A Study on the Pragmatic Features of Collocation
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1 2 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. TR ƯƠ NG VIÊN UNIVERSITY OF DANANG UNIVERSITY OF DANANG ************** Examiner 1: ……………………………………… Examiner 2: ……………………………………… HOÀNGHOÀNG TH THỊ HỊ HƯƠƯƠ NGNG GIANG GIANG AA STUDY STUDY ON ON THE THE PRAGMATIC PRAGMATIC FEATURES FEATURES OFOF COLLOCATION COLLOCATION USED USED IN IN ADVERTISING ADVERTISING HAIRHAIR CARE CARE PRODUCTS PRODUCTS IN IN ENGLISH ENGLISH AND AND VIETNAMESE VIETNAMESE The thesis will be defended at the Examination Council for the M.A. thesis, University of Danang. Time: 22/08/2010 Field Study: THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE Field Study: THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE Venue: University of Danang Code : 60.22.15. Code : 60.22.15. M.A. THESIS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE M.A. THESIS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE (A SUMMARY) (A SUMMARY) The original of this thesis is accessible for the purpose of reference at: - Library of the College of Foreign Languages, University of Danang. Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. TR ƯƠ NG VIÊN Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. TR ƯƠ NG VIÊN - The Information Resources Center, University of Danang. The thesis has been completed at the College of Foreign Languages, DANANG UNIVERSITY DANANG, 2010 DANANG, 2010 3 4 CHAPTER 1 because it’s about how people make sense of each other INTRODUCTION linguistically, but is can be a feustrating area of study because it 1.1 RATIONAL requires us to make sense of people and what they have in mind. Nowadays, together with the development of the society and “Collocation is the way words combine in a language to the world, communicating is an essential part in our daily life. The produce natural-sounding speech and writing”. Advertising is need for different ways to exchange their thoughts, which may be crucial in our modern society. It is designed to promote the sale of a made through language, signs, gestures, body, language, and so on. product or service …Since advertising is catchy and persuasive, However, language proves to be the most effective means, for it is advertisers tend to vary their ways and language so as to draw the capable of conveying all what you want while the others might attention of the potential consumers. This leads to the use of many sometimes be impossible. Advertising is among the many ways different collocations in advertising the same product or service. For conveying ideas in which language plays a very important role. this reality it is very necessary this topic. This study attempts to study Whenever you speak or write something, you make words the syntactic and pragmatic features of collocations in advertising in and sentences in such a way that it makes sense to the listener(s) or English and Vietnamese so that the research will give out some the reader(s) though you may not be aware of this. And this is the consideration and propose methods in using those. And above all, the role of syntax – studying the structures of phrases and sentences. In author of this research hopes to help Vietnamese learners of English addition, the role of pragmatics studying the relationship between understand better when translating and using products in advertising. linguistic forms and the users of those forms. George Yule assumes 1.2 JUSTIFICATION OF THE STUDY that in this three-part distinction- syntax, semantics and pragmatics – Collocation runs through the whole of the English language. only pragmatics allows humans into the analysis [, p.4-5]. No piece of natural spoken or written English is totally free of The advantage of studying language via pragmatic is that one cllocation. Choosing the right collocation will make the speech and can talk about people’s intended meanings, their assumption, their writing more natural and more native – like. And study of syntactic purposes or goals, and the kinds of actions (for example, requests) and pragmatics features of collocations will be a contribution to the that they are performing when they speak. The big disadvantage is understanding and using collocation of the learners. that all these very human concepts are extremely difficult to analyze 1.3 PURPOSES OF THE STUDY in a consistent and objective way. Thus, pragmatics is appealing 5 6 The study is to find out the syntactic and pragmatic features In this study, I will study collocations of “hair” used in of collocations used in advertising hair care products in English and advertising hair care products in written form collected from Vietnamese to point out the similarities and differences between advertisements on mass of communication such as newspapers, them. magazines, the Internet etc ….both in English and Vietnamese and is 1.4 OBJECTIVES limited in analyzing and discussing the syntactic and pragmatic This study is intended features of these collocations. - To collect and systematize some theoretical background for 1.7 ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY the study of collocations. There are five chapters included in the thesis - To analyze, synthesize, comment and illustrate the syntactic Chapter 1 consists of the rationale the justification the and pragmatic features of collocations with examples taken from purposes the objectives the research questions, the scope of the study, written advertisements in English and Vietnamese. some definitions of terms used in the thesis and organization of the - To show the similarities and differences in collocations study used in advertising hair care products between these two Chapter 2 is the theoretical background which includes the languages, in terms of syntax and pragmatics literature review, and some general features of syntactic and - To make some suggestions on using collocations effectively pragmatics of English and Vietnamese. for the English learners Chapter 3 is the one in which the methods of collecting 1.5 RESEARCH QUESTIONS analyzing data and describing data are presented This study will seek answers to the following questions: Chapter 4 focuses on analyzing and discussing the syntactic - What are the syntactic and pragmatic features of and pragmatics features of collocation of the words “hair”, “tóc” and collocations of “hair” and “tóc” used in advertising hair care their proper adjectives and the equivalents based on the findings. products in English and Vietnamese? Chapter 5 is the conclusion of what has been found and - What are the similarities and differences of these discussed. It is the summary of syntactic and pragmatics features of collocations in English and Vietnamese in terms of syntax and collocations of “hair” and “tóc” in advertising in English and pragmatics? Vietnamese and the implication of the thesis 1.6 SCOPE OF THE STUDY 7 8 CHAPTER 2 meaning used in advertisements. A study of collocations in LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL advertising in English and Vietnamese, (2006) Hoang Thi Bao Kim BACKGROUND presents the semantic and syntactic features used in advertisements. 2.1 PREVIOUS STUDIES Ms Bao Kim did research into syntactic and semantic features of the A rewiew of literature on previous studies relating to collocations of “skin” and “da” and had some findings on the collocations and language of advertising is presented in this section. similarities and differences in their using in English and Vietnamese Anna Braasch and Sussi Olsen (2005), in their paper as well as their frequency. In the research of Dao Tan Canh (2008), “Formalised Representation of Collocations in a Danish he finds down the syntactic and pragmatics features of collocation Computational Lexical”, used in advertising of hair care products and skincare products in English collocations have been studied and discussed in a English and Vietnamese and give out some similarities and variety of books. Collocations have been listed in such a way that differences between them. Besides, from different views, some they are called “word colloccations” in Oxford Collocations linguists approached advertising and advertising language, examining Dictionary (2003). the linguistic usage on billboards and in advertisements, the Stephan Gramley and Kurt-Michael Patzold (2004) express correspondence between forms and contents as well as the influence their viewpoints on the meaning, word classes, range of collocations of cultural factors such as: “V ề ngôn ng ữ trong qu ảng cáo” (Tr ần and the conditions and restrictions in collocations. Maria-Violeta Đình V ĩnh, Nguy ễn Đức Toàn, 1993), “Ngôn ng ữ qu ảng cáo-ph ươ ng Seretan (2006), in “Syntactic and Semantic Oriented Corpus pháp sao ph ỏng” (Nguy ễn Đức Dân, 1994), “V ề l ập lu ận trong qu ảng Investigation for Collocation Extraction, Translation and Generation” cáo” (Mai Xuân Huy, 1999), “Qu ảng cáo và ngôn ng ữ qu ảng cáo” In “The discourse of advertising” by Guy Cook (2003, 2 nd (Lý Tùng Hi ếu, 2004) etc… edition), the author provided a framework for analysis of 2.2 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND advertisements as a discursive genre. There have been some 2.2.1 Definitions of terms researches done into laguage of advertising in Vietnamese. In “A 2.2.1.1 Syntactic Features Discussion Concerning Linguistic Units and Meaning in English “Syntactic features are the features involving the rules Language Advertisements” (1993) Dinh Gia Hung and Ho Sy Thang governing the structure of a language such as the form of words, the Kiet discussed the features of English linguistic units and semantic 9 10 structure of phrases, clauses and sentences, word order, into phrases and sentences. In other words, when discussing collocation…” collocations we cannot help talking about common syntactic features 2.2.1.2 Pragmatic Features like word, phrases, sentences… Pragmatic features are the features involving the Collocation is two or more words that often go together. relationships between linguistic forms and the users of those forms. These combinations just sound “right” to native English speakers, The study of language via pragmatics is that one can talk about who use them all the time.