Cross-Cultural Communicative Competence: A Study On Chinese EFL Learners' Pragmatic Failure

This thesis is a study on Chinese EFL learners'pragmatic failures in cross-cultural communication, mainly adopting the framework of"pragmatic failure"by Jenny Thomas. Following the quantitative analysis based on an investigation in the form of questionnaires, the author builds a theoretical framework to do the qualitative analysis of the sources of pragmatic failures both from pragmatic and cultural perspectives, and then puts forward some ways of enhancing students'cross-cultural communicative competence.Thomas (1983) defines and classifies pragmatic failures. She thinks pragmatic failures occur because the meaning the speaker wants the hearer to understand deviates from what the hearer really understands. There are two kinds of pragmatic failures: pragma-linguistic failures and socio-pragmatic failures. Pragma-linguistic failures are language-specific, simply a question of highly conventionalized usage. They often occur when language users misunderstand the connotations of words, misuse sentence structures and transfer speech acts from mother tongue to the target language. Pragma-linguistic failures are comparatively easier to be discovered and corrected because of the limited sources. As the reflection of the deeper socio-cultural differences, socio-pragmatic failures are a far more delicate matter, which cannot be corrected directly.This distinction can, of course, cover most sorts of pragmatic failures and therefore is adopted by many scholars. Based on their research findings, the author arranges and groups pragmatic failures into three categories, namely, pragma-linguistic failures, socio-pragmatic failures, and pragma-behavioral failures. The first two categories are considered from the verbal perspective, and the last one is accounted for from the non-verbal point of view. Nonverbal behaviors are all the behaviors, other than words, that occur during communication, which go along with verbal behaviors and cannot be separated from pragmatic principles and socio-cultural knowledge. Appropriate use of these nonverbal elements helps communication, while inappropriate use brings about pragmatic failures. Here the author uses the term"pragma-behavioral failure"to refer to the pragmatic breakdown that is caused by cultural differences in nonverbal behavior. It would be more generalized and complete to divide pragmatic failures into three types. This thesis will analyze these three pragmatic failures with emphasis on socio-pragmatic failures and pragma-behavioral ones.Pragmatic failures indicate low pragmatic competence. The less the learners'pragmatic failures are, the stronger their pragmatic competence becomes. Pragmatic failure is an important source of cross-cultural communication breakdown. We are convinced that, with more and more cross-cultural communications, the discussion of pragmatic failure will definitely be significant for the purpose of enhancing learners'cross-cultural communicative competence.For a long time in China, English teachers, influenced by structuralism, have paid much attention to linguistic competence in teaching programs, ignoring pragmatic competence in language teaching. Frequently we hear that some students who got high scores in TOEFL, GRE, CET or TEM tests failed in real communication when they were abroad. Every year, a large number of Chinese EFL learners pass a series of English examinations, e.g. CET Band 4, Band 6, TEM Band 4 and Band 8,which have tested listening, reading, writing and translating skills, to the exclusion of the speaking ability. Many students get high marks in these examinations, but when communicating with native speakers of English, they always commit pragmatic failures which are likely to lead to the breakdown of communication. In recent years, oral examination is taken both by English and non-English major students, which, in some degree, has improved learners'speaking ability. Due to the adoption of communicative teaching method in classroom, quite a number of students can speak English fluently. Still, they may lack cross-cultural consciousness in communicative activity and what they have produced are Chinese-English with Chinese cultural connotations or expressions which are improper in English conventions. The pass rate in CET and TEM every year shows that students'linguistic ability has reached a certain level, but what about their pragmatic competence?What is the relationship between pragmatic competence and linguistic proficiency? Does pragmatic competence go up with the advance of linguistic competence?In order to examine how well Chinese students have developed their pragmatic competence, a research investigation in the form of questionnaires has been conducted both in English and non-English major students'classrooms in Henan University. All the questions in the questionnaires are based on the following materials: The Pragmatic Failures of Chinese Students in Communication in English—An Investigation of Chinese-English Pragmatic Difference (He Ziran & Yan Zhuang, 1986); A Survey of Pragmatics (He Ziran, 1988); Language and Culture (Deng Yanchang & Liu Runqing, 1989); pragmatic failures collected by the author in her teaching; pragmatic failures collected by the author in reading books on pragmatics and cross-cultural communication; the cultural differences perceived by foreign teachers who have worked in China for a few years.After a lot of literature review and through the questionnaire investigation, the author has realized that there is a great gap between ideal intentions and the reality—English teaching both for English and non-English majors has much room for improvement in respect to developing students'pragmatic competence. Most of the pragmatic failures are caused by ignorance of the pragmatic principles and culture of the target language. Thus, further researches need to be done and more emphasis should be laid on enhancing pragmatic and cultural teaching in foreign language classes in order to reduce and even avoid pragmatic failures in cross-cultural communication.So a theoretical framework is built to analyze the sources of pragmatic failures both from pragmatic and cultural perspectives in order to help English teachers to know systematically the reasons for the various pragmatic failures in cross-cultural communication. Pragmatic principles entail cooperative principle, politeness principle and speech act theory. The contrast of Chinese and American value systems (the core of culture) is done from seven aspects: individualism/collectivism, self-reliance/dependence, equality/hierarchy, directness/indirectness, different attitudes toward time, different attitudes toward space, and different body motion and gestures. Then the author identifies the differences between Chinese and English in address forms, greetings, opening of conversations, invitations, refusals, gift-giving, compliments, apologies, visit-arranging, and leave-taking through contrastive analysis. At the end of this study, some preliminary suggestions on ways to enhance students'cross-cultural communicative competence are put forward in the hope that the findings of this study can be applicable to language teaching and learning.This thesis consists of seven chapters:Chapter I Introduction gives a brief description of this study.Chapter II Literature Review gives a brief account of some related definitions and concepts and reviews the literature related to this study.Chapter III Investigation of Pragmatic Competence of Chinese EFL Learners reports at full length the conduction of the present study. Aspects of design, subjects, instrumentation, data collection and data analysis are described one by one.Chapter IV Sources for Pragmatic Failure builds a theoretical framework of analyzing pragmatic failure both from pragmatic and cultural perspectives.Chapter V A Comparative Analysis of Cross-Cultural Communication Based on Pragmatics and Culture compares the differences between Chinese and English in address forms, greetings, opening of conversations, invitations, refusals, gift-giving, compliments, apologies, visit-arranging, and leave-taking.Chapter VI Enhancement of Students'Cross-Cultural Communicative Competence proposes suggestions to improve students'cross-cultural communicative competence.Chapter VII Conclusion includes the major findings, theoretical and pedagogical implications, limitations of the present study and suggestions for further research.