Probing Into The Cross-Cultural Pragmatic Failures From The Perspective Of The "Compensation Hypothesis"

This thesis concentrates on analyzing the negative cultural contextual transference leading to cross-cultural pragmatic failures in the Chinese-English intercultural communication (IC) under the guidance of "Compensation Hypothesis" and through the application of pragmatic and sociolinguistic theories; and then purports that negative transference of Chinese cultural context in IC can be interpreted as "compensation of the internal Chinese cultural context" in the external English communicative environment, which is one of the basic reasons responsible for IC pragmatic failures.A descriptive research on cross-cultural pragmatic failures is carried out in terms of oral communication and translation so as to identify and analyze reasons leading to cross-cultural pragmatic failures thoroughly. Meanwhile, the thesis also makes an effort to probe into an effective context-based acculturation teaching mode in order to seek for effective approaches to improve Chinese learners' sensitivities to English culture in IC and enrich their contextual knowledge, thereby avoiding, or at least, lessening pragmatic failures resulting from incorrect match of internal Chinese cultural contexts with the external English communicative contexts.