Pragmatic Failure: A Cross-Cultural Perspective

It is the communicative competence that English language teaching aims at. Communicative competence includes not only students? grammatical (or linguistic) competence, but also their pragmatic(or sociolinguistic) competence. Pragmatic competence means to use language tactfully and appropriately on the one hand, and to interpret language correctly on the other hand. Failing to achieve either one will lead to pragmatic failures. Pragmatic failure can be divided into two types: pragmalinguistic failure and sociopragmatic failure. The former occurs when different associations with lexis pragmatic transfer from Li to L2 and eaching-induced errors come into existence. The latter arises when the paticipants relative power, taboo topics and social identity are involved. Pragmatic failures after all, are language phenomena. They are deeply rooted in culture. Cultures differ from each other in many aspects such as ideology, face system, function of language and non-verbal communication. American individualism and Chinese collectivism each play a decisive role in decision-making. In language use, Americans tend to adopt the politeness strategies of involvement while Chinese, the politeness strategies of independence. They respectively form solidarity face system and deference face system. Also, different cultures have distinctive ways of understanding the basic functions of language, whether language is used for information or relation, negotiation or ratification of group harmony or individual welfare. All the above factors bring about cross-cultural differences in communication. Non-verbal signals compose another part of the contextual background, so they cannot be neglected in communication. Participants?attitudes can also influence the enhancing of pragmatic competence. We must prevent ethnocentrism, stereotypes and prejudice. This cannot be achieved without cultural awareness and cultural-contrastive approach. With understanding of cultural differences, we can increase shared knowledge for mutual understanding in cross-cultural communication. Besides shared knowledge, we still have to study pragmatic theories and principles, and to strength the negotiation skills for some unsure personal questions as well as adaptation skills in various complex and ever-changing contexts. All this will eventually contributes to enhancing of one's communicative competence.