AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF PERFORMATIVES IN SPEECHES IN CULTURAL EVENTS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE

Abstract

This paper is an investigation into the syntactic and pragmatic features of performatives in cultural events in English and Vietnamese. This qualitative and quantitative study was conducted with a contrative analysis where English was chosen as L2 and Vietnamese as L1. It was based on a theoritical framework of speech act theory. The corpus of 200 samples of English performatives and 200 samples of Vietnamese ones randomly was collected in speeches in cultural events from different websites. The study looked into the syntactic features of performatives such as the syntactic behaviours of performative verbs, the clausal structures of the sentence patterns like declaratives, interrogatives and imperatives. In terms of pragmatics, the research presented and discussed in sentences types and Searle’s taxomony of illocutionary acts like representatives, directives, expressives, commissives and declarations in groups of performative verbs with subfunctions of their illocutions and perlocutions. The research also displayed similarities and differences in terms of syntax and semantics between English and Vietnamese performatives in cultural events to help readers to have more knowledge of using effective performatives in everyday communication and particularly in cultural events. This research is also intended to draw out some implications in English teaching and learning.