2021年1月23日发(作者：unpc)
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江苏师范大学学士学位论文





The Analysis Of Pragmatic Failures
In Cross-cultural Communication

1.

Introduction











With the globalization of the contemporary economy and society, intercultural communication
becomes more and more frequent. However, different cultural backgrounds lead to different
language conventions and rules. That will cause misunderstanding even obstacles in the
cross-cultural communication. In order to avoid making ridiculous mistakes during communication,
people should have cultural awareness and use the language appropriately to make the
communication successful. That is the competence of cross-cultural communication. As we all
know that through many years of English learning, most Chinese students may have little problem
in grammar and vocabulary, but only a small proportion of them can achieve pragmatic competence.
So it is necessary to know the pragmatic failures in the cross-cultural communication (Leech, G .N.
Principles of Pragmatics
[M]. New York: Longman, 1983: 32,150).
About the pragmatic failures, Chinese scholars have done much work and people can see such
articles in various periodicals. It was first raised by Thomas, J.

He believed that pragmatic failure in

cross-cultural communication is a common phonemon
(
Thomas, J.

(1983) Cross-cultural Pragmatic
Failure [J].Applied Linguistics, vol.4 (2):91- 112). However, those articles just discuss or list the
different
types
of
the
pragmatic
failures
and
analyze
the
possible
reasons
causing
pragmatic
failures.
The thesis aims to study problems and causes in cross-culture communication

and this paper
also analyzes the differences between English and Chinese learners and then offers some methods.
This paper wants to provide the readers with some basic knowledge about the language difference
between
English
and
Chinese.
Meanwhile,
it
can
help
the
English
learners
to
develop
their
language skills to make a smooth cross-cultural communication.


2. Problems in Cross-culture Communication

1
The Analysis Of Pragmatic Failures in Cross- cultural Communication


Scio-pragmatic failure occurs when people do not have fully understanding abou
t each other’s
cultural
difference
in
cross-cultural
communication
thus
they
choose
an
improper
way
to
communication with each other and cause a communication breakdown. Oatery (See Hu Wenzhong,
1998)said
that
the
Chinese
and
western
interpersonal
relationships
in
eight
aspects
in
daily
conversations,
namely,
addressing
people,
initiating
conversations,
arranging
a
visit
or
activity
,conversation
topics,
greeting
others
,
visiting
someone,
leave-
taking,
the
use
of
“Thank
you”


Now, I will choose some typical commonly problems to discuss in following parts.

2.1 Greetings
Conventional greeting is a kind of effective means to build and keep social contact. In China,
most
people
tend
to
greet
acquaintances
or
some
people
with

you
had
your
dinner?
or

you greet the native speakers of English this way, it will certainly cause pragmatic failure and they
might think you are inviting him to dinner. In fact, it is
a Chinese way of greeting when people
meet.
It
has
the
same
meaning
with
the
word

in
English.
This
phenomenon
results
in
a
question for us to think over: Why are Chinese are used to using

you
eaten
?”
as
greeting
?
Let
me
take
for
example
the
reality
in
China before
Liberation.
China was one of seriously famine-stricken countries in the world .Many people were starved to
death at that time. Worse still, between 1959 and1961, about 40 million people died of starvation
throughout
China.
That
was
really
a
hard
time
for
the
Chinese
people.
Later
on,
under
the
leadership
of
China's
Communist
Party,
the
agriculture
improved,
and
people
started
to
lead
a
happier life. So, Chinese people think that food is the foundation of life. So it is very natural for us
to use
not act this expression; instead a

2.2 Compliments and Thanks
We
can
also
see
the
cultural
differences
in
view
of
the
ways
people
express
gratitude
and
compliments. Chinese value of politeness is different from foreign in the West tend to

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江苏师范大学学士学位论文




use
their
gratitude
and
compliments
more
than
Chinese
people,
and
the
Chinese
tend
to
accept
thanks
and
compliments
less
directly
and
frankly
than
the
westerners
do.
To
English-speaking
people, who is willing to use the remark like” Thank you
is assumed that the compliment is sincere and that the praise is for some worthy achievement or
things.
Therefore,
there
should
be
no
show
of
no
pretended
modesty,false
humility.
However,
modesty
is
one
of
the
traditional
virtues
for
Chinese
people.
The
customary
response
to
a
compliment
would
be
to
say
that
one
is
not
worthy
of
the
praise,
or
that
what
one
has
done
is
hardly
enough.
Acceptance
of
a
compliment
would
imply
lack
of
manners.
So
we
should
pay
attention to the difference in accepting compliments and thanks.


2.3 Color Words
Though for people all over the world the colors are the same, different nations have different
preference
towards
colors.
In
different
culture,
colors
indicate
different analogical
meanings
and
associations,
which
are
quite
opposite
sometimes.
This
difference
will
bring
difficulties
to
two
parties in understanding and communication . Some
languages have only two color terms: black
and white. The third term is red, if a language has three color systems. A term that may include
yellow orange but that has a focal point very close to the “red” of English In add
ition to the exact
fact
that
different
languages
may
have
different
divisions
of
color,
different
language
showsl
different color related association. For example, since he was made director, the company has been
running in the black, instead of the red. In our traditional mind, black always represents something
bad or inferior, while red means joy. However, in this example in the black means to make profit,
and in the red means lose the money.

2.4 In other fields
Cultural differences can be embodied in many other fields. Such as religious beliefs, values,
taboos, etc. In terms of religious beliefs, China is deeply influenced by Confucianism, Buddhism
and Taoism while US and some other western countries promote Christianity
（
Helen Oatey .
The
Customs
and
Language
of
Social
Interaction
in
English
）
.
As
for
values,
it
is
most
evidently
reflected in the attitudes towards privacy. In western countries where individualism is encouraged,

3
The Analysis Of Pragmatic Failures in Cross-cultural Communication


individual privacy is especially protected and respected by others. However, the concept of privacy
is rather weak in China where collectivism is advocated. As for taboos, people who have just met
each other for the first time would frequently touch on topics like age, sex, income, marital status
which is regarded to be very impolite and offensive in western culture. Moreover, Chinese people
created many idioms, some of which can be translated word-to-word into English, while some are
not. For example, the idiom
挥

金

如

土

also caused by different cultures. If we do not take the different cultures into consideration, we are
very likely to have pragmatic failures in cross-cultural communication.


3. Causes Of Pragmatic Failure


There
are
various
causes
of
pragmatic
failure.
The
main
reasons
may
be:
students
’
inappropriate
transfer
of
the
mother
language
and
students
’
tendency
of
judging
or
interpreting
behavior
different
from
others
according
to
their
own
cultural
standard
and
the
inappropriate
teaching
methods.
Conflict
of
different
value
system
and
students
’
insufficient
exposure
to
the
target culture as well as a lack of comparative studies of the two cultures can also lead to pragmatic
failure. In the following parts,I just choose some possible reasons to be discussed.

3.1 Inappropriate Transference
Negative
transfer of the
mother
language
is
the
most
important
reason
for
pragmalinguistic
failure
(
何自然、阎庄，
1986(l): 52-57
).
EFL
Learners
transfer
the
linguistic
pattern
of
their
mother
tongue
into
the
target
language
which
looks
syntactically
and
semantically
similar,
but
convey
a
rather
many
of
the
Chinese
EFL
learners’
errors
result
from
the
negative
transfer
of
Chinese
（

Odlin,
T.
Language
Transfer
[M].
Cambridge:
Cambridge
University
Press,
1989:
7
）

.Here is a typical examples for you. When a foreigner visited his Chinese friend, the Chinese
host offered him a cup of tea and said,
“
Please have a cup of tea.
”
On this occasion, the foreign
guest maybe thought his friend was insincerely. In English,
“
please,
”
means the speaker want to get
benefits
from
the
hearer.
But
in
Chinese,
we
can
use
“
请
”
(
qing,
please)
both
in
offering
and
requesting situation to show politeness. And here in this situation, we should use
“
Would you like a

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江苏师范大学学士学位论文




cup of tea?
”
So if we express our own method in a wrong way, it may cause some troubles.

3.2The Difference Of Society and Culture
Domestic
researchers
considered
cultural
difference
as
the
primary
factor
leading
to
Scio-pragmatic failure .Moreover, according to Halliday, the outstanding English linguist, language
is a social behavior and a form of behavioral potency. The whole social environment constitutes a
cultural environment. Culture is just the behavioral potency which realizes the meaningful potency
through linguistic form and the meaningful potency converts into vocabulary grammatical potency
through
linguistic
system.
We
can
also
see
that
speech
behavior
is
restricted
by
social
culture
environment
to
a
great
extent.
If
we
always
explain
the
verbal
behavior
of
people
from
other
cultures
according
to
our
own
cultural
standards,
it
will
inevitably
lead
to
unnecessary
misunderstandings and even conflict.
Therefore, only paying attention to wording and phrasing, complying with grammatical rules
and ignoring social and cultural differences are bound to result in pragmatic misuses and failures.
We should emphasis the importance of society and culture and respect the difference.

3.3 Improper Teaching Techniques
It is easy to teach students some linguistic elements, but it takes much more efforts and time to
convey
how
and
when
to
use
them
appropriately.
In
teaching,
we
have
many
materials
that
emphasize
language
rules
too
much,
but
seldom
strengthen
the
communicative
functions.
Much
practice is
often
limited to syntactic
considerations
and phonological. Although students
need to
understand
some
pragmatic
principles
that
charge
the
performance
of
speech
acts
in
real
communication, some
teachers still teach students linguistic
knowledge only. Due
to using some
inappropriate
teaching
materials,
pragmalinguistic
failure
may
occur.
Look
at
these
sentences
patterns, such as “How old are
you?” or “How much do you earn?”etc. Students are
required to
recite and use them as possible as they can. So, they have
the wrong impression that when they
meet a foreigner, after greeting, they should use expressions listed above to begin a conversation.
In fact, they may touch
some
taboo
topics
for English native
speakers. Violating a taboo can be
quite
offensive.
Mentioning
a
certain
topic
in
public
would
be
shocking
or
cause
strong

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The Analysis Of Pragmatic Failures in Cross-cultural Communication


disapproval.







To
reduce
pragmatic
failure,
language
teacher
should
develop
students’
cross
-cultural
communicative
competence,
which
sets
new
and
higher
requirements
for
both
teachers
and
students. It is desirable for English teachers to be more learned in the areas of linguistics, literature,
and criticism and so on.

4. Measures to Avoid Cross-cultural Pragmatic Failure
The finally purpose of learning a foreign language is to be able to communication with native
speakers of this country. However, in China many learners think that learning a foreign language
means
learning
the
vocabulary
and
grammar
of
this
country.
Finally,
more
and
more
people
are
unable
to
communicate
with
the
native
sp
eakers’ .Moreover,

being
deeply
influenced
by
their
native culture backgrounds, people communicate with their own cultural values, thinking patterns,
communicative modes, and linguistic knowledge which lead to pragmatic failures. In that situation,
people
can
neither
correctly
understand
the
intensions
of
other
people
nor
appropriately
convey
their
original
thoughts.
In
intercultural
communication,
pragmatic
failure’s
frequent
occurrence
brings lots of obstacles of understanding each other which has a bad effect on communication .How
can we reduce pragmatic failures in intercultural communication? Through the analysis above, I do
believe
that
there
are
some
methods
for
both
EFL
teachers
and
learners.
As
for
teachers,
they
should teach cultural knowledge,
teach with comparisons
and teach in contexts. As
for students,
they should adjusting study attitude, update the schema storage frequently and broaden the general
knowledge
of
both
cultures.
So
we
have
to
cultivate
our
communicative
competence
to
avoid
pragmatic
failures
in
cross- cultural
communication.
So
far,
there
is
no
systematic
way
of
developing students’ cross
-cultural communicative competence, but some possible solutions could
be worked out (Stephen, C. Levinson.
Pragmatics
[M]. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and
Research Press, 2001).This chapter would like to make some suggestions on improving
students’
cross- cultural communicative competence.

4.1

suggestions for Language Teaching
As we have seen, the pragmatic failures taking place in all the cases could have been avoided i

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