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1. INTRODUCTION

To the present tendency of social development, mass media play an important

part in the life. Mass media are tools for the transfer of information, concepts,

and ideas to both general and specific audiences, the mass media such as

television, newspapers, radio, internet, books, etc.. Thereby books, historically,

had been in use for centuries. Books may also refer to a literature work, or a

main division of such a work. In library and information science, a book is called

a monograph, to distinguish it from serial periodicals such as magazines,

journals or newspapers. The book is produced with the intellectual investments

in a long time and considered “spiritual child” of writer. To write or publish a

book is possible to last a lot of years, even the writer’s whole life, so the

published book is the concise knowledges and experiences that the writer

recommends to. On coming to book, readers will be able to shorten the self-

experiential process in the real life and get how to live rather than they have to

experience by themselves. In other words, reading book also makes the readers

interested, even addicted, they feel like they are living in the plot which the

writer built, even they cannot put the book down until the last page. The

vehement attraction of book excites the writers to continue writing; inspire the

film directors to adapt into the films such as Gone With The Wind by  Margaret

Mitchell was adapted into film in 1939; The Twilight Series by Stephenie Meyer

have been adapted consecutively from 2008 to 2010.

With the above conveniences, book seems to become an essential necessity in

the daily life; book is popularized everywhere and diversified the genre for ages.

However, there is a problem that approaching the qualitative and best-selling

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books is not easy for readers in the dozens of books, so to help readers to have a

best choice is what reviewing book is really required.

1.1. Statement of the problem

In the countries with highly educational development, the interest in

studying book review is attached special importance; it even becomes a main

subject in university curriculum in the United States, Australia, and Canada. In

Vietnam, this subject area is still strange and there has not been study and

materials about it yet.

In the recent years, the need of importing books as well as introducing

foreign books to Vietnam, in one word, has been increasing much; there are most

kinds of books in a bookstore, a library, or on the internet. People feel highly

enthusiastic in reading books, even the books in their native languages. In other

words, a lot of good books in Vietnamese need introducing to the foreign

countries.

Because of such the large number of books and people’s enthusiasm, I

recognize that book reviews are indispensable to help the readers to approach the

content, slot, argument and merit of books. Book review is not just a summary or

introduction to a book, but also requires the reviewer’s opinion and justification

about the writer’s viewpoint. To carry out well a book review, the reviewer must

be highly qualified in writing skill in order to describe and develop a review best

as well as know how to lead it up to the readers most attractively and

convincingly.

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Besides, I also recognize linguistically that the book reviews use a large

number of syntactic features, lexical features cohesive devices that refer to the

terms of discourse analysis.

For this reason, I choose to do research on the topic “A DISCOURSE

ANALYSIS OF BOOK REVIEWS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE”. This

thesis is carried out with the hope that the research result will provide certain

linguistically useful practical knowledge for teachers and learners of English,

especially students majoring in writing as well as those who are keen on the

field.

1.2. Aims and objectives

1.2.1. Aims:

This study is expected to provide the Vietnamese learners of English with a

description of discourse features of book reviews in English and Vietnamese.

1.2.2. Objectives:

- To find out the discourse features (layout, lexical andsyntactic features,

and cohesive devices) of book reviews in English and Vietnamese.

- To find out and explain the similarities & differences between the two

groups.

- To suggest some implications for teachers and learners of English,

especially students in charge of writing.

1.3. Research questions

The study tries to answer the following questions:

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- What are the typical discourse characteristics of book reviews in

English and Vietnamese in terms of their layout, lexical features,

syntactic structures and cohesive devices?

- What are similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese

book reviews in terms of layout, lexical feature, syntactic structures

and cohesive devices?

- What are some suggestions for teaching and learning English as well as

writing book reviews?

1.4. Definitions of terms

1.4.1. Book review

According to the website lavc.edu, a book review is a description, critical

analysis, and an evaluation on the quality, meaning, and significance of a book,

not a retelling. It should focus on the book's purpose, content, and authority. A

critical book review is not a book report or a summary. It is a reaction paper in

which strengths and weaknesses of the material are analyzed. It should include a

statement of what the author has tried to do, evaluates how well (in the opinion

of the reviewer) the author has succeeded, and presents evidence to support this

evaluation.

According to wikipedia.org, a book review (or book report) is a form of

literary criticism in which a book is analyzed based on content, style, and merit.

It is often carried out in periodicals, as school work, or on the internet. Reviews

are also often published in magazines and newspapers. Its length may vary from

a single paragraph to a substantial essay. Such a review often contains

evaluations of the book on the basis of personal taste. Reviewers, in literary

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periodicals, often use the occasion of a book review for a display of learning or

to promulgate their own ideas on the topic of a fiction or non-fiction work. At

the other end of the spectrum, some book reviews resemble simple plot

summaries.

1.4.2. Discourse Analysis

Discourse is one of those elastic terms which one sometimes encounters in

linguistics. It is used in somewhat different ways by different scholars. Discourse

is used beyond the boundary of isolated sentences. It means that any sequence of

language in written or spoken form is concerned with the use of language in

stretches larger than a sentence.

According to Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistics (1995) discourse

is defined as “a general term for examples of language use.” It refers to larger

units such as paragraphs, conversations and interviews which are produced as a

result of an act of communication.

David Nunan made some extracts from a number of different sources about

discourse in “Introducing Discourse Analysis” (1993). Consider the following

statements which he quoted:

Discourse is a “continuous stretch of (especially spoken) language larger

than a sentence, often constituting a coherent unit such as a sermon, argument,

joke or narrative” (Crystal 1992:25)

Discourse is “stretches of language perceived to be meaningful, unified and

purposive” (Cook 1989:156)

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David Nunan himself reserved the term discourse to refer to the

interpretation of the communicative event in context.

Briefly, all concepts of discourse stress the communicative dynamics for

language. Therefore, there is a strong tendency for discourse analysts to rely

more heavily on observation of language use during interactions in natural

sequences of sentences.

In this paper, I take the view of Brown and Yule [1] to recommend that we

should adopt a compromise position which suggests that discourse analysis, on

the one hand, includes “the study of linguistic forms and the regularizes of their

contribution” and on the other hand, involves a consideration of the “general

principles of interpretation” by which people normally make sense of what they

hear and read.

1.4.3. Cohesion

According to the Dictionary of Language Teaching & Applied Linguistics

(Richards, Platt J. and Platt H. [16]), cohesion is the grammatical and/or lexical

relationships between the different elements of a text. Also, Halliday and Hassan

[11] state that cohesion is how words and expressions are connected using

cohesive devices which can be categorized into five groups: reference,

substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion.

In Vietnamese, Trần Ngọc Thêm [30] categorizes cohesion into two facets:

content cohesion and form cohesion. “Content cohesion” is expressed through a

system of form cohesion devices and “form cohesion” is embodied in content

cohesion. Thus, a coherent discourse should include these two facets which help

to distinguish a discourse from disconnected jumbles.

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1.4.4. Coherence

Coherence is still an elusive concept. Coherence has been seen as one of the

prime conditions or characteristics of a text: “Without coherence, a text is not

properly a text” said Hatch [4]. Coherence can be generally viewed in two

aspects: text-based and reader-based coherence (John, [15]). The former refers to

the features associated with internal structure of the text itself. The latter,

meanwhile, is associated with the meaningful aspect of writer-reader/speaker-

hearer interaction. So, coherence is the implicit link in the text, it exists in how

people interpret text rather than in the texts themselves (Yule, [16]).

2. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

It is not excessive to say that books play an indispensible role in transferring

information, experiences, knowledge to readers and learners, and with a rapid

increase of a large number of books in the present globalization trend, reviewing

them is really essential. Moreover, to approach the books fastest and most

effectively is to ask for book reviews. Thus, to write a book review requires the

reviewers to master not only the plot, content, merit of the book but also the

reading and writing skill, which helps to make a strong impact on readers, as

well as learners, at the first sight.

A large number of book reviews, written in English and Vietnamese

correlating with the books available, urge me to investigate the study at

discourse level.

As can be seen the discourse characteristics in the book reviews and the

significance to study them in English and Vietnamese. For this reason, the thesis

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is conducted with the hope that A Discourse Analysis of Book Reviews in

English and Vietnamese will be helpful for teachers and learners of English and

especially students in charge of writing; as well as writing book reviews in

English to introduce to foreigners.

3. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

The term Discourse Analysis first entered general use in a series of

newspaper articles by Zellig Harris in early 1952. Although he had not worked

out a comprehensive model in this field, he paved the way for linguists to

analyze language above the sentence level - Discourse. Crystal (1992:25) defines

discourse as “a continuous stretch of language larger than a sentence, often

constituting a coherent unit”. According to Brown and Yule (1983), discourse is

characterized as a process not a product; the regularities which the discourse

analysts describe will be normally expressed in dynamic, not static terms; and

the data investigated are the result of “original language behavior”.

Contrary to most of traditional linguists, discourse analysts not only study

language use beyond the sentence boundary, but also to analyze “naturally

occurring” language use, not invented example. Discourse Analysis does not

provide a tangible answer to problems based on scientific research, but to enable

us to understand the conditions behind a specific problem and make us realize

the essence of that problem and its resolution lies in its assumptions. In other

words, Discourse Analysis enables to reveal the hidden motivations behind the

text, behind the choice of particular method of research to interpret that text. In

this sense, language should be considered in the light of other sciences such as

sociology, logic and psychology. A study into such field, thus, promises a

challenging but interesting work.

Actually, many scholars such as Halliday and Hassan (1976) with “Cohesion

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in English”, Brown and Yule (1983) with “Discourse Analysis”, Widdowson

(1994) with “Linguistics”, Cook (1989) with “Discourse”, etc. have devoted a

lot of intellect and energy to this complex domain. However, most of their works

are confined to providing a systemic theory concerning Discourse Analysis.

Winifred Crombie (1985) in “Process & Relation in Discourse and Language

learning” indicates some semantic relations in discourse. According to him, we

communicate to one another through language not by means of individual words,

clauses or sentences, but by means of coherent stretches of interrelated clauses

and sentences in relation to the linguistic and situational context. Cohesion,

Coherence, Theme - Rheme structure, Information Structure, Frame, Schemata,

Role of Context, Genre, Register, etc. are the main domains in their theory. Even

though there has not been a consensus on the conceptions relating to these, to

some extent, such works equips us with a quite relatively satisfactory theoretical

base to investigate language in use.

In Vietnam, Discourse Analysis seems to be brought in much later.

Nevertheless, a variety of linguists have made every effort to embark on

pursuing and applying this new approach into Vietnamese. Trần Ngọc Thêm

(1999) with “Hệ thống liên kết văn bản Tiếng Việt” is worth mentioning as the

pioneer who works on this field. Subsequently, Diệp Quang Ban (2003) with

“Giao tiếp -Văn bản – Mạch lạc - Liên kết – Đọan văn” has given us a more

overall view of text and utterance especially above the sentence level. More

recently, Nguyễn Hòa with “Phân tích diễn ngoôn phê bình” (2006) or

“Nghiên cứu diễn ngôn về chính trị - xã hội” (1999) and many other relevant

articles has made a great contribution to our linguistic branch and create a great

impetus to this field. The fact that more master theses and doctoral dissertations

relating to Discourse Analysis such as “Phương tiện liên kết phát ngôn – Đối

chiếu ngữ liệu Anh – Việt” by Phan Văn Hòa (1998), “Reason - result link

words in English and Vietnamese Discourse” by Bùi Thị Ngọc Anh (2001) or

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“Some discourse features of political speeches in English and Vietnamese”

by Ngô Thị Thanh Mai (2007), etc. have been carried out proves that this

approach draws much attention from many researchers.

With respect to book reviews, to the best of my present knowledge, there is

no evidence that any research on investigating the discourse features of book

reviews in English and Vietnamese has been done. Thus “A Discourse Analysis

of Book Reviews in English and Vietnamese” would be conducted with the

aim of contributing a minor part to fulfill the overall picture of this field.

4. METHODS AND PROCEDURES

Research methods

Descriptive method

Contrastive method

4.1. Procedure

- Examine 100 English and 100 Vietnamese book reviews in popular e-

news and websites

- Investigate these book reviews in terms of their layout, lexical features

and syntactic structures, cohesion and coherence.

- Discuss the result of analysis above, compare the similarities and

differences between the two languages then give explanation to these.

- Suggest the examples for introducing the book review to the Vietnamese

books.

- Suggest some implications for teaching and learning English as well as

for writing book reviews.

4.2. Sampling

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- 100 English and 100 Vietnamese book reviews collected from different

and popular newspapers and reliable sources on the Internet.

- The length of these is from 500 to approximately 1000 words

4.3. Instrumentation : Mostly Google Search, Bing Search, PDF Search

Engine

4.4. Data Collection

- Data for the research are collected from popular e-news and websites

of Vietnam, the United States, Australia, Canada and the United

Kingdom from websites on the Internet such as :

http://www.vinabook.com

http://www.tuoitre.vn

http://www.evan.express.net

http://www.sggp.org.vn

http://www.ngoisao.net

http://www.books.google.com

http://www.amazone.com

http://www.bookreview.com

http://www.nytimes.com

http://www.bbc.co.uk

http://www.laist.com

http://www.bookreport.com

http://www.lovevampires.com

http://www.unc.edu

http://www.lavc.edu

http://library.queensu.ca

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http://www.library.uwaterloo.ca

4.5. Data Analysis

Data collected will be mainly analyzed on the basis of the following

points:

- Lexical features: We examine semantic features and the choice of the

vocabularies which frequently used in book reviews; compare them

between English and Vietnamese.

- Syntactic structures: We examine which sentence structures are

frequently used in book reviews, compare them between English and

Vietnamese.

- Cohesion: We examine the frequency of the use of lexical and

grammatical cohesion as cohesive devices, how many percents each group

takes up; compare them between English and Vietnamese.

- Coherence: We examine elements that make a unified text in general and

in book reviews in particular such as the unity of ideas, organization of

points, link and reference (cohesion), etc and then compare them between

English and Vietnamese.

4.6. A proposed Outline

Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Statement of the Problem

1.2 Aims and Objectives of the Research

1.3 Significance of the Study

1.4 Research Questions

1.5 Definition of Terms

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1.6 Scope of the Study

1.7 Organization of the Research

Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Literature Review

2.2 Theoretical background

2.2.1 Theory of Discourse

2.2.1.1 Discourse Analysis

2.2.1.2 The Notion of Discourse

2.2.1.3 Discourse & Text

2.2.1.4 Spoken & Written Discourse

2.2.2 Co-text & Context

2.2.2.1 Co-text

2.2.2.2 Context

2.2.3 Coherence & Cohesion

2.2.3.1 Coherence

2.2.3.2 Cohesion

2.2.5 Book Reviews

2.2.4.1 Types of Reviews

2.2.4.2 Book Reviews

2.2.4.2.1 Definition of Book Reviews

2.2.4.2.2 General Characteristics of a Book Review

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Chapter 3: METHODS AND PROCEDURE

3.1 Research Design

3.2 Samples

3.3 Instrumentation

3.4 Data Collection

3.5 Data Analysis

Chapter 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

Chapter 5: CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATONS

5.1 Summary of the Development of the Study

5.2 Implications

5.3 Limitation and Suggestions for Further Research

5.4 Conclusion

REFERENCES

APPENDIXES

5. LIMITATIONS AND DELIMITATIONS

In order to conduct the study in time, the focus has been restricted to the

investigation of some discourse features such as lexical features, syntactic

structures and cohesive devices of book reviews in electronic newspapers,

websites. In fact, there are other discourse features of book reviews that are not

fully mentioned here. Therefore, the findings of the study will not generalize

over all book reviews in newspapers, websites as a whole. However, they can be

expected to contribute useful knowledge to the reading and learning English as

well as writing book reviews.

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6. REFERENCES

English

[1] Angela Downing; Phillip Locke. (1995) a university course in English

grammar, Phoenix ELT

[2] Alexander, L.G. (1994), Longman Advanced Grammar, Nxb T.p Ho Chi

Minh

[3] Brown, G.; Yule, G. (1983), Discourse Analysis, Cambridge.

[4] Cook, G (1998) , Discourse , Oxford University Press

[5] Green, G. M. (1996), Pragmatics and Natural Language Understanding,

Lawrene Erlbaum Associates, Nnc.Publishers, New Jersey

[6] Halliday, M.A.K (1989), An Introduction to Functional Grammar,

Edward Arnold, London

[7] Halliday, M.A.K, and Hassan, R(1976), Cohesion in English, London and

New York, Longman

[8] Hatch, E. (1992), Discourse and Language Education, CUP

[9] Hatim, B.& Mason, I. (1990), Discourse and the Translator, Longman,

London & NY

[10] Johns, A.M. (1986), “Coherence and Academic Writing: Some

Determinants and Suggestions for Teaching” TESOL Quarterly, 20(2) pp.

247 – 265

[11] McCarthy, M. (1991), Discourse Analysis for Language Teacher, CUP

[12] Richards, Platt J. and Platt H. (2003), Dictionary of Language Teaching &

Applied Linguistics, Pearson education limited

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[13] Sally Wehmeier, (2005), Oxford advanced learner’s dictionary 7th edition,

Oxford university express

[14] Salkie, R. (1995), Text and Discourse Analysis, Routledge, London &

New York

[15] Stubbs, M. (1983), Discourse Analysis – The Socio- linguistic Analysis of

Natural Language, Basil Blackwell, Oxford

[16] Tran Thi Thuy Huong. (2002), Substitution in Discourse, M.A. thesis,

Danang

[17] Tran Van Phuoc; Truong Bach Le. (2003) An introduction to Discourse

Analysis, Hue

[18] Yule, G. (1996), Pragmatics, Oxford, OUP

Websites

[19] Book reviews. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/review.html

[20] Book Review Writing Tips.

http://teacher.scholastic.com/writewit/bookrev/read.htm

[21] How to Write a Book Review. California Library.

http://www.lavc.edu/library/bookreview.htm

[22] How to Write a Book Review. Stauffer Library.

http://library.queensu.ca/inforef/bookreview/wri.htm

[23] How to Write a Book Review. Dalhousie University Libraries.

http://www.library.dal.ca/How/Guides/BookReview/

[24] Writing Book Reviews. University of Waterloo Library.

http://library.uwaterloo.ca/libguides/1-12.html

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[25] Writing Book Reports & Book Reviews. Internet Public Library.

http://www.ipl.org/div/farq/bookreportFARQ.html

[26] Wikipedia. http://wikipedia.org

Vietnamese

[27] Diệp Quang Ban (2003), Giao tiếp -Văn bản – Mạch lạc - Liên kết – Đọan

văn, Nxb Khoa học xã hội TP HCM

[28] Diệp Quang Ban (1999), Văn bản và liên kết trong tiếng Việt, Nxb GD,

HN.

[29] Nguyễn Hoà (2003), Phân tích diễn ngôn - Một số vấn đề lý luận và

phương pháp, NXB ĐHQG

[30] Nguyễn Hoà, ( ) Phân tích diễn ngôn

[31] Nguyễn Hoà (2006), Phân tích diễn ngôn phê bình, NXB Đại học quốc

gia, HN

[32] Phan Văn Hòa, (2008) Hệ thống từ nối biểu thị quan hệ logic- ngữ nghĩa

trong tiếng Anh và tiếng Việt, NXB GD

[33] Trần Ngọc Thêm (1985), Hệ thống liên kết văn bản tiếng Việt, NXB Giáo

dục, Hà Nội.

Corpora

[34] Google book reviews. http://books.google.com

[35] Amazon. http://www.amazon.com

[36] Book Review. http://www.bookreview.com

[37] Book Review. http://laist.com

[38] Book Review. http://bookreporter.com

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[39] Review of Books. http://www.reviewsofbooks.com

[40] Sunday Book Review, New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com

[41] Twilight, Stephenie Meyer.

http://www.lovevampires.com/smtwilight.html

[42] Chạng Vạng, Stephenie Meyer. báo SGGP http://www.sggp.org.vn

[43] Điểm Sách, Nhà Sách Online Vinabook. http://www.vinabook.com

[44] Điểm Sách, Báo Ngôisao.net. http://ngoisao.net/News/Truyen-hay

[45] Điểm Sách, Evan Báo vnexpress.net http://evan.express.net

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