MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY NGUYEN THI KHANH A STUDY OF POLITENESS STRATEGIES IN THE CONVERSATIONAL ACTIVITIES OF THE COURSE BOOK “NEW CUTTING EDGE” (ELEMENTARY, PRE-INTERMEDIATE AND INTERMEDIATE) (NGHIÊN CỨU CÁC CHIẾN LƯỢC LỊCH SỰ ĐƯỢC SỬ DỤNG TRONG CÁC BÀI HỘI THOẠI CỦA GIÁO TRÌNH GIAO TIẾP NEW CUTTING EDGE ELEMENTARY, PRE-INTERMEDIATE VÀ INTERMEDIATE) M.A THESIS Field: English Language Code: 60220201 Supervisor: Dr Nguyen Thi Van Dong HANOI – 2013 DECLARATION I hereby declare that no part of the enclosed Master Thesis has been copied or reproduced by me from any other’s work without acknowledgement and that the thesis is original written by me under strict guidance of my supervisor Hanoi, November 10th 2013 Approved by Candidate i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS During the process of writing this thesis, I have been fortunate to receive supports and assistance from a variety of people First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr Nguyen Thi Van Dong, for her encouragement and guidance throughout the research Without her well-designed plan and meticulous review of the drafts, this thesis would not have been completed I would like to acknowledge and express my appreciation to my colleagues at Quang Ninh University of Industry, English department for their enthusiastic support and constructive suggestions in completing this research I also wish to thank all the staff members of the Faculty of Post Graduate, Hanoi Open University for giving me the best environment to fulfill my thesis Last but not least, my gratitude is extended to my parents for their endless love, constant support and encouragement I realize that this thesis is still far from prefect I will be glad to receive criticism and suggestion to make this thesis better Finally, I expect that this thesis is useful to the writer and everyone who is interested in linguistic study ii ABSTRACT This study is to focus on positive and negative politeness strategies in conversations of the course book “New Cutting Edge Elementary, PreIntermediate, Intermediate”, with an aim to help the students at Quang Ninh University improve their awareness of politeness strategies in conversational activities in the course book mentioned above, thus to apply these strategies in their everyday conversations in English The thesis lists three most popular politeness theories: Politeness rules of Lakoff, Politeness principles maxims of Leech and Politeness strategies of Brown and Levinson The course book is analyzed mainly in the light of the politeness theories of Brown & Levinson The research shows that people seems to prefer using negative positive strategy in conversational activities than others The last but not the least, some suggestions for learning and teaching positive, negative and off – record strategies are also presented iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS FTA: Face threatening act S: Speaker H: Hearer, addressee PP: Principle Politeness iv TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS iv TABLE OF CONTENTS v PART I: INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale of the study .1 Aims of the study .3 Research questions Scopes of the study Methods of the study Design of the study PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Language and culture 1.2 Speech acts 1.2.1 Locutionary Acts 1.2.2 Illocutionary Acts .9 1.2.3 Perlocutionary Acts 11 1.3.4 Direct and indirect speech acts 11 1.3 Cooperative Principle and Grice’s Maxims 12 1.4 Politeness 14 1.4.1 General ideas of politeness .14 1.4.2 Face 15 1.4.3 Politeness rules of Lakoff 16 1.4.4 Politeness Principle Maxims of Leech 17 1.4.5 Politeness strategies of Brown and Levinson 19 i) Don’t the FTA (say nothing) 20 ii) Bald on-record .21 v iii) Positive strategies 22 iv) Negative strategies 29 v) Off-record 34 CHAPTER II: CLASSIFICATION OF POLITENESS STRATEGIES IN THE CONVERSATIONAL ACTIVITIES OF THE COURSE BOOK “NEW CUTTING EDGE” I, II, III 39 2.1 Frequency of occurrence of positive, negative, off – record politeness strategies in conversational activities in the course book “New Cutting Edge” 40 2.2 Positive, negative and off – record politeness strategies of the course book “New Cutting Edge” 44 2.2.1 Positive politeness strategies in conversational activities 44 2.2.2 Negative politeness strategies in conversational activities 48 2.2.3 Off - record strategies in conversational activities 50 CHAPTER III: IMPLICATIONS FOR ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING AND SUPPLEMENTARY ACTIVITIES .54 3.1 Implications for teaching politeness strategies 54 3.2 Supplementary activities 55 PART III: CONCLUSION 66 REFERENCES 70 APPENDIX 75 vi PART I: INTRODUCTION Rationale of the study As we know that we are living in the world of globalization English language is a common language and is spoken in many countries It is considered as universal language Nowadays, English has played an important role in our daily life and made a considerable contribution to education, culture, business, science and technology Most of the universities worldwide include English as one of their major subject and the number of people learning English for different purposes such as finding a job, doing businesses or traveling is continually on the increase every day Therefore, different kinds of English teaching and learning are available over the world especially in Vietnam In Vietnam, English becomes the core language to communicate with other countries over the world so English becomes a compulsory subject at many schools at many levels such as: schools, colleges and universities from major to non-major in English However, the basis method is used in teaching in Vietnam is more concentrating on vocabulary and grammar than on communication Therefore, learners not know what to say to have contextual, situational and cultural appropriateness in communication Consequently, learners have a certain limit when communicating or interacting in an appropriate way or even being culture shock although they can read well or have a good grammar Nguyen Quang [20, 2] states that one cannot master a language without profound awareness of its cultural background and in both verbal and non-verbal communication, culture makes itself strongly felt So in order to acquire the second language-English, it is necessary to learn not only linguistic knowledge and interaction but also knowledge of English culture which described as the ideas, customs, skills, arts and tools which characterize a given group of people in a given period of time (Marie Emmitt and John Pollock, cited from Dang Thanh Phuong [18, 39] Nowadays, some cultural factors are included in the course design in universities and schools only When understanding the cultural factors students have chances to expose themselves to natives speaking environments Normally, Vietnamese students tend to employ English based on their native culture and cause misinterpretation in oral communication They are sometimes impolite, unfriendly even rude by chance Hence, to be successful in communicating in the target language, learners must be aware of their own culture of the target speech community Especially, they must understand the hidden and very important parts of the target culture including the politeness strategies used in everyday conversations There were some authors such as Thanh Huong (2005), Nguyen Thuy Hoa (2010), Tran Thi Phuong (2011), Pham Thi Hong Lien (2012) mentioned on politeness strategies in the conversational activities of different course books: “New Headway”, “Inside Out”, “New English File”…These studies only concentrated on studying positive and negative strategies used in the researched course books and mainly relied on the Nguyen Quang’s politeness strategies theory to find out politeness strategies employed in those course books This study aims to more deeply and fully understand about politeness strategies in all aspects, politeness rules and how the aspects used in the course book New Cutting Edge according to the theory of Brown and Levinson Some linguistic researches on politeness such as Politeness rules of Lakoff (1975), Politeness principles maxims of Leech (1983) and Politeness strategies of Brown and Levinson (1987) are given and analyzed Author analyzed the course book in the light of Brown and Levinson theory which is considered as the most influential one In this thesis, off – record strategies are found in the course book beside positive and negative politeness strategies New Cutting Edge which contains a lot of useful conversational activities with many real life situations, is an English course book written by Sarah Cunningham and Peter Moor This course book is employed at the Faculty of English (Quang Ninh University of Industry) where thesis author works as a teacher of English so as to improve the teaching and learning of verbal communication in English Aims of the study The study aims at the following objectives: - To study different kinds of politeness strategies - To classify politeness strategies used in the interaction activities in the course book “New Cutting Edge” - To provide suggestions for effective teaching and learning - To adapt and design some cross-cultural activities to help students avoid misinterpretations and misunderstandings in cross-cultural communication Research questions In order to achieve the aims stated, the study is meant to find out the answers to the following research questions: - Which are the main types of politeness strategies? my mother Do you mind if I change seats? Ok, then Why don’t you sit there, next to Andrea A: Morning! B: Oh, morning! How are you? 13 A: I’m fine, I’m fine Nice day, isn’t it? It was a sort of greeny-black colour and as we looked at it we could see things moving about in it, and we looked more closely and we realised it was full of frogs But anyway, I was really, really hungry so I decided to have some of the lettuce until I saw that it was moving! It was a fifteen-storey hotel so you felt really terrified… A: How are you? B: Oh, not so bad working hard, y'know 6 How are you? 7 Yes, darling, I’m just talking Mummy, can we go to the park now? Oh, dear Is she feeling better now? A: Oh, good Did you get nice weather? B: Um…no, not really It rained most of the time, actually 10 A: Oh well, nothing really B: Oh right Like me then A: Yeah, I suppose so A: Did you have a good weekend? B: Yes, it was Ok I didn’t much, really, just sat at home relaxing, y’know How about you? I wanted United to win, actually, I thought they were a 4 bit unlucky 10 So if I can just ask a few questions? 4, 11 I think I’d like to go somewhere a bit more exotic…you know, a bit more exciting A: Excuse me, can you help me? I’m looking for Church street B: Sorry, I don’t really know A: Did you know it was voted 'the world's best city to live in'? B: I didn't, actually no Well, well Um, well I don't know about the world's best, but, yeah, it's a pretty good place to live I like it, yeah There's some really beautiful scenery around the city And how about entertainment, nightlife? A: anything you like really and lots of bars and stuff so yeah, it's really lively The only problem is, I don't have enough time to try them all! B: And how about the way of life? Is there anything you find dunno about twenty, twenty-five minutes, I suppose Health Helpline, how can I help? I wonder if you might be able to help me And, er, an ice cream dessert two of those, in fact 10 OK, I'll be there in about five or ten minutes then A: Well, yes, actually I'm looking for a Christmas present 10 for my mother and I'm not sure what B: I see, well, how about this perfume? 11 Would you like to come to our house on Sunday? We’re having a barbecue 10 B: To be honest, I don’t really like action films Hi Everything Ok? Why don’t we have pasta? 13 Why don’t you try these on? 13 A: I don't think so, really I'm never sure with perfume B: Yes, it can be difficult, can't it? Now, let's see You 12 A: How about going to see it next week? 2 could buy her a really nice lipstick What about getting her a purse, a really good leather one 14 Excuse me, is there somewhere around here I can change money? Oh, that’s a bit expensive Excuse me, can we have the bill, please? A: Ok Just a moment B: ….I will have to look for someone else, which is a bit annoying when you think… I have a bit problem, then Oh, dear So you won’t go… It was really terrible! 15 It’s a bit expensive Yes, of course I'll be on your desk by nine o'clock 10 NEW CUTTING EDGE INTERMEDIATE 1 A: And does he live with your parents, too? B: Usually he does, but at the moment he’s staying with my aunt and uncle in Edinburgh He’s doing a design course at Edinburgh College of Art A: Really, so he wants to be a designer? B: Hmm, not sure to be honest He’s enjoying the course, but he doesn’t really know what he wants to do… A: ….She really looks like you it's incredible! No Actually that’s my cousin, Holly, but everyone thinks we’re sisters! And this is your gran, I suppose? He looks really grow up…he’s getting really tall 2 A: Phillip, can I introduce you to Petra, a friend of mine from Prague? B: Hi, Petra Nice to meet you A: …Were there for a holiday? B: Yes and no I actually went… you A: Hi, Carrie How are things with you? 7 B: Oh, Hi, Andrew Okay, I suppose, not too bad 11 A: And does he live with your parents, too? B: Usually he does, but at the moment he's staying with my aunt and uncle in Edinburgh 12 A: The year before last, yeah It's an absolutely beautiful city The architecture is amazing! I loved it B: Oh yes, I do, too Were you there for a holiday? A: Yes and no I actually went over to watch Scotland play football I'm a big football fan B: So am I! I was at that match too with my brother and father They're crazy about football 13 Yeah There are never any goals when I go to matches! Anyway, what are you doing here in Edinburgh? 14 A: Well, really I just look after the children I’m terrible at housework; I don’t like it at all! B: Oh, it’s the same with me I hate it, I’m terrible 15 A: …so I’m terrible B: Gosh! I can’t think of anything worse than spending my day with four children! 15 …Anyway, which part of Ediburgh are you staying in? 16 I really enjoy it; they're lovely children 17 Yes, as a matter of fact I live very near there too, Clerk 18 A: Well, perhaps I could come round and see you some 12 time, and we could go and watch some football together? 2 B: I really want to go and watch 19 A: Hi, Carrie How are things with you? B: Oh, Hi, Andrew Okay, I suppose, not too bad Anyway, how are your family, Are your Mum and Dad 1, still… 2 3 and I realised we were completely lost ….so I sort of followed him back to the bar… A: Does the place look the same? B: Mmm, yes and no, of course, but actually I think for most people life is harder, especially old people Just a minute, that was a bit fast for me Could you say that for me? 4, But I think people feel slightly different nowadays 2, … But I think people feel slightly different nowadays And I think that's good I think people worry more about the government, and the economy A: Does the place look the same? B: Mmm, yes and no I'll just check availability for you 10 Erm, just a second Completely different Sometimes you feel as if you’re in a different city 10 For some people yes, of course, but actually I think for most people life is harder, especially old people… 11 I think….I think you’ll really like it… 12 Hello, I’m Jude What can I to help? 13 Umm, it’s looking pretty busy Yeah, it’s completely 4, full… 14 Okay, just a few details Are you Miss, Mrs or Ms? A: …You look so different You’ve changed your hair 1, It’s really nice, I like it 2 B: Oh, thanks, and you look really well too You’ve lost weight, haven’t you? I'll talk to her tomorrow 10 A: Well, just wait a minute Frank, how about you? How are you getting on? B: Sorry, I haven't finished yet just a minute Yes, I think we have We met at the conference last year, 12 didn't we? I started learning English in 1998, I think A: Could I have the bill, please? B: Certainly, sir A: Is it okay if I take this chair? B: Sorry, but someone’s sitting there A: Excuse me, can I get pass, please? B: Sure A: Could you pass me the water, please? B: Here you are A: Do you mind if I borrow your mobile, really quickly? B: I’m afraid the battery’s flat, sorry 6 Could you possibly change this five pound note for me? 1, A: Would you mind watching the children, just for a second? 1, 4 B: Of course not, dear! Is it all right if we sit here? Could you tell me the time please? 11 I’ll give you a lift home 10 12 10 13 I’ll help you with those 10 14 I’ll come with you, if you like Don’t worry, I’ll baby-sit 10 Laurence! I haven’t heard you for ages! How are you? Anyway, how are things with you and Millie? 1, Would you like to come over for a meal? 10 By the way, if you ever see smoke… Oh, hang on The batteries are a bit low at the moment I'll check with Millie and call you back if there's any 10 problem I’ll let you get back to the family now 10 I’ll recharge it as soon as I get home 10 Can I help you at all? I'll just check that we've got one in stock Just a moment 10 Can you give me your postcode? Okay, what would you like to order today? 10 Would you like to pay now by credit card, or shall we 10 send you a statement? 5–8 How are you? Just a minute So I was wondering if we could borrow yours if you’re 11 not using it I think I lent it to my sister Yeah, she borrowed it last summer, I think I’ll call you back in a few minutes, alright? Well, the thing is – Sam’s mum was gonna give us a lift 10 down there, you know with all our stuff, but she’s going away herself now, so I just wondering… Why don’t you ask your mother? 13 I’ll have to think about it, but I’m not promising 10 anything 10 10 12 I’ll go and ring Sam 10 I think I know this actually 2 Can I speak to Mr Bell? 1 Ok, come on It’s time your light was out Oh, Dad? I really enjoyed the concert I think it went really well You’ve really been a great help It was my pleasure, really I’ll be off, then I’ll see you around, maybe 10 I’ll write it down for you 10 I wonder….would you like a cup of coffee? I think 10 there’s… Well, oh dear… ... from pre- intermediate to intermediate level (New Cutting Edge – Intermediate) These course books contain a lot of interaction activities with meaningful conversation in daily life In the part Real... record politeness strategies 42 The chart shows that the percentage of politeness strategies in all conversations in the course book New Cutting Edge (Elementary, Pre – intermediate and Intermediate) ... activities of the course book "New New Cutting Edge" (Elementary, Pre – intermediate, Intermediate) Chapter presents the implications for learning and teaching politeness strategies for students at Quang