Criticizing behaviors by the Vietnamese and the American: topics, social factors and frequency

- Hoang Thi Xuan Hoa / VNU Journal of Science, Foreign Languages 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.
- 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.
- 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..
- This study was designed to examine some of those aspects, namely the most common topics that these two people often criticize on, a number of the social and situational variables (relative power and social distance between interactants, severity of offence, the setting, the gender of the hearer, etc.) hypothesized to influence the choice of criticizing strategies by Vietnamese and American people, and the frequency they criticize people having different relations with them.
- Hopefully, the results of this study could help establish the foundation for further investigating the nature of the speech act of criticizing, and for comparing criticizing behaviors by Vietnamese and American peoples..
- Sociopragmatic judgments involving contextual factors such as social power, distance, rights and obligations, purpose of the speech act, etc., are the basis for the speaker to decide whether it is appropriate to perform a given speech act, whereas pragmalinguistic decisions, which are language-specific, concern linguistic choices related to encoding speaker’s illocutionary force in an appropriate way (Bonikowska, ibid).
- Studies show that social relations such as degree of social power and distance between interlocutors and the ranking of imposition of the speech acts are among the most important variables in determining the pragmatic decisions involved in the performance of speech acts.
- It is one of the foremost factors that determine the way in which interlocutors converse because it is an important determinant of the degree of comfort or politeness in a verbal exchange [12].
- In this study, the term relative power is used to generally refer to the power of the speaker with respect to the hearer, which reflects the degree to which the speaker can impose his/her will onto the hearer.
- It includes reference to the right of the speaker to perform the act and the degree to which the hearer welcomes the imposition [5].
- Beside those three major factors, a number of other factors are also likely to influence speech act behavior, such as the speaker’s perception of the degree of the offence, the age of the two interlocutors, the topic, the setting of the speech event, etc [15].
- Although, in general, all the above mentioned factors have been found to influence speech act performance, different cultures may give different weightings to each of the factors.
- However, the investigation of the speech acts of refusal and apology by Japanese and American people by Beebe, Takahashi, and Uliss-Weltz (1990) reveals that Japanese refuse differently according to the status of the interlocutors, while Americans are more affected by the degree of familiarity or social distance between interlocutors.
- The weighting of the factors varies across cultures.
- Therefore, a cross-cultural study on a certain speech act should investigate not only its patterns of linguistic realization and socio-pragmatic strategies but also how each of the factors influences on the speech act in different cultures.
- Consequently, criticism may impair the hearer’s face, which leads to the unfavourable reaction and judgments of the hearer toward the speaker, resulting in conflicts and damage to the relationship [21].
- When the speaker finds that an action performed or a choice made by the hearer is inappropriate or unsatisfactory, he/she has to make a very careful decision: Should he/she perform the act of criticism, or should he/she not? And if yes, how should he/she do it so that the realization of the speech act would most effectively bring about the desired results? In order to come to such decisions, the speaker has to judge whether the situation and the relationship between himself/herself with the hearer are suitable for him/her to make the criticism.
- In other words, the speaker has to decide whether the necessary conditions for the appropriateness of the speech act are actually satisfied.
- Nguyen Thi Thuy Minh [23] in her interlanguage study of criticisms made by Vietnamese learners, has identified four conditions for the speech act of criticism relating to the speaker’s perception of the hearer’s offence and the speaker’s attitude toward the offence and his/her desire for a change in the action or attitude of the hearer.
- Although the existence of the speech act of criticism is universal across languages, its frequency, the situational contexts in which it is found, and the types of linguistic forms available and used are culture-specific.
- Criticizing, like other speech acts, reflect fundamental values of the society, so the study of criticisms in one culture can provide important insights into social norms and values that are embedded in that culture.
- Therefore, a comparison between criticizing performance by the Vietnamese and the American is necessary not only because of its implications for language teaching and learning but also for cross-cultural understanding which constitutes an important condition for successful cross-cultural communication between peoples of the two cultures.
- To create a basis for cross-cultural research on criticizing behaviors by American and Vietnamese people, this preliminary study investigates some issues concerning the speech act of criticizing such as the factors that affect the pragmalinguistic decisions in performing the speech act of criticizing, the common criticism topics, and the frequency of the speech act by the Vietnamese and the American..
- New Hampshire is chosen as the location for the study because of the following reasons.
- First, being one of the six New England states and one of the thirteen original colonies of the U.S., and with 96% of the population are white, New Hampshire has Anglo-American as its mainstream and dominant culture.
- Second, fifty nine per percent of the state’s inhabitants are classified as urban, one of the lowest rates among the states, so its population composition can be considered as more similar to that of Vietnam than any other states (Encarta, 2006).
- In Vietnam, Hanoi is chosen because it is the city where people from various parts of the country come to live, so its population can have most of the characteristics of the people in Northern Vietnam.
- Then, based on the features of the American informants, a group of Vietnamese informants of similar features were chosen.
- Instrument Two questionnaires, one in Vietnamese and the other in English, were administered to the Vietnamese and Americans groups respectively.
- Two bilingual Vietnamese nationals were invited to check the language of the two versions of the questionnaires to make sure that they were identical in meaning, and only different in the language.
- Factors such as age, gender, social distance, social status, the effect of the criticism, the severity of offence (offence in the study is defined as an act with unfavorable consequences which is contrary to social code of behavioral norms [25], the goal of criticizing, the setting, etc.
- Part 3 of the questionnaire investigated the topics that people often criticize on.
- [21] in their study of the “good and bad criticisms”, and by the definition of criticism given by Nguyen Thi Thuy Minh in her interlanguage pragmatic study of criticism by Vietnamese learners of English.
- The last part, part 4, of the questionnaire was to find out the frequency the Vietnamese and American informants criticize their friends, relatives, superiors or subordinates, etc.
- Means of the elements were compared within groups to identify the most common topics of criticizing, the rank of the factors that affect the criticizing behaviors and the frequency of criticizing by the people in each group.
- Procedures Before officially administered to the respondents, the questionnaires were piloted on a group of three Vietnamese and a group of three Americans to check the clarity of the questions, the naturalness of the language employed and the questionnaire format.
- The English version of the questionnaire was first administered to American samples.
- Most of the respondents were from Southern New Hampshire University and some worked in other institutions in various parts of the state of New Hampshire.
- First, the researcher’s friend was introduced to different departments, schools, centers and offices of the University by an international relation officer where she talked to the people working there about the aim of the study, the purpose of the questionnaire and gave a brief instruction of how to complete it.
- Then she left the questionnaires - the number of which corresponded to the number of the staff - in each office/department/school and asked the head of the department/office/school to collect the completed questionnaires and returned them to the international students’ office for her.
- Approximately 29% of the people contacted refused to fill out the questionnaire.
- The Vietnamese group was selected according to the features of the American group to make sure that the two groups had similar parameters except their cultures.
- However, of the 132 questionnaires sent out only 110 were returned, and 102 were chosen.
- Although the total number of the informants was not big, it was assumed that, with the quota sampling and the similarities between the two groups being secured, the results obtained would reach a reasonable degree of validity and reliability.
- Factors affecting criticizing behaviors The means of the factors by the two groups were calculated.
- A comparison of the means within groups shows that the orders of importance of these factors perceived by the two groups are different.
- Age is the factor that comes as the second most important consideration for the Vietnamese.
- The explanation given by some of the respondents was that how they criticized would depend on the seriousness of the offence, for the trivial mistakes they would even choose to opt out.
- The social power of the H, and the social distance between S and H rank as the fifth and sixth most important factors respectively.
- The explanation provided by some informants is that they believed that the purpose of criticizing was to make things change for the better, so they did not care about the bad effect on the relationship between themselves and the H that might come as the consequence of the criticism.
- The order of importance of the factors provided by the American informants is different from that by the Vietnamese.
- To the Americans, the most important factor is the setting of the criticism.
- Most of the informants claimed that they would not criticize anyone in public, because, according to them, that would damage the H’s face seriously, which might have counter effect to them as the H may react negatively and talk back to them making them lose their own face.
- This is consonant with the results of the research by Beebe et al.
- Compared with the Vietnamese that ranked age as the second most important factor, the American informants considered the age of the person they criticize much less important.
- The purpose of the criticism and the status of the H come sixth and seventh respectively and, like with the Vietnamese, gender of the H considered as the least important factor is at the bottom of the scale.
- The differences between the orders of importance of the factors as seen by the two groups are obvious.
- However, the results of the two-tailed t-test reveal only four factors that are of significant difference between the Vietnamese and Americans.
- Although status does not come high in the ranking of importance of all the factors both by the Vietnamese and Americans, the difference in the means between the Vietnamese and American groups is significant at the p value of 0.000.
- The fourth difference is the factor of the purpose of criticizing.
- To the Vietnamese, this is one of the most important factors leading them to the decision to criticize or not, while to the Americans, the purpose of criticizing is overridden by most of other factors.
- Topics of criticism The second part of the questionnaire aims at discovering the topics that Vietnamese and Americans often criticize on.
- The highest of the means are just 3.23 and 3.12 for the Vietnamese and Americans respectively.
- The means of the Vietnamese group are generally higher than those of the American one (the mean of all the topics is 2.83 by the Vietnamese compared to 2.51 by the Americans), showing that the Vietnamese probably feel more comfortable criticizing on the various topics, which may lead to the conclusion that Vietnamese tend to criticize more than Americans do.
- Although the two groups did not differ significantly in their ranking of the degree of comfort in criticizing most of the topics, the Vietnamese informants did rank Important Choices in Life, Choice of Life Partner, Behavior at Home and Religious Belief significantly higher than did the American ones.
- Frequency of criticizing The third part of the questionnaire is to find out the frequency the Vietnamese and Americans criticize people having different relationships with them on the topics listed in part 2 of the questionnaire.
- Again, in this part, the means by the Vietnamese group are generally a lot higher than those of the Americans, and informants’ answers on part 3 quite match their answers on part 2, which demonstrates the reliability of the questionnaires.
- Comparison of the means of the two groups reveals some similarities as well as some differences.
- The second similarity between the two group is that for both groups the means for the bosses (older and younger) are quite low showing that both the Vietnamese and American informants seldom criticize people in higher positions.
- In addition, although most of the informants in both groups responded to question 1 that gender was not an important factor they took into consideration when criticizing, the means of the frequencies show that they do pay attention to their friends’ gender when criticizing them (close friend of the same gender: 3.29, of different gender: 2.87)..
- The most notable difference between the two groups is that means for all cases by the American informants are significantly lower than those of the Vietnamese ones with the p value is often smaller than 0.01 (p < 0.01).
- Americans evidently criticize much less often than the Vietnamese.
- This conforms to the results obtained by question 2, according to which the degree of comfort Americans feel when having to make direct criticism is much lower than that by the Vietnamese.
- Also, the means of different relationships are distinctively different for the Vietnamese group, whereas for the American informants, the means are low but not different significantly.
- This demonstrates the fact that relationship has more effect on the Vietnamese sample when deciding to criticize than on the American one.
- Of the family members, grandparents is ranked the lowest by the Vietnamese respondents in the frequency of being criticized by the Vietnamese but higher than other groups such as colleagues, subordinates or bosses, whereas they are ranked by the Americans as even lower than all other relationships except for older bosses.
- This is probably because of the fact that, as nuclear family is more popular in the American society, it is very unusual for American people to live or have everyday contact with their grandparents, and hence they seldom criticize them..
- In summary, the investigation in the frequency of criticizing by the Vietnamese and the American reveals the fact that Americans criticize considerably less than the Vietnamese on all topics, to people of all types of relationships to them.
- Relatively, the Vietnamese tend to criticize their spouse more often, while the Americans do so more to their siblings.
- Also, Americans criticize their grandparents (ranked 11th by the Americans and 7th by the Vietnamese) much less than the Vietnamese.
- As part of a larger cross-cultural study on criticizing behaviors by the Vietnamese and the American, this piece of research aimed at investigating three aspects related to criticism including the common topics that the Vietnamese and Americans often criticize on, the weightings the two peoples give to contextual and other factors in criticizing and the frequency they criticize.
- The results of the survey reveal certain differences between the two cultures in criticizing behavior.
- First, the Vietnamese and the American differ in the ranking of factors affecting their criticizing behaviors.
- To the Vietnamese, the goal of criticizing, the age of the H, and the severity of offence are the most important factors, whereas to the Americans the setting of the criticism, the distance between themselves and the H, and effect of criticism on the relationship between themselves and the H rank above all other factors.
- In terms of the degree of consideration taken for the factors when criticizing, the three statistically significant differences found between Vietnamese and Americans are the age of the H, the relative social status of H, and the purpose of criticizing.
- The differences may stem from the influence of the Confucian ideology on the traditional Vietnamese society which emphasizes “hierarchical respect, seniority, age, rank and title” [8].
- The investigation into the criticism areas also reveals some similarities and differences between the Vietnamese and American informants.
- Although there is a slight difference in the order, the list of seven most frequently criticized topics by the Vietnamese almost match with that of the Americans.
- Americans would want to have a wall around them, at least part of the time, so that no one can violate their privacy.
- They seldom criticize probably not only because they care about H’s face but probably also because they care about their own face, for one of the possible consequences of criticizing is that the criticized will react negatively to the criticizer which makes the criticizer lose his/her own face.
- When criticizing, the Vietnamese believe that their criticism would do something good to the criticized, saving them from the bad consequences of the offence they committed, and in that way they show their care for the H’s face.
- The results of the study also show that although Americans criticize much less frequently than the Vietnamese, when they do criticize, they are not affected by the social factors as much as the Vietnamese are.
- In sum, the study has found a number of similarities and differences between the Vietnamese and Americans in terms of areas of criticism, factors affecting criticizing behavior, and the frequency of criticizing.
- Thus, the actual criticisms by the Vietnamese and the American in various realistic situations should be collected and analyzed to find out the similarities and differences between the two languages in terms of strategies and semantic formulas.
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