2.1.

      Cross-cultural pragmatics
Born with the function of communicating, language is closely linked to the
culture in which it exists and serves. Obviously, culture provides land for
language to develop, and in its turn, language operates to serve the culture. They
are really interrelated and interdependent. Through language, speakers expose
their culture, and with a knowledge of the cultural background, hearers may
realize their partner’s culture in spite of the fact that individuals differ in the way
they use.
It is the fact that there is no clear cut between cultures, which often causes
difficulties for foreigners in communication with people from different cultures.
Therefore, it is very necessary for cross-cultural communicators to be aware of
what the pragmatics is and what the differences between their cultures are in
order to avoid culture shock and to ensure successful communication.
According to Stephen C. Levinson (1983:21), “pragmatics is the study of the
relationship between language and context that are basic to an account of
language understanding”. Pragmatics, on the whole, investigates the way in
which language is appropriate to the context in which it occurs. Therefore,
pragmatics goes beyond the meanings implied in individual words and word
order.
As for Richards (1992:284), pragmatics focuses on the three main aspects:
 How the interpretation and use of utterances depend on knowledge of
the real world.
 How the speakers use and understand speech acts.
 How the structure of sentences is influenced by the relationship between
the speakers and the hearers.
Yule (1986:87) defines cross-cultural pragmatics as the study of differences
in expectations based on cultural schemata is part of a broad area of
investigation generally.
2.2.      Issues of Politeness, Directness and Indirectness
What is politeness?
According to Thomas (1995: 150), ''politeness is a more general matter of
expressing (or rather, of giving the appearance of expressing) consideration to
others.''
Also in terms of culture, politeness is regarded as ''the idea of polite social
behaviors etiquette, within a culture'' (G. Yule - 1996: 60)
Each society has a great deal of rules or ideas towards etiquette, thus,
politeness differs or greatly varies between cultures. For example, in the first
meeting it is not customary for an Englishman to ask someone about their
personal life. The following questions, therefore, are taboos:
“Is your job a well-paid one?"
or '’How old are you?''
In the meantime, these questions are highly acceptable in the Vietnamese
culture since the hearer may think that the speaker is considerate.
The degree of politeness, which is accompanied with directness and
indirectness is still controversial among linguists. However, they all share the
opinion that Directness, Indirectness and Politeness are closely interlinked and
associated with different speech acts.
Blum-Lulka (1987:131) believes that “Politeness is defined as the
interactional balance achieved between two needs: the need to pragmatic clarity
and the need to avoid coerciveness. This balance is achieved in the case of
conventional indirectness, which indeed received the highest ratings for
politeness ''.
It might be the case that when giving a face-threatening act, indirectness
degree is measured as an indicator of reducing or minimizing the threat, which is
equal to politeness. Direct strategies, in the favor of pragmatics clarity or non -
coerciveness, can be considered to be impolite because they indicate a lack of
concern with face and non conventional indirect strategies  can be considered as
impolite because they indicate a lack of concern for pragmatic clarity.
Leech (1983: l08) suggests that given the same prepositional content, it is
possible “to increase the degree of politeness by using a more and more indirect
kind of illocution '' because indirect illocution is regarded as more polite by
increasing the degree of option.
If a teacher says to her student:
Could you say again your example, please?
She uses her utterance in a polite and indirect way. By doing so the teacher
(1)  encourages her/his student to be self- confident enough to say the example
again, (2) does not use the power of teacher on the student, and (3) gives a soft
and beautiful request but does not impose the reaction of the student by using
words like '' Could'', ''Please''.
Leech (1983: l08) also intensifies that: “Indirect illocutions tend to be more
polite because of the degree of optimality and the more indirect an illocution is,
the more diminished and tentative its force tends to be ''.
There is a distinctive link between politeness and indirectness in terms of
the two main types of indirectness: conventional and non-conventional.
 Blum-Kulka (1987:132) assumes ''Politeness and directness are in the case
of conventional indirectness, but not in the case of non-conventional
indirectness”.  The example:
Chị ơi, hết  mưa là  nắng  hửng  lên thôi ( Luck emerges from loss and
sorrow) can be understood in different ways :
(l) The speaker comforts the hearer
(2) The speaker hopes the better future is coming.
However, Blum-Kulka also thinks ''Indirectness does not necessarily imply
politeness that is the reason why the most indirect strategies cannot obviously be
regarded as the most polite ones ''. The hearer's face can be threatened by the
utterance:
“Khiếp ở đâu ra mà bẩn như ma bùn thế ?”
(Few, you look as if you were covered in mud)
And of course it is not as polite as:“Em hãy rửa mặt đi”(Wash your face).
2.3. Expressing sympathy
Expressing sympathy is defined in Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary
(2005) as “an act of feeling sorry for somebody, showing that you understanding
and caring about somebody’s problem. Expressing sympathy is regarded as an
act of giving others some comfort through utterances in view of speech act.
Eg: A: I’ve lost all my money and credit card.
      B: Oh! Don’t be so sad. Lost money saves life!
Pragmatically, B produces utterances containing an act of sharing unhappy
feeling with A and comforts A by confirming the good side of the misfortune with
a hope for a better future.
Sympathy exists when the feelings or emotions of one person are deeply
understood and even appreciated by another person. In common usage,
sympathy is usually making known one's understanding of another's sorrows or
suffering, but it can also refer to being aware of other (positive) emotions as well.
3. Methodology and data

The study consists of five parts. The first part is the introduction of the study.
The second part will be the theoretical background of the definition of sympathy,
directness, indirectness and politeness will be reviewed. Methodological issue
will be discussed in the third part, describing the subjects, the instruments of the
study, the data collection procedure and the data analysis procedure. The next
part looks at the collected and analyzed data to get the findings. The last part of
the study will present the conclusion.
 As mentioned earlier, statistic analysis and comparative analysis are the
main techniques used in the study. The data were analyzed by the following
procedure: First, the data were gathered and organized in tables so that it is
easier to be compared. Then the data from Vietnamese subjects were compared
with the data from the English subjects to identify the differences between these
two group’s sympathy expressing. Finally, the identified differences were
compared with the Vietnamese to determine if the differences were due to
pragmatic transfer from Vietnamese, more attention is paid to the part 2 of the
questionnaire which focuses on sympathy expressing in certain situations.
Interviews are conducted with some English native speakers so that the
researcher can understand more about the English sympathy expressing.
The data was collected from two groups of subjects: one group of
Vietnamese subjects and one group of English subjects. The Vietnamese
subjects are twenty in number: ten of them are students who are studying
English at a Foreign Language Center (upper intermediate level) and the others
are teachers of English from different parts of the country taking a master course
at National University of Hanoi who have already had experiences in teaching
English in Vietnamese. However, they have little chance to interact with native
speakers of English. The English subjects are only five in number. Three of them
are teachers at the Apollo centre, one is working for Bacninh water supplying and
sewage company where the researcher is living, and a professor at Högskolan
Dalarna University, Mrs. Christine Cox Eriksson.
The advantage is that they have just been working in Vietnam for a short
time (not more than two years), or never been to Vietnam so they have not been
affected by Vietnamese traditions and customs.
The next part deals with the way of expressing sympathy in English and
Vietnamese, which bases on the questionnaire to collect data from a number of
verified population of various different ages, gender, occupations....
4. Data analysis and findings

4.1. Data analysis

* Situation 1: How Vietnamese and English people often sympathize a
person who is suffering from her/ his mother’s sudden death.
Vietnamese English
- Xin chân thành chia buồn - It’s really a big loss.
(I’m very sorry to hear that).
- May be it is his/her fate.
- Âu cũng là cái số (It’s her/
- I’m very sorry to hear about
his fate)
your loss.
- Xin chân thành chia buồn,
đúng  là  trăm đường  không tránh  - When her/his number is off.
đươc  số (Sorry to hear that, but
- Man propose, God dispose.
noone can escape from fate).
Such a pity.
- Death when it comes will
have no denial.
.- The die is cast