... theory and politeness in general and speech act of comfort and politeness in expressing sympathy in particular have been discussed Besides, this chapter has also compared sympathy and antipathy and ... internal and external modifications were analyzed Regarding the choice of strategies, the American preferred strategy and most while Vietnamese made use of strategy and at average level The American ... sympathy between American speakers and Vietnamese speakers Moreover, the data was also analyzed contrastively to find out the influence of age, gender and social status on the choice of sympathy...