Negative Pragmatic Transfer In The Speech Act Of Requests By College English Majors

The thesis aims to study the phenomena of negative pragmatic transfer occurred in the requests of the Chinese students of English and meanwhile, discusses the differences of negative pragmatic transfer between different learners.Kasper (1992) divides negative pragmatic transfer into negative pragmalinguistic transfer and negative sociopragmatic transfer. But Professor Liu Shaozhong (1997) believes that there is a third negative pragmatic transfer by the Chinese students of English, that is, negative pragmarhetoric transfer. This thesis, applying the DCT by Blum-Kulka, further verifies the existence of the three types of negative pragmatic transfer in the requests of the English majors and at the same time, probes into the distribution of each type of negative pragmatic transfer.This study finds that negative sociopragmatic transfer is the first biggest in proportion among the three types of negative pragmatic transfer in the elicited data, followed by negative pragmalinguistic transfer, and negative pragmarhetoric transfer occupies the last place. Further, the data indicates that English level and gender are two influential factors affecting the occurrence of negative pragmatic transfer. Generally speaking, the higher English levels and the females commit less negative pragmatic transfer than the lower English levels and the males do. Meanwhile, the former commit less negative pragmalinguistic transfer but more negative sociopragmatic transfer compared to the latter ones who are in the opposite case. Through the open-interviews, it is discovered that their learning ways and study habits are the main contributing factors of the differences.This thesis discusses the phenomena of negative pragmatic transfer and the differences in negative pragmatic transfer by different students from a new...