A Research On Chinese And Vietnamese Speech Act Of"Suggestions"

The imperative is the most special mood in many waysofspeech acts that may directly influence onlisteners’feel ings. In order to overcome this problem, speakersare likely touseappropriatemethods and strategies forthe imperative. In specific communicative situations, people often prefer to use "Proposal" rather than "Order, Prohibition, Threat or Advice". Based on the speech act theory of Austin and Searle, the dissertationis aiming at distinguishing "Proposal" in actual utterance between Chinese and Vietnamese and proposing positive politeness strategies to put them into effect.The dissertationis organized into six parts. Firstly, the introduction presents research background, research scope, research meanings,research methodology, innovation points and the source of corpus ect...Chapter1highlights relevant principles of speech acts, imperative mood, proposal actions and politeness strategies. Additionally, modality and prototype theory which are directly related to corpora processing, imperative defining and describing are also mentioned. On the basis of these principles, the chapter discusses the standards and methods of defining proposal actions in Chinese and Vietnamese. Accordingly, each of speech acts is characterized independently and a group of speech acts obviously has its own features. In order to make clear about proposal actions, it is necessary to take many standardsinto accountand then carefullycompare proposal actions with other actions.Chapter2addresses proposal actions in Chinese and Vietnamese, finding out that the two languages both use tacit and explicit methods, quasidominance and other coexistences. Their sentence pattern models are almost the same. However, different features in proposals between Chinese and Vietnamese are also listed as follows:the distribution of ellipsis which is mainly shown as M1and M2models is absolutely different; the acceptation of performative verb (de nghi) in Vietnamese is broader than that of "建议" in Chinese; the modal particles which express proposal in Vietnamese is more than that in Chinese, their combination ability is much higher than Chinese; verb overlapping is a specific type of recessive expression of proposal in Chinese but not in Vietnamese ect..Chapter3generalizes the indirect expressions of proposal in Chinese and Vietnamese. This part thoroughly analyzes the implied proposal in form of interrogative, declarative and exclamative in Chinese and Vietnamese. It is shown that their forms and implications are largely identical with only minor differences. The elements which have much impact on proposal understanding and using in both languages are the same. Listeners must get not only language knowledge, but also cultural background and contextual information to comprehend the real intentions of speakers, in which contextual information is the most important factor. In addition, the dependence of implicit in conventionally indirect proposal on context is weaker than that in unconventionally indirect proposal in both Chinese and Vietnamese.Chapter4focuses on implementing the politeness strategies of proposal in Chinese and Vietnamese. Speakers in both two languages have to consider many factors, for example, how to organize utterances to meet the need ofcommunication, how to make proposal appropriately and politely so that listeners are delighted to accept. Related corpus indicates that respecting to listeners, shortening social distance, mincing words, speakers’ enthusiasm and sincere are the most popular proposal strategies. Mutual acceptabilityand familiarity, power relations between two sides may directly affect to proposal strategies in Chinese and Vietnamese. The author emphasizes that "modesty" and "respect" mainly control Chinese and Vietnamese speech acts. It is commonly believed that politeness makes a conversation become smoother and speakers will finish communicative tasks easily if they use suitable strategies of proposal.Finally, the conclusion summarizes the dissertation, points out its weaknesses and discusses possible future research directions.