| Nowadays, communication has already been an indispensable part of our daily life, but communication breakdown happens frequently. Jenny Thomas summarizes this kind of breakdown as cross-cultural pragmatic failures. Scholars and experts across the world have studied the field from diverse angles, but there is no research on cross-cultural pragmatic failures caused by disparities on temporal concepts, which results in losses to individuals, companies and countries. Therefore, it is necessary to solve the problem.This thesis adopts Edward Hall's theory and Florence Kluckhohn and Fred Strodbeck's theory on Chronemics. According to their theories, time can be perceived into three categaories: cultural time, psychological time and monochronic and polychronic time orientation. This thesis involves three methods: constractive approach, diagrammatization and case study. We find out the deep reasons of CCPFs caused by disparities on temporal concepts through the three methods: every culture has its special temporal concept, which penetrates into people's work and life; people unconsciously hold their own temporal concept to perceive their interlocutors in the process of cross-cultural communication; when the temporal concepts of interlocutors are different, CCPFs probably appear.From the above analysis, the author proposes some suggestions: (1) Respecting and getting familiar with other's temporal concepts. (2) Accumulating knowledge on Chronemics. (3) Becoming a time adaptor. (4)Explaining their own temporal concepts in the process of business negotiation. When there are disparities, people should make adjustments. |
PDF Full Text Request