tailieunhanh - Báo cáo " Criticizing behaviors by the Vietnamese and the American: topics, social factors and frequency "

Speech acts as minimal unit of discourse analysis have been the focus of a large body of research as they do not only represent language form but also reflect cultural values of the people who perform them. Like most other speech acts, the realization of the speech act of criticizing is influenced by a number of social and situational factors, the perception of which might vary greatly across cultures. In addition, cultures may also differ in their common topics and frequency of criticism their people make in everyday life. . | VNU Journal of Science Foreign Languages 23 2007 141-154 Criticizing behaviors by the Vietnamese and the American topics social factors and frequency Hoang Thi Xuan Hoa Department of English - American Language and Culture College of Foreign Languages Vietnam National University Hanoi Pham Van Dong Street Cau Giay Hanoi Vietnam Received 05 December 2007 Abstract. Speech acts as minimal unit of discourse analysis have been the focus of a large body of research as they do not only represent language form but also reflect cultural values of the people who perform them. Like most other speech acts the realization of the speech act of criticizing is influenced by a number of social and situational factors the perception of which might vary greatly across cultures. In addition cultures may also differ in their common topics and frequency of criticism their people make in everyday life. This paper report a cross-cultural study on criticizing behaviors by the Vietnamese and American people focusing on three aspects the topics of critics factors affecting criticizing behavior and the frequency of criticism. Responses to questionnaire items by 102 Vietnamese and 102 Americans reveal both similarities and differences between the two groups of people in all the three investigated aspects. Although the results of the study are inconclusive it is hoped that they could be used as reference for further investigation into criticism performance by the Vietnamese and Americans. 1. Introduction The action view of language introduced in the speech act theory 1-3 has started a new era in language research. Speech acts as minimal units of discourse Austin 1 have become the focus of investigation of many language researchers as the concept of speech act embraces both linguistic form and social norms 4 . The results of a large body of research in speech acts reveal that although many speech acts seem to exist in different cultures and societies their natures their Tel. 84-4-8510304 E-mail