Pragmatic Failures In Nonverbal Communication: A Perspective Of Intercultural Communicative Context

This thesis attempts to explore pragmatic failures in nonverbal communication from a new perspective of intercultural communicative context based on the rubric of Relevance Theory and Adaptation Theory. It holds that pragmatic failures will not necessarily occur in the scope of verbal communication. The research of pragmatic failures in nonverbal communication is worthwhile due to their innate characteristics. And what's more important, it notes that the root reason for pragmatic failures in nonverbal communication is failing to adapt to the instant intercultural communicative context.In general, pragmatic failures in nonverbal communication bear the following characteristics: culture-bound, subject to the dynamic intercultural communicative context, vague and unsystematic. These characteristics shed light to us that pragmatic failures in nonverbal communication can be analyzed from the perspective of intercultural communicative context with the pragmatic principles. From the cognitive perspective, in intercultural communicative context, we take communicators as the center in the context and divide the context into three categories: culture context, communicative context and linguistic context. Meanwhile, the three features of intercultural communicative context arrive at: in levels, dynamic, adaptive. In intercultural communication, communicators, as cognitive"culture man", can exert their subjective initiative to activate some internalized or sensible contextual elements and make some culture adjustment to make themselves adapt to the context and achieve optimal relevance in the communication process, thus minimizing the possibility of pragmatic failures.The thesis at first gives a definition of intercultural communicative context and figures out its features based on Relevance Theory and Adaptation Theory. Then a redefinition of pragmatic failures, which takes pragmatic failures in nonverbal communication as a distinctive branch is presented. Subsequently, the pragmatic failures in nonverbal communication are elaborated from different aspects in intercultural communicative context with supportive examples. We can conclude that the root of pragmatic failures in nonverbal communication is the communication participants'failure to adapt to the ever-changing intercultural communicative context. At last, the importance and some feasible proposals for developing intercultural communicative competence, especially communicative competence in nonverbal communication are discussed.