TAILIEUCHUNG - If my mother were still alive, I and you would definitely get divorced: A case study of a Vietnamese woman’s refusing in interaction

This paper presents the major findings from a recent study conducted to explore how a Vietnamese woman refuses a high-stakes advice or request in everyday conversations. Data used in this study are conversations excerpted from a TV series entitled Những công dân tập thể (lit. the citizens living in the same apartment building). | “IF MY MOTHER WERE STILL ALIVE, I AND YOU WOULD DEFINITELY GET DIVORCED”: A CASE STUDY OF A VIETNAMESE WOMAN’S REFUSING IN INTERACTION Nguyen Trong Du* School of Foreign Languages, Thai Nguyen University, Quyet Thang, Thai Nguyen, Vietnam Received 16 August 2018 Revised 25 January 2019; Accepted 29 January 2019 Abstract: This paper presents the major findings from a recent study conducted to explore how a Vietnamese woman refuses a high-stakes advice or request in everyday conversations. Data used in this study are conversations excerpted from a TV series entitled Những công dân tập thể (lit. the citizens living in the same apartment building). The analytical tool is a combination of Conversation Analysis (Hutchby & Wooffitt, 1998, 2008; Sacks, 1992a, 1992b) and Multimodal Interactional Analysis (Norris, 2004, 2009). The results show that (1) Vietnamese refusing is often performed concurrently by different modes of communication and language is only one of them; (2) refusing a high-stakes advice or request often takes a long time to negotiate in a conversation and through a series of conversations; and (3) Vietnamese women’s responsibility to obey their parents, a Confucian teaching, still has its role in contemporary Vietnamese society. Keywords: Vietnamese refusing, refusal, interactional data, conversation analysis, multimodal interactional analysis 1. Introduction 1 In the past 40 years, research on refusing has witnessed a significant growth in different ways. First, refusing has been explored in different languages and cultures such as English, Chinese, Spanish, Persian, Arabic, and Japanese1. Second, refusing together with its related phenomena such as face, facework, and politeness have been explored from the point of view of different disciplines including anthropology, sociolinguistics, linguistic ethnography, psycholinguistics, among others 2 Tel.: 84-912452262 Email: 1 For a relatively full reference of speech act .

• Xã hội học
• Vietnamese refusing
• Interactional data
• Conversation analysis
• Multimodal interactional analysis
• Vietnamese women’s responsibility