An Analysis Of Pragmatic Failure With Cross-cultural Pragmatics

Cross-cultural Pragmatics is a relatively young linguistic branch, growing out ofpragmatics and comparative linguistics, and introducing cultural factors into theresearch scope of pragmatics. It attracted close attention from numerous pragmaticscientists and brought them to carry out extensive research on it the moment it cameinto the world. Despite the differences in their research results and interpretations,they haven’t at least neglected the important role which culture plays incommunication. The author has also made an attempt in this thesis to do some modestexploratory research on cross-cultural pragmatic failure in communication inreference to the achievements of the seniors in this field, with the intention of findingout on the basis of Relevance Theory what is responsible for cross-cultural pragmaticfailure and making an analysis accordingly to check the interpretative force ofRelevance Theory on cross-cultural pragmatic failure in communication.The author of this thesis believes that relevance theory can give a convincingexplanation to pragmatic failure. In cross-cultural communication, the amount ofdiscourse relevance and the degree to which the speaker and hearer can understand itare critical to the rise and fall of pragmatic failure. The degree of relevance affects thecorrect understanding of context meaning. There is no doubt that cross-culturalcommunication is the exchange by means of language between people from differentcultural backgrounds. Then, when both sides of communicators are giving and takingeach other’s information passed through speech, one needs to initially digest other’svocabulary in utterance according to context and within his own cognitive reach andthen responds. The process of understanding and dealing with information sent andtaken in discourse is the process of looking for relevance. The less relevance is detected,the harder the discourse is understood, the more likely the pragmatic failure occurs inresponse to other’s utterance. So in cross-cultural communication, when the speaker is encoding the discourse, he should never take it for granted that he will put his ideaacross, and he should and must be on guard against the potential deviating of thehearer’s understanding from his expected meaning, otherwise chances are that thehearer will give a totally unrelated verbal utterance due to the wrong decoding of theinformation taken. Now pragmatic failure is by no means a novelty. This tells us thatcommunication is a two-way operation, and the communicators have to single out therelevance in utterance, so as to minimize or avoid misinterpretation and keepcommunication running on. Considering the explanation made so far by relevancetheory and its application to cross cultural communication, it is quite simple and direct.It can be seen as a consolidation of “Grice’s theory of “maxims of conversation.”Cross-cultural Pragmatics is a relatively young branch in contrast to others inlinguistic filed. It attaches great importance to the research of cross-culturalcharacteristics. Cross-cultural pragmatics is, so to speak, the study of the use ofsecond language in cross-cultural speech communication when the pragmatic problemoccurs.Cross-cultural pragmatics can be divided into cross-cultural pragmatic linguisticsand cross-cultural social pragmatics. The former is the study of similarities anddifferences of the pragmatic function in the same or similar languages from thedifferent language culture, and similarities and differences when people understand thelanguage form and use these language forms over their speech acts. The latter is thestudy of “social environment which influences the use of language” that is the study ofsocial and cultural components which influence people in language use.Though Cross-cultural pragmatics is a new field of linguistics, it is developingfast. Scholars have conducted many different contrastive researches on it.Cross-cultural pragmatics started drawing Chinese scholars’ attention in themid-1980s and their studies on it. Their efforts paid off with the publication ofthe research fruit ranging from cross-cultural pragmatic contrastive,cross-cultural pragmatic competence, cross-cultural adaptation, cross-culturalpragmatic failure and pragmatic rules. According to He Ziran, one of thepioneers home in this field, cross-cultural pragmatics is the study of the pragmatic problems when the second language is used in cross-cultural speechcommunication. Cross-cultural communication refers to the speechcommunication in which the mother tongue is not used by one or neither of thespeakers involved. By He Zhaoxiong, another Chinese leading scholar,cross-cultural pragmatics is the study of communication between people with thedifferent cultural backgrounds, and focuses on the comparative study of verbalactivities in different cultures. The difference between two definitions lies in thefocal point of formulation, but they have a basic matter in common. Both takeinto consideration the research on the communication between the participantswith different cultural backgrounds, with their favor left aside towards differentinterpretations of cross-cultural pragmatics. It can be expected that there will befurther exploration and discovery in this field and that more forcefulinterpretations of cross-cultural pragmatics will come out.With the worldwide fantastic spurt in information technology today, contactsbetween different peoples or countries are booming, thus facilitating greatly culturalinterchange, and propelling the international cooperation and development. And therein the process of cross-cultural communication have simultaneously emerged strikingsorts of communication barriers, failures or clashes， because of the differencesbetween cultures like ways of thinking, culture and values. Researches on culture,communication, cross-cultural communication are of great significance to thereduction and prevention of pragmatic failure. Remember that different countries andnations have their own particular cultures, and that the difference in understandingbetween cultures is one of the important factors that affect the world harmoniousdevelopment.Culture and communication are two different concepts; however, they aredirectly linked. Culture is “the total set of beliefs, attitudes, customs, behavior, socialhabits, etc. of the members of a particular society while communication refers to theexchange of ideas, information, etc. between two or more persons.” Culture isreflected in communication and affects or dominates communication. Communicationcan be called exchange, verbal or nonverbal, which is the circulating of the give-take-give. If what the culture-oriented speaker/sender gives goes against theculture of the culture-oriented hearer/receiver, what has been given will be subject toprobable misunderstanding or potential exclusion or the improper output on thehearer’s side. As a result, the communication is either interrupted or on the wrongtrack, ending up in failure with efforts in vain. It is cultural components that kill thecommunication and are responsible for its failure in a certain sense, which we believeis attributed to cross-cultural pragmatic failure.Cross-cultural pragmatic failure refers to the misunderstanding and even conflictarising in the communication process because of the hearer’s failure to catchdiscourse implication of the speaker accurately and because of his following improperoutput of utterances, which may be proper in his culture. The pioneer study ofpragmatic failure in China goes to He Ziran and his fraternity. In1984, they launchedinvestigation into pragmatic differences between English and Chinese in reference toThomas theory, and made known their results of investigation together withexplanations about pragmatic failure. Cross-cultural pragmatic failure is a commonphenomenon in cross-cultural communication process,in this process, the speakerdisobeys the communication standard and social customs, ignores hearer’s identity orstatus, harms the special cultural value of target language, causes the breaking off orfailure of communication, makes communicating obstacles, then communicationcannot achieve the expected results. Though there is no grammatical error, the wrongway of speaking or the improper performance makes the communication lose theexpected effect.Through the probing and analyzing of cross-cultural pragmatic failure as well asthe expounding of relevance theory，the author has found that is capable of a forcefulinterpretative answer to cross-cultural pragmatic failure, and has further enrichedexplanations of pragmatic failure phenomena from the cross-cultural pragmaticsperspective. The research focus of the thesis is to use the cross-cultural pragmaticstheory to explain language users’ pragmatic failures in the process of language output;it will begin with the study of pragmatic failure phenomena in interculturalcommunication before the analysis of them, which involve values, ways of thinking, religious belief and the differences in living environment, and finally gives thecross-cultural pragmatic failure prevention strategy for the sake of cultivation of andimprovement over the ability of cross-cultural communication. In cross-culturalcommunication, only when we gain both linguistic competence and social culturalcompetence, apply them in a flexible way and build a system between the twocultural patterns eventually will the effect of coordinated pragmatic failure beimproved and the fluency of cultural communication be guaranteed.There are many components that may contribute to cross-cultural pragmaticfailures: beliefs and values; ethical norms; social relations; cultural contexts; failures toshare the same implicated premise; discrepancy in natural environments and so on. Inorder to avoid cross-cultural pragmatic failure, developing pragmatic competence is ofgreat importance. In the process of cross-cultural communication, language users needto have a universal perspective on meaning.At the same time, language users should realize every linguistic system is unique;they need to observe each language’s characteristics and apply them incommunication, so that pragmatic failure can be minimized or avoided.