VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY – HANOI
COLLEGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES
DISAGREEING
IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE:
A PRAGMATICS AND CONVERSATION ANALYSIS
PERSPECTIVE
By
KIEU, THI THU HUONG
A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements
for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Supervisors: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Hoang Van Van
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Phan Van Que
HANOI - 2006
CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY
I certify my authority of the study project report submitted entitled
DISAGREEING IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE:
A PRAGMATICS AND CONVERSATION ANALYSIS PERSPECTIVE
In fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Except where the reference is indicated, no other person’s work has been used
without due acknowledgment in the text of the thesis.
Hanoi - 2006
Kieu Thi Thu Huong


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am indebted to many people without whose help the present thesis could not have been
completed. First of all, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisors
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Hoang Van Van and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Phan Van Que for their invaluable
guidance, insightful comments and endless support.
I wish to express my deep indebtedness to Prof. Dr. Luong Van Hy, the chair of the
Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, Canada for his brilliant scholarship,

ii
ABSTRACT
This thesis takes as its main objective the description of the native perception and
realization of the speech act of disagreeing in English and Vietnamese within the
theoretical frameworks of pragmatics and conversation analysis and the help of SPSS,
version 11.5, a software program for social sciences. It aims at yielding insights into such
issues as politeness, its notions and relations with indirectness, strategies and linguistic
devices used to express disagreement tokens in the English and Vietnamese languages and
cultures. Linguistic politeness is carefully examined in its unity of discernment and volition
on the basis of the data obtained from elicited written questionnaires, folk expressions,
interviews and naturally occurring interactions. The meticulous and miraculous methods
offered by conversation analysis are of great help in describing and exploring the structural
organization of disagreement responses in preferred and dispreferred format, the
relationships between disagreements and the constraint systems, and negotiation of
disagreements by native speakers.
The findings exhibit that the differences in choosing politeness strategies to perform
disagreements by speakers of English in North America and speakers of Vietnamese in
Hanoi result from the differences in their assessment of socio-cultural parameters and
social situations. Although indirectness might be used in some contexts as a means to
express politeness, there is no absolute correlation between politeness and indirectness in
the two languages and cultures under investigation. Despite the English general preference
for direct strategies and the Vietnamese tendency to indirect strategies, the former may be
indirect in some contexts and the latter are prone to be direct or even very direct from time
to time. Consequently, the study of politeness should be conducted in close relation to the
iii
study of the speakers’ wider socio-cultural milieus with systems of local norms, beliefs and
values. In proffering disagreements to the prior evaluations or ideas, native speakers not
only deploy individually volitional strategies but also observe socially determined norms of
behavior, especially in the choice of formulaic expressions, speech levels, address terms,
deference markers etc. Therefore, the deployment of the normative-volitional approach to

Table 1-4: Assessment of socio-cultural factors: Age of co-
conversants 37............................................................................xii
Table 1-5: Assessment of socio-cultural factors: Manner of
communication 38......................................................................xii
Table 1-6: Assessment of socio-cultural factors: Setting 39.....xii
Table 1-7: Assessment of socio-cultural factors: Gender of co-
conversants 39............................................................................xii
Table 1-8: Assessment of socio-cultural factors: Social status 40
....................................................................................................xii
Table 1-9: Assessment of socio-cultural factors: Length of time
you know your co-conversants 42.............................................xii
Table 1-10: Assessment of Social Situations - Sit. A1. Praise on
Nice-looking Spouse 44.............................................................xii
Table 1-11: Assessment of Social Situations - Sit. A2. Self-
praise on New Hairstyle 45........................................................xii
Table 1-12: Assessment of Social Situations - Sit. A3.
Disparagement of New Italian Shoes 45....................................xii
Table 1-13: Assessment of Social Situations - Sit. A4. Miss X Is
Getting Too Fat 45.....................................................................xii
Table 1-14: Assessment of Social Situations - Sit. B2. Bigger
Pensions 46.................................................................................xii
Table 1-15: Assessment of Social Situations - Sit. C1. Mr. Y's
Promotion 46..............................................................................xii
Table 1-16: Assessment of Social Situations - Sit. C4. Voting
for Mr. X 47................................................................................xii
Table 1-17: Assessment of Social Situations - Sit. D1. Car
Expert 47....................................................................................xii
Table 1-18: Assessment of Social Situations - Sit. D2. Favorite
Team's Failure 48.......................................................................xii
v

Table 3-34: Choice of Politeness Strategies to Disagree with
Someone You Dislike (Miss X is fat) 107................................xiii
Table 3-35: Choice of Politeness Strategies to Disagree with
Someone You Dislike (Tax increase) 107................................xiii
Table 3-36: Choice of Politeness Strategies to Disagree with
Someone You Dislike (Boring party) 108................................xiii
Table 3-37: Choice of Politeness Strategies to Disagree with
Colleague, same age & gender (Miss X) 109...........................xiii
Table 3-38: Choice of Politeness Strategies to Disagree with
Colleague, same age & gender (Tax) 109.................................xiv
Table 3-39: Choice of Politeness Strategies to Disagree with
Colleague, same age & gender (Party) 109..............................xiv
Table 3-40: Choice of Politeness Strategies to Disagree with
Older Acquaintance (Miss X is fat) 111...................................xiv
Table 3-41: Choice of Politeness Strategies to Disagree with
Older Acquaintance (Tax increase) 111...................................xiv
vi
Table 3-42: Choice of Politeness Strategies to Disagree with
Older Acquaintance (Boring party) 112...................................xiv
Table 3-43: Choice of Politeness Strategies to Disagree with
Older Boss (Miss X is fat) 112..................................................xiv
Table 3-44: Choice of Politeness Strategies to Disagree with
Older Boss (Tax increase) 113..................................................xiv
Table 3-45: Choice of Politeness Strategies to Disagree with
Older Boss (Boring Party) 114..................................................xiv
Table 4-46: Correlations of content and format in adjacency pair
second 121.................................................................................xiv
Table 4-47: The preference ranking of the repair apparatus
(Based on Levinson 1983: 341) 127.........................................xiv
Table 5-48: Interrelatedness between acceptances/agreements

Someone You Dislike (Miss X is fat) 106.................................xv
Chart 3-17: Choice of Politeness Strategies to Disagree with
Someone You Dislike (Tax increase) 107.................................xv
vii
Chart 3-18: Choice of Politeness Strategies to Disagree with
Someone You Dislike (Boring party) 108.................................xv
Chart 3-19: Choice of Politeness Strategies to Disagree with
Colleague, same age & gender (Miss X) 108............................xv
Chart 3-20: Choice of Politeness Strategies to Disagree with
Colleague, same age & gender (Tax) 109..................................xv
Chart 3-21: Choice of Politeness to Disagree with Colleague,
same age & gender (Party) 110..................................................xv
Chart 3-22: Choice of Politeness Strategies to Disagree with
Older Acquaintance (Miss X is fat) 110....................................xv
Chart 3-23: Choice of Politeness Strategies to Disagree with
Older Acquaintance (Tax increase) 111.....................................xv
Chart 3-24: Choice of Politeness Strategies to Disagree with
Older Acquaintance (Boring party) 112.....................................xv
Chart 3-25: Choice of Disagreeing Strategies to Disagree with
Older Boss (Miss X is fat) 113...................................................xv
Chart 3-26: Choice of Politeness Strategies to Disagree with
Older Boss (Tax increase) 114...................................................xv
Chart 3-27: Choice of Politeness Strategies to Disagree with
Older Boss (Boring Party) 114...................................................xv
ABBREVIATIONS AND CONVENTIONS...................................................................XVI
INTRODUCTION..................................................................................................................1
CHAPTER ONE...................................................................................................................14
DISAGREEING – A COMMUNICATIVE ILLOCUTIONARY AND SOCIAL ACT 14
1.1.THEORETICAL PRELIMINARIES..........................................................................................14
1.1.1.Speech Act Theory................................................................................................14

2.1.2.3. Brown & Levinson’s model.........................................................................58
2.1.3. Normative Approach...........................................................................................60
2.1.3.1. Chinese research...........................................................................................60
2.1.3.2. Japanese research..........................................................................................62
2.1.3.3. Other non-Anglophone research .................................................................63
2.1.4. Normative-Volitional Approach..........................................................................64
2.1.4.1. Literature by Vietnamese researchers..........................................................64
2.1.4.2. Literature by other researchers.....................................................................67
2.1.5 Summary...............................................................................................................69
2.2. EMPIRICAL STUDY.........................................................................................................70
2.2.1. Aims and Methodology .......................................................................................70
2.2.1.1. Aims..............................................................................................................70
2.2.1.2. Data collection methods and respondents....................................................70
2.2.2. Politeness Level Rated by Respondents..............................................................70
2.2.2.1. Data results...................................................................................................70
2.2.2.2. Comments.....................................................................................................80
2.2.3. Summary..............................................................................................................81
2.3. CONCLUDING REMARKS.................................................................................................81
CHAPTER THREE.............................................................................................................83
STRATEGIES OF POLITENESS IN DISAGREEING..................................................83
3.1. THEORETICAL PRELIMINARIES.........................................................................................83
3.1.1. Brown & Levinson’s Model of Strategies...........................................................83
3.1.2. Manipulation of Strategies..................................................................................84
3.1.2.1. Bald-on-record strategies..............................................................................84
3.1.2.2. On-record strategies .....................................................................................87
3.1.2.3. Off-record strategies.....................................................................................89
3.1.2.4. No FTA.........................................................................................................94
3.1.3. Indirectness in Disagreeing................................................................................95
3.1.3.1. Notion of indirectness...................................................................................95
3.1.3.2. Factors governing indirectness.....................................................................97

4.2.2.3. Comments...................................................................................................147
4.2.3. Strategies for Disagreements as Preferred Seconds........................................148
4.2.3.1. English corpus............................................................................................148
4.2.3.2. Vietnamese corpus......................................................................................151
4.2.3.3. Comments...................................................................................................156
4.2.4. Summary............................................................................................................157
4.3. CONCLUDING REMARKS...............................................................................................157
CHAPTER FIVE................................................................................................................159
STRATEGIES FOR CONSTRAINT SYSTEMS AND NEGOTIATION OF
DISAGREEMENTS...........................................................................................................159
5.1. THEORETICAL PRELIMINARIES.......................................................................................159
5.1.1. Constraint Systems............................................................................................159
5.1.2. Negotiation of Disagreements...........................................................................160
5.1.2.1. Insertion sequences.....................................................................................161
5.1.2.2. Summons-answer sequences......................................................................161
5.1.2.3. Pre-sequences.............................................................................................162
5.1.2.4. Sequences in disagreeing............................................................................165
5.1.3. Some Frequently Used Devices in Disagreements ..........................................167
x
5.1.3.1. Intensifiers..................................................................................................167
5.1.3.2. Person referring terms................................................................................169
5.1.4. Summary............................................................................................................173
5.2. EMPIRICAL STUDY.......................................................................................................174
5.2.1. Aims and Methodology......................................................................................174
5.2.1.1. Aims............................................................................................................174
5.2.1.2. Data collection methods and respondents..................................................174
5.2.2. Strategies for Constraint Systems.....................................................................175
5.2.2.1. English corpus............................................................................................175
5.2.2.2. Vietnamese corpus......................................................................................177
5.2.3. Strategies for Negotiation of Disagreements....................................................181

TABLE 1-9: ASSESSMENT OF SOCIO-CULTURAL FACTORS: LENGTH OF
TIME YOU KNOW YOUR CO-CONVERSANTS..........................................................42
TABLE 1-10: ASSESSMENT OF SOCIAL SITUATIONS - SIT. A1. PRAISE ON
NICE-LOOKING SPOUSE................................................................................................44
TABLE 1-11: ASSESSMENT OF SOCIAL SITUATIONS - SIT. A2. SELF-PRAISE
ON NEW HAIRSTYLE.......................................................................................................45
TABLE 1-12: ASSESSMENT OF SOCIAL SITUATIONS - SIT. A3.
DISPARAGEMENT OF NEW ITALIAN SHOES...........................................................45
TABLE 1-13: ASSESSMENT OF SOCIAL SITUATIONS - SIT. A4. MISS X IS
GETTING TOO FAT...........................................................................................................45
TABLE 1-14: ASSESSMENT OF SOCIAL SITUATIONS - SIT. B2. BIGGER
PENSIONS............................................................................................................................46
TABLE 1-15: ASSESSMENT OF SOCIAL SITUATIONS - SIT. C1. MR. Y'S
PROMOTION.......................................................................................................................46
TABLE 1-16: ASSESSMENT OF SOCIAL SITUATIONS - SIT. C4. VOTING FOR
MR. X.....................................................................................................................................47
TABLE 1-17: ASSESSMENT OF SOCIAL SITUATIONS - SIT. D1. CAR EXPERT 47
TABLE 1-18: ASSESSMENT OF SOCIAL SITUATIONS - SIT. D2. FAVORITE
TEAM'S FAILURE..............................................................................................................48
xii
TABLE 1-19: GENERAL ASSESSMENT OF ALL SITUATIONS BY
RESPONDENTS..................................................................................................................49
TABLE 2-20: ASSESSMENT OF POLITENESS LEVEL. 4.1. 'SHE'S ALL RIGHT, I
SUPPOSE.'............................................................................................................................71
TABLE 2-21: ASSESSMENT OF POLITENESS LEVEL. 4.3. 'FASHIONS
CHANGE, YOU KNOW.'....................................................................................................72
TABLE 2-22: ASSESSMENT OF POLITENESS LEVEL. 4.4. ‘WE’RE VERY MUCH
IN AGREEMENT, BUT ….'...............................................................................................73
TABLE 2-23: ASSESSMENT OF POLITENESS LEVEL. 4.5. 'NOT ME, I
TOTALLY DISAGREE. '....................................................................................................74

TABLE 3-39: CHOICE OF POLITENESS STRATEGIES TO DISAGREE WITH
COLLEAGUE, SAME AGE & GENDER (PARTY).....................................................109
TABLE 3-40: CHOICE OF POLITENESS STRATEGIES TO DISAGREE WITH
OLDER ACQUAINTANCE (MISS X IS FAT)...............................................................111
TABLE 3-41: CHOICE OF POLITENESS STRATEGIES TO DISAGREE WITH
OLDER ACQUAINTANCE (TAX INCREASE)............................................................111
TABLE 3-42: CHOICE OF POLITENESS STRATEGIES TO DISAGREE WITH
OLDER ACQUAINTANCE (BORING PARTY)...........................................................112
TABLE 3-43: CHOICE OF POLITENESS STRATEGIES TO DISAGREE WITH
OLDER BOSS (MISS X IS FAT)......................................................................................112
TABLE 3-44: CHOICE OF POLITENESS STRATEGIES TO DISAGREE WITH
OLDER BOSS (TAX INCREASE)...................................................................................113
TABLE 3-45: CHOICE OF POLITENESS STRATEGIES TO DISAGREE WITH
OLDER BOSS (BORING PARTY)..................................................................................114
TABLE 4-46: CORRELATIONS OF CONTENT AND FORMAT IN ADJACENCY
PAIR SECOND...................................................................................................................121
TABLE 4-47: THE PREFERENCE RANKING OF THE REPAIR APPARATUS
(BASED ON LEVINSON 1983: 341)...............................................................................127
TABLE 5-48: INTERRELATEDNESS BETWEEN ACCEPTANCES/AGREEMENTS
AND REJECTIONS/DISAGREEMENTS......................................................................159
CHART 2-1: ASSESSMENT OF POLITENESS LEVEL. 4.1. 'SHE'S ALL RIGHT, I
SUPPOSE.' ...........................................................................................................................71
CHART 2-2: ASSESSMENT OF POLITENESS LEVEL. 4.3. 'FASHIONS CHANGE,
YOU KNOW.'.......................................................................................................................72
CHART 2-3: ASSESSMENT OF POLITENESS LEVEL. 4.4. 'WE'RE VERY MUCH
IN AGREEMENT, BUT ....'................................................................................................73
CHART 2-4: ASSESSMENT OF POLITENESS LEVEL. 4.5. 'NOT ME, I TOTALLY
DISAGREE.'.........................................................................................................................74
CHART 2-5: ASSESSMENT OF POLITENESS LEVEL. 4.6. 'THAT'S PRETTY
GOOD.'..................................................................................................................................75

SAME AGE & GENDER (PARTY).................................................................................110
CHART 3-22: CHOICE OF POLITENESS STRATEGIES TO DISAGREE WITH
OLDER ACQUAINTANCE (MISS X IS FAT)...............................................................110
CHART 3-23: CHOICE OF POLITENESS STRATEGIES TO DISAGREE WITH
OLDER ACQUAINTANCE (TAX INCREASE)............................................................111
CHART 3-24: CHOICE OF POLITENESS STRATEGIES TO DISAGREE WITH
OLDER ACQUAINTANCE (BORING PARTY)...........................................................112
CHART 3-25: CHOICE OF DISAGREEING STRATEGIES TO DISAGREE WITH
OLDER BOSS (MISS X IS FAT)......................................................................................113
CHART 3-26: CHOICE OF POLITENESS STRATEGIES TO DISAGREE WITH
OLDER BOSS (TAX INCREASE)...................................................................................114
CHART 3-27: CHOICE OF POLITENESS STRATEGIES TO DISAGREE WITH
OLDER BOSS (BORING PARTY)..................................................................................114
xv
ABBREVIATIONS AND CONVENTIONS
# Number
& and
CA Conversation analysis
CCSARP Cross-cultural Speech Act Realization Project
CP Cooperative Principle
D Relative distance
DCT Discourse Completion Task
EFL English as a foreign language
FSA Face saving act
FTA Face threatening act
H Hearer
P Relative power
R Rating/Raking of imposition
S Speaker
SA Speech act

in an awareness of developing a sense of socio-cultural factors in learners to help them
become successful in interaction. Thus, this study is conducted with the hope of
1
contributing to the socio-cultural aspects of spoken English-Vietnamese communication
for the avoidance, or at least, the reduction of pragmatic failures.
The speech act of disagreeing has been chosen for investigation in this study as it is of
great interest to the researcher and of great help to language teachers and learners. In
everyday life, native speakers talk to each other, exchanging ideas, evaluations or
assessments of things, events and other people. Their interlocutors may agree or disagree
with them. The way second speakers express their disagreement with prior speakers is
both language-specific and culture-specific. The differences in the ways in which native
speakers of English and Vietnamese realize disagreements seem to make it problematic
for cultural outsiders to say the right thing at the right time. Therefore, a comparison of
the ways used to realize disagreeing by native speakers of English and Vietnamese is
considered essential and valuable in the teaching and learning of English by Vietnamese
learners and Vietnamese by native speakers of English.
1.1.2. Society, culture and language
Social acts or ‘speech acts’ (Austin, 1962) are thought to be performed via strategies
which are mainly the same in all cultures (Fraser, 1985). However, this universalistic
view is doubted and rejected by some researchers who contend that different cultures
conceptualize speech acts differently according to differences in cultural norms and
values as well as social constraints (Wierzbicka, 1990).
It has been said that language of a community is part or a manifestation of its culture,
which is viewed as the system of ideas and beliefs shared by members of a community
(Bentahila & Davies, 1989). Society, culture and language are closely related and interact
between themselves. Their relationship and interaction have been researched into and
focused on in prior papers. Sapir (1963: 166) states that language is ‘a cultural or social
product’. Consequently, the interpretation of the social meaning of a certain linguistic
2
expression should be done with reference to the bigger socio-cultural background of the

Conversing with each other, people frequently proffer evaluative assessments of things,
events or people they know. These assessments may include opinions, praises,
compliments, complaints, boasts or self-deprecations. Given that their interlocutors are
co-operative, they may support or reject prior assessments by either agreeing or
disagreeing.
Since the 1970s of the twentieth century, Pomerantz has paid attention to the way second
assessments are made. Her 1975 Ph.D. dissertation can be considered her first step. In
this paper, she carefully examines the major features of disagreeing and agreeing. Later
on, she takes into consideration the construction of disagreement/agreement (Pomerantz,
1984a). The main features in preference organization like preferred and dispreferred turns
used by second speakers to perform disagreeing/agreeing are looked at with great care.
Pomerantz is also interested in the relationship between responses to prior complimentary
tokens and the system of constraints, in which disagreements are structurally dispreferred
but agreements may implicitly mean self-praise. In her work on “Compliment
Responses” (1978), Pomerantz finds out that native English speakers tend to make
compliment responses located somewhere between agreeing and disagreeing. The ‘in
between-ness’ of compliment responses, according to Pomerantz (Ibid.), can be the result
of conflicting effects brought by the correlation between preference organization and
self-compliment avoidance. Other searches by Pomerantz (1984), Levinson (1983) and
Heritage (2002) come to the same conclusion.
4
Nguyen Q. 1998 Ph. D. dissertation is probably the most significant research into
compliments that has ever been done in Vietnam. Compliments and such related issues as
politeness and its strategies, lexico-modal markers and the addressing system are
thoroughly discussed and empirically examined to bring out their cross-cultural
similarities and differences. He has also brought out the safe/unsafe topics for giving
compliments and underlined the most frequently used strategies in responses to prior
complimentary attributes. It appears that while native speakers of English tend to utilize
direct strategies, their Vietnamese counterparts seem to exploit indirect strategies.
Disagreeing has long been an appealing pursuit of the present writer. It has been