The speech act of correction In english and vietnamese: An interlanguage pragmatics study

Abstract

This is a study of pragmatic transfer by Vietnamese learners of English as well as cross-cultural differences between the Vietnamese native speakers and American native speakers in their use of correcting politeness strategies under the influence of the relative power in the investigated situations. The study investigates the discourse strategies used by the NSEs, VSEs and NSVs in carrying out the speech act of correction to communicating partners of different social statuses. Focus is on the politeness strategies and direct-indirect strategies preferred by each group of speakers in specific face-threatening speech situations where the speaker corrects the mistake of an addressee. 30 NSEs, 30 VSEs and 30 NSVs participated in the study. Data were collected with the MPQ as a perception-eliciting instrument and DCT as a collection instrument for gathering production data. The descriptive, contrastive method was employed for describing and interpreting the realizations of politeness strategies as well as directness-indirectness strategies. It was found that the frequency of use of strategies by the NSEs is different from that by the VSEs and the NSVs, though they do share some similarities. In addition, and related to differences in culture, the NSEs also differ in the ways they correct their conversational partners, as compared to the ways used by the VSEs and the NSVs. Thus, it is apparent that cross-cultural differences and pragmatic transfer are clearly observed in many situations of this study