The Analysis Of Pragmatic Failure In Intercultural Communication

The interrelation between cultures covers three categories, namely, cultural overlap, cultural gap and cultural conflict. Without the knowledge of other cultures, there will be barriers when people from different cultural groups communicate with each other. Sometimes, even if one has mastered a foreign language very well the embarrassments and conflicts are unavoidable. Therefore, in order to minimize the misunderstandings between different cultural groups it is necessary to study the phenomena and causes of pragmatic failure in intercultural communication. The thesis adopts some pragmatic theories, including Grice's cooperative principles, Leech's politeness principle and Levinson's face system, to analyze pragmatic failure that results form the diversities of cultures. From the above contrasts and comparisons, we will have a better understanding about how people from different cultures carry out their illocutionary activities with different standards of those maxims. Moreover, it should be questioned whether those theories are general standards which are fit for all kinds of cultural groups. During the process of research, we have noticed that the patterns of communication are various according to different culture backgrounds. As a result, the failures and conflicts of intercultural communication are very common occurrences. Hence, according to the classification of pragmatic failure by Jenny Thomas and Verschueren's definition of pragmatics, the study of pragmatic failure will cover the fields of verbal communication and non-verbal communication. The pragmatic failure in verbal communication refers to the inappropriate utterances that are caused by the ignorance of the target language norms and cultural background. Non-verbal communication is also called as body language and kinesics. In other words, the information could be delivered through silent language which consists of one's hand movement, posture, facial expression, temporal and special behavior, the tune and pitch, and so on. All in all, the deep-rooted reasons of pragmatic failure lie in the diversities of value, thinking pattern, belief and so on. The author hopes that the research of pragmatic failure in intercultural communication will be helpful to strengthen people's communicative competence and enlighten the EFL teaching in China..