Making a request in America and Vietnam

Making a request in America and Vietnam

In our everyday life, we make a lot of requests such as asking our roommates to keep silent, asking our father to fix the bicycle, or even asking our teacher if we can come to class late. Have you ever wondered what a request means? How are requests used in different countries? And what are the differences in making requests between Vietnamese people and Americans? This small essay will answer all these questions.

      First, I want to mention the definition of request. On general classification, Searl (1969) provided us with five types of general functions performed by speech acts: declarations, representatives, expressions, directives, and commissions. In this classification, requests belong to directives. The followings are some definitions of “directives” that will help you to have the basic knowledge about requests.

      Following John Searl (1962; cited in Schiffrin, 1994: 57), directives are “these speech acts embody an effort on the part of the speaker to get the hearer to do something, to “direct” him or her to some goals.”

Example: Could you do the dishes?

      The philosopher Searl (quoted in Semantics Lecture Outline, 1998: 40) maintains that directive is “a speech act, which has the function of getting the listener to do something such as suggestion, a request or a command.”

Example: Could you clean up the kitchen?

      Leech (1983) regards directives as “a speech act that intends to get the hearer of the addressee to carry out an action: command, request, invitation, entreaty, allowance, and dare” (p.334)

      In addition, I give you the definition of “speech act”. Speech acts mean language in use. “Speech acts are what we do through language such as requesting, agreeing, apologizing, complimenting and so on.” (Nunan, 1993: 13)

      From the data above, we can see that requests are acts of getting someone to do something. They can be defined as “the act of asking someone to do something” (Jones 1983, p.15).

Requests are classified into 4 main types: Requests for something or something done, requests for help, requests for permission, and requests for information.

      Following Brown and Levinson (1987) requests are the acts predicating putting some feature act X of the hearer, and in so doing putting some pressure on the hearer to do or refrain from doing the act of X. These acts threaten the hearer’s negative face wants by indicating that the speaker does not intend to avoid impeding hearer’s freedom of action.

Brown and Levinson (1987) show very convincingly that requests are in essence “face-threatening acts”, which refers to the emotional and social sense of self that everyone has and expects everyone else to recognize. Participants’ facial wants should be respected in interaction.

      For face purposes or politeness, people usually use indirectness in making requests. Indirectness is a universal linguistic phenomenon, but there are considerable differences in indirectness employment in making a request by people from the two cultures_ Vietnam and America.

Generally speaking, Vietnamese people seem to be more indirect than American people in making requests. That is shown by the fact that more Vietnamese people give reasons before making requests, minimizing the size of imposition in making requests and giving pre-requests than American people.

      People from different countries can diminish the face-threatening risk of request by employing one of these above strategies.

      About the first strategy of giving reasons before making the request, American people tend to be more direct than Vietnamese people. They often “get to the point” without any reason while Vietnamese people seem to give more reasons before making a request. This can be explained by the directness and indirectness of the communication style. Being direct rather than indirect is the dominant value in American culture while in Vietnamese culture; the dominant value is being indirect rather than direct.

      In communication, American people have several expressions that emphasize the importance of being direct such as: “get to the point”; “don’t beat around the bush”;

“let go down to business”.

      On the contrary, Vietnamese people are famous for beating around the bush. Following Trần (1998): “Tính tế nhị khiến người Việt Nam có thói quen giao tiếp vòng vo tam quốc, không bao giờ mở đầu trực tiếp, đi thẳng vào vấn đề như người phương Tây” (p.158)

      In addition to giving reasons before making a request, minimizing the size of imposition in making a request can also prove to help reduce the risk of face-threatening to the hearer

      Thomas (1995), when talking about the “size of imposition” meant how great the request we are making is. She stated that we would probably use a greater degree of indirectness in asking to borrow 10 pounds than we would in requesting to borrow 10 pence, and we would probably use a greater degree of indirectness in requesting someone to translate an article for us than in requesting someone to pass us the newspaper.

      This strategy can be explained in Brown and Levinson’s terms (1987) that attempting to minimize the size of imposition on the hearer is a general strategy of negative politeness. They say that in English it can be done by using expressions like “just”, “a little”; euphemisms such as “borrow” for “take”; “a second”, “a minute”, or “for a few minutes”. In Vietnam, such strategy is also found in a number of equivalent phrases such as “ một chút”, “một đoạn”, “ chỉ”…

      Vietnamese people tend to minimize the size of imposition in making requests more often than Americans.

      The third strategy is “giving pre-request before making requests”

According to Yule (1996), “…face is at risk when the self needs to accomplish something involving the other. The greatest risk needs to be when the other is put in a difficult position” (p.67).

      He suggested one way to avoid the risk of losing face is to provide an opportunity for the other to halt the potentially risky act. In making requests, speakers often first produce what can be described as a pre-request rather than simply making a request.

Pre-requests can be made in the forms of “Are you busy?”, “Can you do me a favor” or “Can I ask you a question?”, before the “real” request is presented.

      Vietnamese people seem to have the tendency to give more pre-request than American people.

      In brief, Vietnamese people seem to be more indirect than American people in making requests. Since indirectness is equated with politeness in some cultures including Vietnam culture, people in those cultures are correspondently considered politer speakers. Obviously, that is a clear contrast with American norms.

      Above is the difference of indirectness employment in making a request by people from the two cultures_ Vietnam and America. Next, I will tell about the similarities and the differences in the linguistic forms of requests between the two cultures.

      As we have seen, requests in the broadest sense usually mean the act of “getting somebody to do something”. According to Richards (1983): “request can be divided into three major categories based on their forms: imperatives, interrogatives or declarative” (p.98)

      Request in interrogative forms- the most polite form of request is used overwhelmingly by both people from the two countries-Vietnam and America. After interrogatives, imperatives are used by quite a large number of Vietnamese people. On the contrary, the American people do not use many imperatives. Instead, they use declarative. Vietnamese people, on the other hand, tend to use fewer declarative than American people. Therefore; we can say that American people seem to be more formal than Vietnamese people in making requests.

      In attempting to rate the politeness degree in each request form, Lakoff (1977) proposed that “the ranking of the request strategies came from a theoretical claim that, when requests are made, imperatives are less polite than declarative, which are in turn less polite than interrogative” (p.10). It is however worthy of notice that the distribution of request forms cannot be attributed to politeness alone because politeness is a complicated concept and it varies greatly according to cultures as well as contexts. As seen in the case of requests made by Americans and Vietnamese people, we see that the norm of politeness is rated very differently across cultures. While the imperative “Mẹ đưa cho con lọ muối!” is seen by Vietnamese people as very normal in Vietnamese family settings, it is seen as pretty rude and quite abrupt in American family settings. Americans rarely use such expressions to make requests to people, no matter how close they are. Instead, they would say “Mom/Dad, give me the salt please!” or “Can you give me the salt?”. These expressions are seen as quite formal and rarely used by Vietnamese people to their parents.

      Although Americans tend to be informal and relaxed in their communicating style, we should not generalize that Americans are informal in all cases, even in making requests. In general, Americans make more formal requests than informal ones. This can be explained that while Americans appreciate the informal style of speaking, they do never want to intrude on others. Americans feel it is not an interesting thing to ask someone to do something for them and in turn, they feel very uncomfortable asking others for help. They do show care and respect to others in the way of not intruding on others’ business, independence as well as freedom. This can be traced back to the dominant values of American culture, which are the values of individualism, equality, and privacy. This is quite right in explaining the pretty high degree of formality Americans use in making requests even with their parents who are close to them.

      As stated by Holmes (1992), “language varies according to its uses as well as its users, according to where it is used and to whom, as well as according to who is using it” (p.245). Vietnam has had a long tradition of rice growing. People have to unite and rely on each other to fight against the bad weather and natural damage to protect their harvests. Collectivism is the dominant pattern of Vietnamese culture. As stated by Tran (1998) “…người Việt Nam nông nghiệp sống phụ thuộc lẫn nhau và rất coi trọng việc giữ gìn các mối quan hệ tốt với các thành viên trong cộng đồng.” (p.155). It is the tradition of living close to each other that Vietnamese people feel the relationship between them and others is quite close. Therefore, there is no need for them to use formal language to communicate with each other. As stated by Holmes (1992), “imperatives are used between people who know each other well or to subordinates. Interrogatives and declarative, including hints, tend to be used between those who are less familiar with each other, or there are some reasons to feel the task being requested is not routine” (p.293). So, formal language is only used among those who have great social distance. Vietnamese people, in using more informal language to people have shown the tendency to like to establish good relationships with each other.

       It is surprising to find that Americans seem to be quite formal in requesting a comparison of Vietnamese people.

      There are similarities as well as differences in requesting Americans and Vietnamese people. One’s culture has a great effect on his (her)

making request. I hope this essay will help you have a comprehensive view of requesting in both Vietnam and America and find out your ways of making suitable requests when communicating with foreigners. As Vietnamese learners of English, we are sure to fail in selecting the right structures if we separate language from the influence of cultural elements. To integrate into the foreign culture to communicate effectively with people from other cultures.

REFERENCES

1. Brown, P. & Levinson, S. (1987). Politeness: Some Universals in Language Use. Cambridge: CUP
2. Homes, J. (1992). An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. London: Longman.
3.  Jones, L. & Baeyer, C.V. (1983). Functions of American English. Cambridge: CUP.
4. Lakoff, R.(1973). The logic of politeness; minding your p’s and q’s. Papers from the 9^th Regional Meeting. Chicago Linguistics Society: 292-305.
5. Leech, G.N. (1983). Principle of Pragmatics. London: Longman.
6. Nunan, D. 1993. Introducing Discourse Analysis. Series Editor: Ronald Carter and David Nunan. Penguin English.
7. Richards, J. & Schmidt, R. (1983). Language and Communication. UN of America: Longman, INC.
8. Thomas, J. (1995) (eds). Meaning in Interaction: An Introduction to Pragmatics. London and New York: Longman.
9. Trần N.T. (1997). Cơ Sở Văn Hóa Việt Nam. Ho Chi Minh College of Science and Humanity.
10. Yule, G. (1996). Pragmatics. Oxford: OUP.

                                        GV:   Nguyễn Thị  Hồng