................................................... 59
5.1.2. Main differences................................................................................................................... 59
5.2 Limitation of the study ................................................................................................................. 60
5.3

Recommendations/Suggestions for further study .................................................................. 60

REFERENCES....................................................................................................................................... 61

vii


Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1.

relatives or friends bad news because they find it hard to reduce their beloved people’s
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feeling of sadness or to lessen their pain. However, in some cases, the informers have
no choice even with the best and most talented ones.
Needless to say, hedges such as “I regret to inform” have a great effect of minimizing
the shock to the wife. All in all, hedging is a way used in a certain context for specific
communicative intention that speakers use for some purposes such as politeness,
vagueness, and mitigation. Therefore, the desire to have further findings into major
similarities and differences in using hedges when speakers give bad news by learners
and teachers in Le Quy Don High School in Lai Chauhas motivated the writer to
convey this research entitled “Hedging strategies and how to realize them in
English and Vietnamese”. After this research, the writer hopes to provide all of you
wider socio-cultural knowledge as well as the awareness needed for better
communicating in learning of students and teaching of teachers English in Vietnam.
1.2.

Aims and objectives of the study

Aims
- To find out English use hedges as a polite ways of giving bad newsand Vietnamese
equivalents.
- To implicate for teaching speaking English skill for Vietnamese learners of English
effectively.
Objectives
- To find out hedging strategies in English
- To find out the way to realize them in English and Vietnamese
1.3. Research questions
- What are hedging strategies in communication?

Chapter 2 (Literature review):
Chapter 3 (Findings and discussion) analyses gathered data from survey in order to
explore major cross-cultural similarities and differences when choosing the hedges in
specific situations.
Chapter 4(Applying of the research findings)in Le Quy Don High School for The
Gifted in Lai Chau Province
Chapter5 (Conclusion): summarizes the main findings from the research, offers some
implications for teaching English in Vietnam, and gives some suggestions for further
research later.

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Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1. Previous studies
B. Halabisaz Department of English, A. Pazhakh (Corresponding Author) Department
of English, M. Shakibafar Department of English, Islamic Azad University Boroujerd
Science and Research Branch, Boroujerd, Iran (2014) with the title “Hedging in Thesis
Abstracts on Applied Linguistics across Persian and English” This study investigated
the hedge in thesis abstracts to understand how the writers of these theses make their
claims about their new findings. The categories of hedges were applied according to
Crompton’s (1997) taxonomy of hedge, and the data were analyzed through two-way
Chi-Square, SPSS version 16. The results showed that there was a significant
difference between natives and non-natives in terms of using hedges in abstracts of
linguistic theses written by English and Persian writers. Native English writers used
more hedging devices, while non-natives (Iranian) writers employed less hedge devices
in their M.A. abstracts. The differences are attributed to the degree of rhetorical
sensitivity and modality, awareness of audience, purpose, and cultural background of
the learners. The implication of this study can be helpful in academic writing, and EFL
writing instruction.

with pragmatics, learners’ language power of word usage is extremely widened. Not
only do they can use target language flexibly, but they are also more confident in
conversational English with less anxieties of unexpected interpretation. This article
mainly focuses on the similarities and differences in using hedges in English and
Vietnamese conversation in order to help students use English effectively based on the
cooperative principles as well as point out the implication for leaning and using
hedges.
In conclusion, Although these thesis has shown some researches on using the hedging
before giving bad news, but the situations are different, and the above researchers has
not found the hedging strategies and how to realize it in English and Vietnamese.
Therefore, this thesis will show more about the situation of learning English of hedging
before giving bad news for high school students is the first thesis on this issue.
2.2. Theoretical background
2.2.1. Speech Acts
People often use language for doing things: to report, greet, and ask
questions,order,warn propose marriage, and promise and perform many other actions in
daily life.The sentences people utter are not used only to say something but also to do
things Davidson (1998).

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For example: After “I sentence you to death” is declared by a judge, there will be an
action of executing the prisoner. Speech act theorists try to explain what people do
when a sentence is uttered.
For example: when a speaker says “Close the door,” this speaker performs the act of
ordering and also expects the hearer to recognize the speaker’s intention by going to
close the door.
Actions performed when the speakers utter the sentence are called speech acts. This
idea shows that when people utter statements, they do not only utter the sounds or

Normally, some sociolinguistics report that research relating to language is usually
beyond just words or sentences which are considered as principle elements of
linguistics.
According to Bach (1979) shown that The inference the hearer makes and takes
himself to be intended to make is based not just on what the speaker says but also
mutual contextual beliefs.
Austin (1962) has shown as speech act is to report states of affairs and utterance
of some sentences can be treated as performance of an act. Moreover, Richards defines
speech acts as an utterance or a functional unit in communication. Similarly, Hymes
(1972) defines them as the acts we perform when we speak. It is argued that speech
acts are relating to culture and manner of doing them is ruled by social contexts which
are different in each community.
In other word, these findings have to be analyzed with social context also. It
means that language must deal with real situations with human’s interactions and social
contexts. According to Nguyen Hoa (2000) defined asthe business of a statement can
only be to describe some state of affairs or to state some fact, which must do either
falsely or truly, this meant that it is needed to understand that some sentences intend to
show emotion and feeling clearly or to affect them in special ways.
2.2.2. Directness and indirectness in speech
2.2.2.1. Directness and indirectness
According to Jannedy, Poletto, and Welden (1994), it is point out that for direct
speech acts,declarative sentences constitute speech acts of assertion, interrogative
sentencesconstitute questions, and imperative sentences constitute orders and requests.
In otherwords, a direct speech act has a direct relationship between the form and
the functionto communicate the literal meaning that the words in sentences
conventionallyexpress. As a result, the declarative sentence “the book is on the table”
has thefunction of assertion. The interrogative sentence “Who is he talking to?” has
thefunction of question, while the imperative sentence “Leave me alone!” is an order.

7

In English, people seem to show three purpose of the conversation right away in
the beginning. But in Vietnamese, it goes in the opposite way and people often go
around before going straight to their main point. According to Nguyen Quang (1998),

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if relationship between them and the time allow, participants will have a discuss
unrelated stuff or small talk.
The exact sentence spoken in one context can perform a different act inanother
context. As Searle (1998) says, the utterance can constitute differentillocutionary acts,
and it is quite complex to tell what the act of the utterance is.
Forexample, when a wife says to a husband at a party “It’s quite really late,” it might
bejust a statement of fact and sometimes a request. If the speaker intends to state the
factof the time, the statement in a declarative sentence type is a direct speech act.
However, if the speaker wants to request her husband to take them home, thesentence,
although declarative, does not directly perform a representative act butrather the act of
request. When the type of sentences and the function are not related,the indirect speech
act occurs.
Indirectnessis opposed to directness. Indirectness also has some advantages. Thai
(2007) alleges that the indirect approach to an issue is employed when the speaker
needs to avoid or postpone a certain sensitive point in a conversation or composition
and adigressive development or delayed theme in writing is meant to respect the
judgment of readers.
Indirectness is also a strategy used to avoid “face-threatening-acts”. Furthermore,
indirectness is a good choice to maintain politeness as in “Indirectness is thus most
generally attributed to politeness. Deborah (2007) supposes that sometimes telling the
complete truth can actually get communicators into trouble, for example a
communicator asks a question and his partner gives him a truthful answer with no
explanation, the communicator may think the answer is suspicious even though the

they
communicate. They interpret language on the assumption that the speaker is
obeyingfour maxims: the maxim of quality, the maxim of quantity, the maxim of
relevance,and the maxim of manner Yule (1996).
1. The maxim of quality. It means that the speaker always says the truth. Hewill not say
something that he believes is false, and he will not say things for whichhe does not
have the adequate evidence.
2. The maxim of quantity. It is assumed that the speaker follows the rule ofgiving
enough information. The speaker does not say too much or too little; he will beas
informative as required.
3. The maxim of relevance. It means that the speaker should be relevant whenhe
engages in the communication. Whatever he says should be related to the topic
ofcommunication.

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4. The maxim of manner. The speaker will not speak something ambiguous orobscure,
and he will make his speech flow orderly.
If the speaker does not follow each cooperative principle, it is said that
heviolates the particular maxim; as a result, the hearer cannot understand what
thespeaker wants to convey. Sometimes, the speaker seems to violate the principle,
buthe actually does not and the hearer can still understand what the speaker really
wantsto say. For example, the speaker might use hyperbole, but this is not because
thespeaker intends to violate the maxim of quality, and he does not lie, as well. He
justmakes his point more forceful, while the hearer understands his intention. If
thissituation happens, it is called flouting, not violating.
According to Sadock (2004) flouting the cooperative principle is related to
theindirect speech act. When the indirect speech act is used, at least one maxim of
thecooperative principle is being flouted. For example, in the context that a guest of

culture,people once praised an unborn child by saying “how ugly the baby is” because
in thepast many newborn children died very young and people believed that the
ghostsliked to take the beautiful babies.
However, nowadays with the progression of themedicine and hospital, that
belief has gradually disappeared and “How ugly the babyis!” is not a compliment any
more. People have changed to say, “How lovely the babyis!”, instead. Any more here,
like a threat in one culture is not a threat in another.Therefore, the way to perform the
speech act in one culture is different from anotherculture. Hedging strategies play an
important role in speech act. Hedges are used to moderate the force of an utterance or
the certainty of its content and therefore play an important role in interpersonal
communication.
2.3.3 Face, politeness, and politeness strategies
According to Brown and Levinson (1987) “Politeness is basic to the production
of social order and a precondition of human cooperation, so that any theory which
provides an understanding of this phenomenon at the same time goes to the foundation
of human social life.”
2.3.3.1. The definition of the face
Face is a technical term used in psychology and sociology to refer to the status
and esteem of individuals within social interactions. Thompson (2003).
Since face, understood as every individual’s feelings of self-image Thomas
(1995), can be destroyed, maintained via communicating with other people, an
individual usually claims for himself or herself through interaction. That is the reasons
why people usually avoid making other people feel embarrassed.
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People know that and respect that is why in everyday interchange, we usually
avoid embarrassing the other person, or making him feel uncomfortable simply
because we bear in mind that everybody has basic face needs or wants which refers to
the respect that individual has for him or herself.


politeness) or conversational principle and maxims and face-saving acts or politeness
strategies Blum-Kulka(1987).
Blum-Kulka(1987) indicates in her cross-cultural findings that politeness is a function
of repressive action with the latter having correlative relationship with indirectness, an
interaction achieved between two needs, the need for pragmatic clarity and the need to
avoid coerciveness and a social distance and role relationship. Through her definition
of politeness, she shows an idea that the more indirect we are, the more polite we
become. Clearly, she implies that there is a close relationship between indirectness and
politeness.
For examples:
(1) Indirect way: What’s the hell? It is too tidy.
Direct way: you should tidy up your room, son
(2) Indirect: What’s the wife expected to do at this time? (Implies “to get dinner
ready”)
Direct : Time to cook, sweetheart.
Inspire of the fact that “Face threatening acts” have a variety of degrees, many
direct ways of speaking seem to be more accepted so more polite. However, according
to Dascal (1983), indirectness might be costly and risky because the speaker have to
think more and process more in indirectness (costly) while the hearer may not
understand what the speaker wants to perform (risky).
Nguyen Quang (1994) defines politeness in a better way, which is used as politeness’s
definition for this study. This concept does not lean to any sides: positive or negative
but is the combination of the two.
In the research, the term of politeness or we can say “speaking in a polite way” is used
for for politeness reasons in what Brown and Levinson say due to the following
reasons:
Firstly, despite some conversational views, contract and the difference between
normative and strategic politeness is not very clear, almost all illocutionary acts should
be performed in the scale of interpersonal relationships

expressions:
- It’s up to you,……
- I don’t care if you don’t want to …….
- Make the hearer feel good – you can say things that make the listener feel
great as such expressions below
-

What would I have done without you?

-

I’d really appreciate what you have done.
I owe you once for this help.
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Leech’s (1983) Politeness principle contains 6 maxims including Tact,
Generosity, Approbation, Modesty, Agreement and Sympathy, those maxims which
involve in the cost and advantage and also the favorableness to the listener.
2.3.3.4. Positive politeness and strategies
Brown and Levinson (1987) also show some examples for the kinds of decisions
that speaker can choose and fifteen politeness strategies toward the positive face of the
hearer. In general, positive politeness strategies’ purpose is to save the positive face
and they are addressed to the hearer’s positive face through informality, intimacy
solidarity,… and familiarity’s expressions. Therefore, the speaker develops those to
satisfy the hearer’s positive face chiefly by two ways including by expressing the
similarities among participants (using expressions such as let’s or why don’t we in
English or chúng ta/ chúng mình in Vietnamese), and by showing an appreciation of
the hearer’s self-image.
Seventeen below strategies focus on positive face, and are also the examples of