Gender Differences in Politeness Strategies in Negotiations in Sharktank America and Sharktank Vietnam: A Contrastive Analysis

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.54855/ijli.23222

Keywords:

contrastive analysis, politeness, negotiations, Shark Tank, Gender

Abstract

Gender and language have long been an interesting field in sociolinguistics and pragmatics. In the current study, politeness - one of the core issues of modern pragmatics, is adapted to hopefully shed great light on the issue in Vietnamese and American contexts to explore the gender differences in negotiations. Employing descriptive, qualitative, and quantitative methods, the data recorded from 10 conversations in Shark Tank Vietnam Season 3 TV program and 1tenconversations in Shark Tank America were transcribed and analyzed to reveal the different strategies based on Brown and Levinson's theory (1987) used by gender group of Sharks (investors). The gender linguistic differences under the contrastive analysis theory feature the prominent politeness strategies used by investors in American and Vietnamese negotiations. Those are very significant to support the evaluation of language and gender in the current society and in a cross-culture context.

Author Biography

Hoang Thu Ba, Thuongmai University

Hoang Thu Ba is a vice Director, Center of Research and Training Professional Skills. She is also a lecturer, Theoretical Linguistics Department, English Faculty, Thuongmai University. Since 2007 joining Thuongmai University, Thu Ba has been working as an English teacher and has been involved in studies related to ELT, Applied Linguistics, and Pragmatics. Ba has attended national and international conferences about ELT and linguistics. In 2019, Ba started a Ph.D. course to pursue the contrastive linguistics and social linguistics field in Vietnam. She has published a number ofarticles about pragmatics issues, motivation in learning and teaching English.

References

Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1978). Universals in language usage: Politeness phenomena. In Questions and politeness: Strategies in social interaction (pp. 56-311). Cambridge University Press.

Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage (Vol. 4). Cambridge university press.

Candilas, K. S., Diane, X. M., Gaid, J. K., & Kolog, P. J. (2023). Verbal learning styles: implications to college students' oral English skills. International Journal of Language Instruction, 2(1), 30-39. DOI: https://doi.org/10.54855/ijli.23213

Chew, G. C. L. (2011). Politeness in Vietnam. Politeness in East Asia, 208-225.

Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction ritual: essays on face-to-face interaction. Aldine.

Herbert, R. K. (1990). Sex-based differences in compliment behavior1. Language in Society, 19(2), 201-224.

Hobbs, P. (2003). The medium is the message: Politeness strategies in men's and women's voice mail messages. Journal of Pragmatics, 35(2), 243-262.

Holmes, J. (1986). Functions of 'you know in women's and men's speech, Language in Society, 15(1), 1- 22

Johnson, D. M., & Roen, D. H. (1992). Complimenting and involvement in peer reviews: Gender variation1. Language in Society, 21(1), 27-57.

Kitao, K. (1990). A study of Japanese and American perceptions of politeness inrequests. Doshisha Studies of English, 50, 178-210

Lakoff, R. (1975). Language and woman's place, New York: Harper and Row.

Leech, G. (1983). Principles of Pragmatics, London: Longman.

Litvinova, A. V., & Larina, T. V. (2023). Mitigation tools and politeness strategies in invitation refusals: American and Russian communicative cultures. Training, Language and Culture, 7(1), 116-130. DOI:10.22363/2521-442X-2023-7-1-116-130

Mahmood, A. S., Saad, N. S. M., & Nur, N. M. (2023). The Ups and Downs of Learning and Using English: Aviation Students' Voices. International Journal of Language Instruction, 2(1), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.54855/ijli.23211

Nguyen, D. T., & Le Khac, C. (2021). The Vietnamese greetings in Mekong Delta, Vietnam. International Journal of Linguistics, Literature, and Culture, 7(2), 82-89. DOI:10.21744/ijllc.v7n2.1353

Nguyen, H. N. (2023). Teaching English Sounds to Vietnamese Secondary School Students: From Theories to Applications Using Learner-centered Methods. International Journal of Language Instruction, 2(1), 16–29. https://doi.org/10.54855/ijli.23212

Olshtain, E., & Weinbach, L. (1993). Interlanguage features of the speech act of complaining. In G. Kasper & S. Blum-Kulka (Eels.), Interlanguage pragmatics (pp. 281-297). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Pham, T. M. T., & Yeh, A. (2020). Politeness of Vietnamese Students in Writing Request Email in English: a Course-based and Socio-pragmatic Study. International Journal of Language and Literary Studies, 2(2), 109-128. https://doi.org/10.36892/ijlls.v2i2.202

Pilkington, J. (1998). Don't try and make out that I'm nice!' The different strategies women and men use when gossiping. Language and gender: A reader, 254-269.

Sienes, M. J. V., & Catan, J. E. C. (2021). The Speech Act of Apology by Filipino Call Center Agents. International Journal of TESOL & Education, 2(1), 117–128. https://doi.org/10.54855/ijte.22218

Takahashi, S. (1996). Pragmatic transferability. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 18, 189-223.

Tanaka, N. (1988). Politeness: Some problems for Japanese speakers of English. JALT Journal, 9, 81-102.

Tannen, D. (1994). Talking from 9 to 5: How women's and men's conversational styles affect who gets heard, who gets credit, and what gets done at work. William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1350 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10019.

Ton, T. N. (2022). Meaning as Use: The pragmatics of Vietnamese speech practice. In The Routledge Handbook of Asian Linguistics (pp. 376-392). Routledge.

Trosborg, A. (1987). Apology strategies in native/non-natives. Journal of Pragmatics, 11, 147-167.

Van Eemeren, F. H., & Grootendorst, R. (2003). A pragma-dialectical procedure for a critical discussion. Argumentation, 17(4), 365-386.

Vu, T. T. H. (1999). Politeness in modern Vietnamese: A sociolinguistic study of a Hanoi speech community (pp. 2001-2001). University of Toronto.

Yule, G. (1996). Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Downloads

Published

10-06-2023

How to Cite

Hoang, T. B. (2023). Gender Differences in Politeness Strategies in Negotiations in Sharktank America and Sharktank Vietnam: A Contrastive Analysis. International Journal of Language Instruction, 2(2), 21–36. https://doi.org/10.54855/ijli.23222

Issue

Section

Research Article