Invite is literally translated as ‘mời’ in Vietnamese. The Vietnamese verb ‘mời’
(invite)63 is one among the most common verbs in the Vietnamese language (Đ. H. Nguyễn, 1979) and inviting acts are popular in Vietnamese culture of hospitality and solidarity (see Chapter 3). However, this verb and the acts of inviting in Vietnamese have not been explored in as much depth and breath as invitations in English and other languages. This might be because this verb and the acts of inviting in Vietnamese present a great deal of complexity in their real use, especially in regards to meal contexts, on which this study focuses. Most studies of Vietnamese inviting acts rarely distinguish between the verb and the acts, which are both expressed in the same form of ‘mời’ 64 ; whereas, the inviting acts can be performed and described by a number of
63
‘mời’ has another less common meaning ‘to eat’ with a politeness connotation (see Chapter 5)
64 Vietnamese verbs have no inflections denoting gender, person, number, tense, mood, or voice like
English verbs (Nguyễn, 1979), so the same form of Vietnamese ‘mời can be equivalent to all English forms of invite, invited, inviting, invitational, invitation, invitations, or invites
variants in reality65. Furthermore, studies of Vietnamese inviting acts included examples of invitations at mealtimes but tended to decontextualise when interpreting them.
‘Mời’ (invite) was defined in an authoritative Vietnamese dictionary as ‘to politely and
respectfully request or show the desire or want for other people to do something’66 (Hoàng, 1994, p. 624). Examples such as ‘to invite you to come and visit’ or ‘to invite you to have a seat’ were given to illustrate this definition. Another example, “Mời cơm thân mật (mời ăn cơm)” (cordial and amicable invitations at meals, i.e., to invite
someone to eat rice/to have meal) was also provided. This example referred to the invitations extended frequently in and around Vietnamese meals that are known as Vietnamese mealtime ritual invitations (VMRIs), the focus of this study. Under this definition and with illustrated examples, ‘Mời’ (invite) was presented here as both an
act of inviting and a verb.
The semantics of the verbs ‘mời’ and ‘rủ’, were investigated in Nguyễn (1979). The verb ‘mời’ was classified into causative verbs; equivalent to the English verbs ‘invite’, ‘make’, ‘permit’, ‘urge’, or ‘forbid’. It had a synonym of ‘rủ’, which was in the same
group and defined similarly as “to invite [informally, for a Dutch treat]” (p. XXX). These verbs were also called ‘telescoping’ verbs since, according to Nguyễn (1979), they followed the construction of V1 N V2 with N (noun) working at the same time as the object of the main verb V1 and as the subject of the second verb V2. Nguyễn (1979, p. XXVII) also pointed out that Vietnamese ‘mời’ is different from English ‘invite’ in that the structure, X mời Y ăn cơm [ X invited Y to have dinner] can be shortened to
either:
X mời Y [ X invited Y]
or: X mời ăn cơm [ X invited (someone) to have dinner]
Seeing the verbs ‘mời’ and ‘rủ’ sharing the same function as invitations and finding
formal differences in the grammatical structures between ‘mời’ and its English equivalent ‘invite’ are great contributions in Nguyễn (1979), which could rarely be comprehensively achieved in later studies of these verbs and Vietnamese invitations. Although the given examples are food/meal-related, Nguyễn (1979), however, did not point out that the shortened structures with ‘mời’ are common only in meal-time contexts, and rarely found in other contexts. He did not either refer to the essential
65
see Sections 4.2, 4.3, and Chapter 5
66
difference between ‘mời’ and ‘rủ’ that the latter is not a performative verb, and
therefore, it cannot substitute for ‘mời’ in the above invitations although they are
synonyms in reporting acts of inviting.
Đào’s works (2011a, 2011b) are amongst few pragmatic studies focusing on Vietnamese inviting acts. Her analysis was theoretically framed by SAT and based on the examples collected from literature (novels and short stories), but not natural data. According to Đào (2011a, p. 16), ‘mời’ (inviting) and ‘rủ’ (asking/requesting others to
do something together67) are two different acts although they are very close to each other. Framed by Searle’s illocutionary act classification, ‘mời’ was grouped by Đào
(2011b) into demand acts, which is a subset of directives. ‘Mời’ (inviting) was
characterised by both forces of ‘demand’ (tính cầu) and ‘request’ (tính khiến), but the ‘demand’ force was stronger than the ‘request’ force. In Đào’s table of 18 demand acts68
, ranked on the basis of the force of the illocutionary act (declining force of demand and increasing force of request), ‘mời’ ranked 11th with an ‘average’ force of demand. It was
ranked below ‘rủ’ (asking), which was ranked 10th with a ‘low’ force of demand. This means that the force of request in ‘mời’ was higher than in ‘rủ’. They were, therefore,
two different acts in Đào’s categories, as opposed to Nguyễn’s (1979) categorising them both as invitations (see earlier).
Đào (2011a) also distinguished the act of ‘mời’ from the act of ‘rủ’ in terms of their
means of expression. She offered two types for the acts of inviting. Explicit expression, or K1 expression (her term), contained the verb ‘mời’; implicit expression, ‘K2
expression’, did not contain this verb. In her opinion, ‘mời’ was a performative demand verb (vị từ ngôn hành cầu khiến). It was a ‘common and standard verb’ and could be
substituted with the 20th-Century synonym ‘rước’ (invite solemnly), but not with ‘mời mọc’ since this synonym was not a performative demand verb. According to Đào,
implicit expression contained a modal predicate with demand meaning (vị từ tình thái cầu khiến) ‘hãy’ (please) and/or four demand-meaning particles ‘đi’, ‘đã’, ‘nào’, ‘nhé’.
67
She cited this definition of the verb ‘rủ’ in a Vietnamese Dictionary (Hoàng, 1992, p. 836)
68 She listed 18 Vietnamese verbs ra lệnh (Command), cấm (prohibition), ngăn (forbid), giục (urge), cho/cho phép (allowance), yêu cầu (requirement), đề nghị (request), dặn (tell), khuyên (advice), rủ (invitation), mời (invitation), nhờ (ask), chúc (wish), xin/xin phép (ask for permission), cầu (solicitation), nài (insist), van (plea), lạy (pray), but she provided only 14 English equivalents as Command, prohibition, forbid, urge, allowance, requirement, request, advice, invitation, ask, wish, ask for permission,
solicitation, and playfulness (Đào, 2011b, p. 66). ‘Rủ’ is clearly amongst the verbs that were not provided with their equivalents by this author.
She pointed out that ‘rủ’ had onlythe implicit expression that used a modal predicate with demand meaning ‘hãy’ (please) and six demand-meaning particles ‘đi’, ‘xem’, ‘đã’, ‘thôi’, ‘nào’, ‘nhé’. Thus, unlike the act of ‘rủ’, the act of ‘mời’ had both explicit expression and implicit expression; the act of ‘mời’ did not go with two demand- meaning particles ‘xem’ and‘thôi’.
In terms of meaning, Đào (2011a) claimed that all explicit expressions, utterances with the verb ‘mời/rước’ (invite), were performing the act of ‘mời’ (inviting); those that were
not explicit (utterances without these verbs) could be identified by the ‘request’. If the utterances were clear in requesting the hearer to do the actions with the speaker, they were the act of ‘rủ’; otherwise, they were the act of ‘mời’ (inviting).
I partly agree with Đào’s distinction between ‘mời’ and ‘rủ’ as two different acts only
when they refer to actions that are not related to eating or drinking. However, when eating/drinking is the action, especially in the implicit expressions at meal context, the distinction may be blurry and even confusing. For example, she cited “Ăn cho vui, cô
Nga” (Please eat together for rejoicing, aunt Nga) as an act of ‘mời’ (p. 15). However, based on her distinction in terms of meaning, this utterance is also an act of ‘rủ’, because by extending this utterance, the extender clearly requests the hearer to do something with (eating together).
Đào considers that ‘mời’ and ‘rủ’ have different functions, but my findings do not
support this conclusion in the setting of meals. Take this example, “Thôi, vào ăn cơm đi anh’ (Honey, please come in to have meal!), which is commonly extended by a participant to get her husband to join their everyday meals. In Đào’s (2011a) distinction, it will be categorised as an act of ‘rủ’ rather than ‘mời’, because it contains the demand-
meaning particle ‘thôi’. However, it is the stakeholder of this utterance who reported this act, in her words, both formally as ‘mời’ and informally as ‘rủ’, and even as
‘kêu69’(calling/asking/telling).
Therefore, in the meal context, I suggest that ‘mời’ and ‘rủ’ are both acts of extending mealtime invitations. This suggestion is consistent with Nguyễn’s (1979) proposing that ‘rủ’ is an informal synonym of ‘mời’. Indeed, relating to food and meals, there are no
clear boundaries between them. They both share inviting functions, which differ from
69
each other just in terms of formality. The formality of contextual situations that often depends on interlocutor relationship or social distance and personal perceptions towards that relationship can mediate the choice of which verbs to describe the utterances, yet the utterances are invitations (further discussed in Section 4.5.3 below).
A number of comparative or contrastive linguistic works (e.g., T. H. Dang, 1992; T. M. D. Dang, 2001; Lưu, 2007; T. K. Q. Nguyen, 2004; V. T. Nguyễn, 2012) examined cross-cultural similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese invitations. Framed by SAT, these studies all viewed invitations in the two languages as speech acts despite their discrepancies in being defined as direct or indirect invitations. They proposed that invitations in the two languages contained either Pre-invite+Invite (head act) or no Pre-invite (termed ‘Lead’ by Wolfson, 1981), but in Vietnamese, the head act (Invite) could be repeated. Regarding the structures, invitations in both languages were found to be performed by expressions with and without performative verb (invite/mời), but the structures in Vietnamese had more variety. However, the types of variation were not yet clearly explained in these studies.
Differences between English and Vietnamese invitations were found mainly in the use of politeness strategies, whose analyses were based on the universal concepts developed by English politeness theorists such as Brown and Levison (1987), Lakoff (1973), and Leech (1983). Some studies also found differences in that Vietnamese invitations were more influenced by socio-cultural variables such as status/power, age, and gender on language use. In this way, these studies have oriented to societal aspects and their influences on the language. However, interactional functions of the language use in relation with these societal aspects have not been focused on.
It can also be seen that studies of Vietnamese invitations have commonly used a comparative approach to show their similarities and differences in relation to English invitations in some speech situations. However, these cross-cultural studies tended to view Vietnamese invitations through the lens of viewing English invitations. In this way, they did not explore invitations as cultural acts despite their attempts to compare the language of inviting acts in the two cultures. They exposed their limitations in the lack of focuses also on socio-cultural conventions, which co-construct meanings of invitations.
Studies of Vietnamese invitations included examples of mealtime invitations in their discussions; however, they interpreted them using the same interpretative framework as for all Vietnamese (and English) invitations. In other words, these more language- oriented studies tended to describe mealtime invitations like any other types of invitations, disregarding their contextual dependence and socio-cultural attribution. They, therefore, lack what Nahar (2006) regards as “the necessary sensitivity to the versatility of genre description” (p. 692). Furthermore, none of these cross-cultural studies gathered data in their natural settings, but from non-natural sources such as questionnaires, discourse completion tasks, or role-plays, which tended to provide ‘obvious language’ types of data. Meanwhile, regarding meal contexts, Vietnamese invitations drawn from ‘real-world’ and daily-use offer a wide range of data, which go far beyond their ‘obvious’ linguistic convention. Only exemplary utterances are not enough to thoroughly interpret mealtime invitations and mealtime invitations are not fully identified in isolation from their meal contexts. Mealtime invitations need to be situated in their particular discursive contexts for comprehensive explanations. Therefore, when these studies treated examples of mealtime invitations as all other invitations (and as speech acts), discrepancies in their interpretations happened (discussed further in Section 4.5.2 below).
In short, the limitations in previous studies of invitations in terms of interpretative frameworks require a more comprehensive interpretative framework for mealtime invitations. Mealtime invitations are instances of what Agar (1996) defines as ‘languaculture’, which integrates both linguistic and cultural elements. The interpretations of their language, hence, cannot be separated from the socio-cultural norms that are always in the background that native speakers make sense of them when issuing and receiving them. This means that the more language-oriented interpretative framework or the one that restricts the interpretation of mealtime invitations to linguistic acts only would not work well with mealtime invitations. In the next section, I will propose a framework for interpreting (Vietnamese) mealtime invitations.