Abstract
The current study investigated the complaint and complaint response strategies employed by native Vietnamese university students with a focus on examining the relationship between social power and their choice of politeness strategies to make complaints and respond to complaints in the Vietnamese academic context. This research adopted a mixed-methods approach that integrated quantitative data from Discourse Completion Tasks (DCTs) and qualitative data from introspective interviews. 150 native Vietnamese participants from four universities in the Mekong Delta region were involved in the research to elicit answers for 12 scenarios in DCTs, and seven of them participated in semi-structured interviews, providing data about their perception and experience. The result of this study showed that Vietnamese students utilized a wide range of complaint and complaint response strategies and varied their choice of strategies across different social power contexts. Their strategic choice heightened the importance of politeness and indirectness among Vietnamese students to maintain harmony and avoid conflicts. To make complaints, Vietnamese students significantly favored Request strategies in all social power situations, and to respond to complaints, constructive and reparative strategies such as Suggesting Alternatives and Agreeing to Change Behavior were highly frequently used. When interacting with peers, Vietnamese students were more direct, but when addressing those with higher power, they opted for indirectness. The findings of this study have significant implications for language teaching and intercultural training for students in the Vietnamese context.
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