| With the development of science and technology, the communication and cooperation between nations becomes more and more frequent. English, as a global language, is playing an indispensable role in the modern society. In order to accomplish communication, English speakers need not only the basic knowledge of English language, but pragmatic competence. It is obvious that college English teachers should develop the students' communicative competence and treats it as the goal of College English Teaching. But research indicates that pragmatic competence does not necessarily develop with the length of time the learners study English in college. Most students are not adaptive and cannot use English to communicate with the native speakers of English appropriately, though they have a large vocabulary and have a good command of rules of grammar. The students have various kinds of problems when they are encountering native speakers of English. This dissertation aims to explore these problems: pragmatic failures.Cross-cultural pragmatic failure has attracted much attention in the field of pragmatics and applied linguistics. The term "pragmatic failure" is adopted from the article by J.Thomas (1983). She states that pragmatic failure refers to the inability to understand "What is meant by what is said". G. Leech (1983) said "the transfer of the norms of one community to another may well lead to pragmatic failure". In other words, pragmatic failure refers to communication breakdown resulting from being unable to realize a variety of pragmatic differences. Different from grammatical errors, pragmatic failure maybe regarded as a fact that a non-English native speaker is being deliberately impolite, unfriendly, or even rude.The study of pragmatic failure generally follows the procedure of description then explanation. The scholars in China just focus on the description at the speech act level, (different speech acts in addressing, introduction, leave-taking and refusal) and the lexical level. While actually pragmatic failure occurs at all levels. Thus, the author of the thesis intends to describe pragmatic failure from phonological, lexical, syntactical, discourse, and speech act, etc. levels to make a comprehensive study on pragmatic failure. The purpose is to find out underlying causes for pragmatic failureand ways to improve students' pragmatic competence, and thus achieve the goals of College English Teaching.This dissertation is divided into 5 chapters:Chapter one serves as an introduction. It presents the current situation of College English Teaching and learning in China. It points out the fact that English learners have committed various pragmatic failures in communication.Chapter Two is literature review. It reviews the study of pragmatic failure, the definitions, different ways of analyzing it and different explanation as to why pragmatic failures occur. Besides, the review also covers the definitions of pragmatic competence and the significance of developing the students' pragmatic competence.Chapter Three conducts a comprehensive study on pragmatic failures. It is the theoretical analysis from a phonological, lexical, syntactical, discourse level etc. Some important theories, such as speech act theories, politeness principle, are applied to analyze the causes of pragmatic failure. The conclusion is that the learners who are not fully aware of the pragmatic differences existing in Chinese and English may exhibit pragmatic failure. Pragmatic failures occur due to the following reasons: firstly, L2 learners do not always transfer some aspects of universal of L1-based pragmatic knowledge to L2 communication; secondly, the failure can also be caused by the negative transfer of pragmatic knowledge from L1. Thirdly, pragmatic failures can be caused by factors related to teaching.Chapter Four tries to find out the implications for college English teaching and make some tentative suggestions, such as integrating culture into college English classroom, introducing pragmatic knowledge about the target la... |
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