Name: Đỗ Thị Duy An Class: NNA K31 DN Course: Research methods

LIBRARY RESEARCH

I. Research Article Analysis

1. Waldvogel, J. (2007). Greetings and closings in workplace email. Journal of Computer‐

Mediated Communication, 12(2), 456-477.

In this paper, the researcher investigates the use and form of greetings and closings in the
emails of two New Zealand workplaces aiming at getting insights into people’s relational
practices at work and exploring some of the ways emails contributed to the construction of
aspects of social and professional identity and provided indications of the nature of the
workplace culture and its current climate or “state of health.”

The study is stimulated by the significantly affective messages being conveyed through
business transactions and the contribution to the interpersonal strength among business
partners built up via this efficient means of communication which are of great importance to
the staff well-being and the corporation financial prospect.

The study took place at an educational organization and a manufacturing plant in New
Zealand where a survey was conducted to ask the staff about their use of email, their attitudes
toward it, and their email practices. The data featured the inward and outward messages from
a senior manager and a set of emails related to a particular issue. In the first place, the
preferred greetings and closings in emails written by the employees in each organization were
analyzed to identify the influence of the sociolinguistic variables of status, social distance,
and gender on their form and use. Such politeness markers as salutation, names and other
formulaic components of email which signaled respect were stated in operational definitions.
Then a comparison was made between the two working environments to indicate the
existence of gender marked styles.

2. Thomas, J. (1997). Discourse in the marketplace: The making of meaning in annual

reports. Journal of Business Communication, 34(1), 47-66.

The author attempts to review linguistic structures in a series of management messages in the
annual reports of Cross & Trecker, a machine tool manufacturer and to determine how the
linguistic choices actually used in a group of messages might be interpreted.

The motivation of the study comes from the fact that these annual reports have poor sources
of information striving to make management look good regardless of the financial state of the
company. The language in the annual letter to the stockholders seems to be predominantly
positive which is controversial regarding audience, objectives and credibility.

The researcher used the transitivity structures – associated with verb choices, and thematic
structures, which have to do with structural subjects at the clause level. Data from the
transitivity and thematic analyses provide insights into the cohesion of the texts as well as

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Name: Đỗ Thị Duy An Class: NNA K31 DN Course: Research methods

into what kind of meaning is left unexpressed, demanding reader interpretation. Each
sentence of the management reports paragraphs was separated into its constituent clauses,
both independent and subordinate so that the percentage of the use of passive voice and
passive construction could be examined. At the same time, the author analyzed the frequency
of the six process verbs by Halliday used in these annual reports. Additionally, two types of
themes: the personal pronoun we and a variety of inanimate nominal groups, such as fiscal
1988 and other typical business terms were summarized to help identify the differences in the
distribution of the two kinds of thematic structures. Meanwhile, the context and cohesion of
the managers’ messages were considered by looking at the lexical taxonomic relations,
including cohesive items, in the first and last paragraphs to pinpoint the subtle differences in
the years of profit and the years of loss. Finally, the condensations which occurred in the
reports were also collected and analyzed to indicate the confident and positive tone of the
writers.

3. Sinaceur, M., & Tiedens, L. Z. (2006). Get mad and get more than even: When and why
anger expression is effective in negotiations. Journal of Experimental Social
Psychology, 42(3), 314-322.

The researcher aims to investigate whether people who express anger in a negotiation are
effective in inducing more concessions in their negotiation partners.

Even though many studies have been conducted and the results demonstrated that negative
feelings may bring about negative outcomes in negotiations (Carnevale & Isen, 1986; Forgas,
1998). In this paper, the author argues that anger expressions are noticed and processed by
negotiators and that the inferences people draw based on these expressions affect negotiation
behavior.

During the first experiment, 157 undergraduates at a large U.S. University were required to
read a negotiation vignette in which they were asked to imagine that they were playing the
role of a negotiator who was finalizing a deal about the sale of technical equipment using the
good and poor perceived alternatives manipulation. Hence, recipients with poor alternatives
made more concessions to counterparts expressing anger than to non-angry counterparts.
Experiment 2 examined the effect of anger expression in negotiation with a procedure that
would allow them to measure concession behavior and to confirm whether the damage of
anger expressions might outweigh the benefits, making anger a dangerous tactic in
negotiations. Sixty-eight students at a large French “Grande Ecole” and 80 students at a large
Moroccan “Grande Ecole” were divided into 71 same-sex dyads and role-played a job
contract negotiation by randomly being assigned to either the role of a candidate or of a
recruiter. Participants in neutral conditions were advised to hide their emotions while the
angry ones were given a set of recommendations about expressing anger. After the
negotiation, participants were asked to indicate whether they reached an agreement or not,
and, if there was an agreement, what the outcome on each of the four negotiation issues was.
Following the negotiation, they completed a questionnaire. Finally, they were debriefed.

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Name: Đỗ Thị Duy An Class: NNA K31 DN Course: Research methods

4. Phạm Thị Thanh Mai. (2006). Common linguistic features of circumstances of manner in
English and in Vietnamese in the view of functional grammar, Master thesis, Danang.

The author presents a contrastive analysis of the Manner circumstances used in English and
in Vietnamese context aiming to give a description of syntactic and semantic features of
Manner circs in both languages, which is intended to identify the similarities and differences
of Manner circs in the two languages semantically and syntactically.

The paper is motivated by the reality that the notions of manner circumstances are understood
differently by grammarians; hence, there are some overlaps in distinguishing between
subtypes of manner circs.

The researcher used the descriptive and contrastive method to investigate the circumstances of
manner which were described on the semantic as well as syntactic characteristics and
analyzed under the view of functional grammar. The study focused on some certain syntactic
and semantic features of three subtypes of Manner Circumstances – Means and Quality and
Comparison. Data were collected and analyzed for the purpose of comparing and contrasting
Manner Circs in English and in Vietnamese to highlight the similarities and differences
between the two languages.

5. Nguyễn Tú Nhi. (2008), Causation in English and in Vietnamese: a cognitive semantics

perspective, Master thesis, Danang.

In this paper, the researcher attempts to examine the constructions which are commonly used
to express causation in English and in Vietnamese as well as the similarities and differences
of these constructions in the view of cognitive semantics in order to make some contributions
to English language teaching and translation.

The motivation of the study comes from the fact that the difference in causative constructions
between the two languages may bring about the negative impacts in language transfer and
learners often fail to convey the causative relation between participants in a causative event.

First of all, information relating to causation and cognition as well as data relating to
causative constructions in both English and Vietnamese were collected. This study was
restricted to causative constructions with causal connectives, periphrastic causative
constructions and lexical and morphological causative constructions. Then, the information
was analyzed and generalized to make clear the notions of cognition and causation in the two
languages. After that, causative constructions were described and analyzed under the light of
cognitive semantics and from the results of the analysis and description; a contrastive
comparison was made between causation in English and that in Vietnamese.

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Name: Đỗ Thị Duy An Class: NNA K31 DN Course: Research methods

II. Comparison between these Types of Research Methods

In five articles and thesis above, there are a multiple types of research methods employed.
The first three applied the qualitative analysis while the fourth thesis used descriptive and
contrastive method and the last one employed deduction, and generalization methods.

The first thing should be considered is that in the first three articles, experiments were
conducted, then the outcomes were taken into account and analyzed to present the possible
results. However, in thesis number four and five, the research questions were put before the
investigation and the results were then synthesized and analyzed as well as some comparisons
were made.

It is obvious from the research that in the first two articles, data were intentionally gathered
from real organizations and the second from factual experiments. On the other hand, the the
last two thesis, information and data were randomly collected from books and the Internet
which showed some limitations in real application.

References:

Links to resources?