1. Full name: Nguyễn Vân Khánh                                   2. Sex: Female

3. Date of birth: 30/04/1983                                            4. Place of birth: Hải Dương

5. Admission decision number: 2416/2015/QĐ-XHNV; Dated: 13/10/2015 by Rector of USSH, VNU

6. Changes in academic process: none

7. Official thesis title: A contrastive study on requests in English and Vietnamese (in the light of politeness)

8. Major: Comparative – Contrastive Linguistics              9. Code: 62 22 02 41

10. Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nguyễn Văn Độ

11. Summary of the new findings of the thesis:

- Established a theoretical framework for the study, namely, theories on requests and politeness with its kernel – Cost-Benefit, options together with numerous means to minimize the cost for H/O which was developed by Leech were chosen.

- More than 270 English and Vietnamese directives (taken from bilingual English – Vietnamese literature works)

- The writer identified the structure of a request in both English and Vietnamese requests which consists of two parts: the head act and the modification. The head act is often categorized into the direct or conventional indirect act. It can function independently or together with a number of various modifiers. The modification part plays the role of softening the illocutionary force of a request. These elements can stand before or after the head act. They are vocatives, personal names, titles, openers, grounders, hesitators… However, the success of the thesis does not lie in these formal identifications, but the finding of similarities and differences in the above mentioned areas of the request. For example, (a) there is no similarity in terms of the illocutionary force of the bilingual requests when they are compared and contrasted. To be more exact, while in the English language, the directives, by the criteria developed by Leech, are orders but in Vietnamese they are no longer orders anymore; they are perfect requests. The reason is, the Vietnamese complementary means in turn these orders into requests; (b) there are also differences between the two languages in terms of the modifier of the request.

- Strategies for requests in English and Vietnamese are also described, compared and contrasted in detail. The results allow to make a remark that, it is not easy to state firmly that English people prefer indirect requests in the form of a question and the Vietnamese favor direct requests in the form of an order together with various pragmatic modifiers. Our research revealed, in many cases, particularly in formal and diplomatic situations, there are not really many differences in the use of requests in the form of question between the English and Vietnamese. Even, if we observe when people make requests in daily life, it is not difficult to find that more and more Vietnamese use indirect requests exactly like English.

- Regarding politeness in requests in English and Vietnamese (based on bilingual data), the author has carefully described, compared and contrasted. In general, the results of the comparison and contrast show that new findings share a lot of similarity with what have been stated in terms of politeness in requests in the two languages. For example, the English people prefer making indirect requests which have interrogative form and negative politeness while the Vietnamese favor direct requests which have imperative form and positive politeness, or politeness marker “please”, when being used, especially with rising tone in the end of the sentence, has capability in making a request more polite. Requests can be softened when being complemented by various kinds of internal and external modifiers. In English, grammatical means (moods, aspects, and tenses) play an important role in reducing the imposition derived from the request, equally making the request more polite…

- The findings of our research also revealed some more not less interesting points in the aspects of using lexical means (various kinds of modifiers) by Vietnamese to express politeness shown by grammatical means (moods, aspects, and tenses) in English to make requests, or in exploiting tag-questions to increase the level of tentativeness in the act of requesting in English and its Vietnamese corresponding means used in improving politeness in requests.

12. Practical applicability: the findings of this thesis can be useful in teaching and studying languages, translation work or comparing or contrasting the two languages English and Vietnamese.

13. Further research directions: research on other speech acts or research on requests in situational conversations using the politeness theory of G. Leech.

14. Thesis-related publications:

1. Nguyễn Vân Khánh (2018), “Lịch sự nhìn từ quan điểm của Leech”, Tạp chí Khoa học Ngoại ngữ Quân sự (14), tr.3-11.

2. Nguyễn Vân Khánh (2018), “Hành động yêu cầu nhìn từ góc độ Lợi – Thiệt”, Tạp chí Khoa học Ngoại ngữ Quân sự (15), tr.90-96