Speech Acts In Cross-Cultural Communication

We live in a world of speech because we "produce" speech at all times. There are a variety of ways to carry out speech acts and it is hard to imagine what the world would be without speech acts.Austin and Searle have made great contribution to the research and study of linguistics by putting forward the speech act theory, which to some extent is centered in sentences. Differences occur in many aspects of life during the course of putting the speech acts into effect. These differences are prevalent no matter for people sharing the same culture or for people in different cultures. Speech acts vary because of different culture patterns, regions, value systems, traditions and way of thinking, all of which will lead to troubles in communication. Being aware of these differences seems vital for us to understand communicative activities and to improve communicative situation.This thesis discusses the expressive speech acts. First analyses factors that affect speech acts in different cultures in the perspective of cultural patterns, which detailed in several aspects: value systems, interpersonal relationship, power distance, context and communication styles. The reasons for these factors are also presented: historical roots and social roots.Then explores seven formulaic speech acts, which are greetings, addressing, refusals, and apologies, expressing gratitude, criticism and compliment by using comparisons. Examples are presented in many circumstances to show how people in different cultures react to those speech acts and reasons are also attached. According to these differences of cultural patterns, misinterpretations and misunderstandings are often found in many aspects of social life.In conclusion, from both the pragmatic and cultural points of view, this thesis had done a contrastive study of speech acts in English and Chinese. On one hand, the theoretical similarities of speech acts are explained from a pragmatic perspective, on the other hand, it emphasizes on the explanation and analysis of cultural factors. This thesis aims to figure out the differences in cultural aspect and provides advices to avoid misunderstandings and failures effectively in intercultural communication, so as to enhance mutual understanding between Americans and the Chinese.