Communication
People tend to be reluctant to voice likes and dislike, except with close friends, as they feel this can lead to disagreement and tension, They often choose to remain silent rather than disagree with someone else’s opinion. If forced to give an opinion, they may agree with the speaker rather than expressing their own feeling or else give a vague, indirect answer. One way would be to suggest another possibility.
Between friends, it is possible to express opinions freely since it is expected that friends will share common views, like and dislikes are not often a topic of conversation. It is more usual to infer opinions from general conversation that to ask outright.
Strong expressions of opinions are particularly avoided when speaking to older people or people of higher status. Facial expressions and gestures indicative of like or dislike are acceptable with friends but are regarded as disrespectful in front of elders or superiors. People often avoid expressing a liking for something if they feel that others will disapprove of it.
It would be rare for older people or people of higher status to ask younger people or people of lower status if they liked something. A student, for example, would not expect a teacher to ask them if they had enjoyed an activity, and would almost always reply that they had, regardless of their true opinion.
Value System
A major factor of importance in the value scale of the Vietnamese is the concept of ‘good name’. To the Vietnamese, a good name is better than any material possession in this world. By securing a good name for himself, a man can command respect and admiration from his fellow countrymen. A rich and powerful person with bad reputation is looked down upon while a poor man with a good name is respected. It is believed that the best thing that a man can leave behind once he has died is good reputation. The desire to have a good name, not only in his lifetime but also after death, betrays the deep aspiration of the Vietnamese to be remembered after death in the memory of his family and the community.
A man with a bad name will be despised by his fellow countrymen and become a disgrace for his family. He will lose face, which is a terrible thing in an immobile society where almost everybody knows anybody else in the community. To acquire a good name, a man must avoid all words and actions which may damage his dignity and honour. There are three ways in which he can acquire a good name: either by heroic deeds, intellectual achievements or by moral virtues. Leading a virtuous life is the easiest and surest path to a good name. The virtues most cultivated are the sense of honour, honesty, righteousness, modesty, generosity and disdain for material gains, virtues most extolled by the Confucian doctrine. In view of the strong solidarity of the Vietnamese family, it is not surprising that the Vietnamese strives for a good name not only for himself but also for his parents and children.
The concept of respect is another major factor in the Vietnamese value system. A Vietnamese person is expected to show respect to people who are senior to him in age, status or position. At home, he should show respect to his parents, older sibling and older relatives. This is expressed by his obedience in worlds and action. Respect is part of the concept of filial piety.
Outside the family, respect should be paid to elderly people, teachers, clergymen, supervisors, employers and people in high positions. Learned and virtuous people enjoy special respect and admiration. But respect is not a one-way behavior. A Vietnamese person also expects other people to show them respect by virtue of their age, status or position.
Respect is expressed by specific behaviour patterns and by definite linguistic devices inherent in the Vietnamese language. On the positive side, respect is often expressed in the form of courtesy, on the negative side; it consists in trying to spare others from the humiliation of losing face. Linguistic devices are one of the many ways in which help the Vietnamese achieve this objective. Depreciatory terms are applied to oneself and complimentary terms used for others. Face is extremely important for the Vietnamese. Everybody is eager to save his face; the rich like the poor, those in high as well as in low positions. This fear of losing face is explicable in an immobile society. The individual who loses face will have to endure public ridicule and derision right in the midst of his community. Furthermore, the family would have to share any social disgrace incurred by the individual. So, one is very careful to avoid losing face and refrain from making others lose face. The practice of beating about the bush to avoid negative answer to a request and the tendency of the Vietnamese student to say yes to every question asked by their teacher stems from this preoccupation of ‘saving face’.
Family Roles and Values
Vietnamese parents consider it a most important responsibility to train their children. At an early age, children are taught by their parents to behave according to the principles of filial piety and social courtesy. The family is the school where the child learns the respect rules in both behaviour and in linguistic response. The cornerstone of children’s behaviour in the family is filial piety that consists of loving, respecting and obeying one’s parents. Talking back or acting contrary to the wishes of tone’s parents is evidence of lack of filial piety. For the Vietnamese, the obligation to obey their parents does not end with their coming of age or their marriage. Filial piety also means solicitude and support to one’s parents, chiefly in their old age. Vietnamese elderly people never live by themselves or in nursing homes but with one of their children, usually their eldest son.
This obligation is not discontinued by the parents’ death. It survives in the form of ancestral cult and the maintenance of ancestral tombs. Ancestor worship is a family cult practiced in most, if not all, Vietnamese homes, even in the homes of Vietnamese people living overseas. The child who lacks filial piety is rejected and ostracized by other members of the family and community. The worst insult, that a Vietnamese person can receive and by which they are hurt most, is the expression ‘lack of filial piety’, applied to them.
In Vietnamese culture, the relationship between siblings is determined by the principle of age priority that requires siblings to respect and obey older ones. The eldest brother is entrusted with a heavy responsibility, that of substituting for the parents in case of emergency. He is considered by his siblings as their leader. The principle of collective and bilateral responsibility underlies the relationship between members of the family at every level. Concord and love among siblings is a token of a happy virtuous family.
Women are traditional subservient to men and are taught the three degrees of dependence: before marriage to depend on their fathers; after marriage to depend on their husbands; on becoming a widow they depend on their sons. The four virtues of the Vietnamese woman are proper employment, proper demeanor, proper speech and proper behaviour. Although the admired characteristics of Vietnamese woman as revealed by traditional sayings emphasized her ability to endure, suffer and sacrifice, they also reveal her strengths. Events in Vietnamese history have meant that women have become accustomed to being alone, and taking over the family business and the household while the male is away. The male is traditionally dominant, authoritive, executive, providing the wherewithal of authority, care and support; the female is subordinate, obedient, administrative, providing the method of care and support. The parental male role is provider and judge, public upholder of family honour by his social intercourses; the parental female role is provider through productive activity and capacity, the maintainer, through domestic organization, of continuity and family honour, as well as a source of relatively unpaid labour for the family unit.
Acculturation and Its Effects On Communication
Urbanisation and modernisation have altered the role of females from that of being the ‘General’ of the gamily to being that of wife and mother. There is generally a degeneration of the role of the elderly woman as ‘General’ when families migrate. In Australia, reduction in the power formerly wielded by older women within the family has compounded the psychological difficulties of readjustment for this age group and increased their isolation.
In the last three decades the Vietnamese family institution has been attacked on all fronts. The western doctrine of individualism advocated the liberation of the individual from the violation of the family upon their personal freedom. Under the communist regime of North Vietnam children were taught to spy on their own parents and report to the party of any subversive talk or behaviour. The war devastated the countryside and brought people to the cities where narrow spaces are not suitable to pattern of the extended family. Since 1975, with the communist takeover of the whole country and the tragic exodus of the Vietnamese people throughout the world to search for freedom, the Vietnamese family has become increasingly broken and dispersed. Husbands and wives, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters live thousands of kilometeres apart. But despite all this, deep feelings and ties are still strong and the Vietnamese family concept still survives through time and change.
