An Empirical Study Of College English Learners’ Pragmatic Failure In Cross-cultural Communication

This empirical study aims to investigate college English learners‘pragmatic failurein cross-cultural communication. It uses a Pragmatic Competence Test to examineeighty-three EFL learners from a first-class university in China on their pragmaticskills. Based on classical theories and the subjects‘performance in the test, the authorputs forward three categories, pragmalinguistic failure, sociopragmatic failure, and thegrey area. Various sub-categories such as deixis, formulaic speech, excessivecompleteness, etc., are also proposed, and specific examples are used to illustrate eachtype of pragmatic failure. Both qualitative and quantitative analyses are employed.The result of the research shows the average score of the eighty-three subjects arevery low, and proves that Chinese college English learners‘pragmatic failure rate ishigh, and their pragmatic competence is generally low. The data suggestpragmalinguistic failure happens most frequently. The correlation analysis showsone‘s pragmatic competence is positively correlated with his organizationalcompetence. However, it is possible that the two kinds of competence might not becorrelated when one‘s organizational competence has reached a certain level. Theindependent samples t-tests prove that the English majors tend to commit lesspragmatic failure than the non-English majors. This suggests that exposure may playan important role in one‘s development of pragmatic competence, since thoseEnglish-major subjects definitely have more exposure to the English language thanthose non-English-major ones. Additionally, it is proposed that the development ofpragmatic competence is like half a parabolic curve. It develops fast in the beginningbut slows down gradually. According to the interview with some subjects after thePragmatic Competence Test, it is found that teaching induction is a possible reasonbehind pragmatic failure. Certain classroom discourses and teacher-generatedmaterials may lead to EFL learners‘complete sentence response, lack of marking forspeech act modality, literal translation, etc. Moreover, some subjects‘wrong choicesin the test suggest negative pragmatic transfer is also one factor leading to pragmaticfailure. All that supports the point that pragmatic knowledge should not only be taughtbut also be emphasized in English courses so that communicative breakdown mayoccur less frequently in cross-cultural communication.