A Constrastive Analysis of Invitation's Refusal Trategies in America and Vietnam
HCMC University of Pedagogy – English department
A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF INVITATION’S REFUSAL STRATEGIES IN AMERICAN AND VIETNAMESE
Student: Dang Thi To Nhu Class: 4A07 Instructor: Ph.D Nguyen Ngoc Vu
December 2010
Invitation‟s refusal strategies 1
Introduction
Human communication is a combination of cooperation and understanding. Success in communication depends greatly on the ability to recognize speakers‟ communicative intentions and pragmatic meaning of their utterances. Actually, those who may be regarded as fluent in a second language owing to their phonetic, syntactic and semantic knowledge of that language may still be unable to produce language that is socially and culturally appropriate. As a result, Larina (2008) shows that numerous problems in communication occur because people do not only speak different languages but use them in different ways according to specific social and linguistic norms, values, and social-cultural convention. Many people devalue the importance of invitation‟s refusal strategies because normally, it is a person right to say something he/she doesn‟t like or doesn‟t want to. However, it is not as simple as it is thought to be since misbehavior in this domain can result in the interlocutor‟s feeling of being shocked, angry, or even seriously insulted. It is because every body, as a human being, expects the appreciation and respect from others. America and Vietnam are two countries with different culture so their social and linguistic norms are different as well. This paper is an attempt to provide a cross-culture comparison of ways American and Vietnamese deal with a tactful-required kind of speech act: refusing an invitation. In this paper, the similarities and differences in refusal strategies between American native speakers and Vietnamese native speakers will be discussed under three circumstances: when the invitee is at a lower status; when the invitee is at an equal status;
1
Invitation‟s
A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF INVITATION’S REFUSAL STRATEGIES IN AMERICAN AND VIETNAMESE
Student: Dang Thi To Nhu Class: 4A07 Instructor: Ph.D Nguyen Ngoc Vu
December 2010
Invitation‟s refusal strategies 1
Introduction
Human communication is a combination of cooperation and understanding. Success in communication depends greatly on the ability to recognize speakers‟ communicative intentions and pragmatic meaning of their utterances. Actually, those who may be regarded as fluent in a second language owing to their phonetic, syntactic and semantic knowledge of that language may still be unable to produce language that is socially and culturally appropriate. As a result, Larina (2008) shows that numerous problems in communication occur because people do not only speak different languages but use them in different ways according to specific social and linguistic norms, values, and social-cultural convention. Many people devalue the importance of invitation‟s refusal strategies because normally, it is a person right to say something he/she doesn‟t like or doesn‟t want to. However, it is not as simple as it is thought to be since misbehavior in this domain can result in the interlocutor‟s feeling of being shocked, angry, or even seriously insulted. It is because every body, as a human being, expects the appreciation and respect from others. America and Vietnam are two countries with different culture so their social and linguistic norms are different as well. This paper is an attempt to provide a cross-culture comparison of ways American and Vietnamese deal with a tactful-required kind of speech act: refusing an invitation. In this paper, the similarities and differences in refusal strategies between American native speakers and Vietnamese native speakers will be discussed under three circumstances: when the invitee is at a lower status; when the invitee is at an equal status;
1
Invitation‟s