A Study On Cross-cultural Pragmatic Failures In Oral Communication Of College English Students

With the rapid development of the globalization and cooperation between countries, English is playing a more and more important role in cross-cultural communication. In order to accomplish cross-cultural communication, English learners in China need not only the linguistic knowledge, but also pragmatic competence. However, much attention has been put on developing students' linguistic knowledge in English teaching in colleges in China, resulting in poor pragmatic competence in cross-cultural communication.Cross-cultural pragmatic failure has attracted much attention in the fields of pragmatics and applied linguistics in China. For instance, Hu Wenzhong (1989) uses the term 'cultural mistake' to refer to language and behavior that is inappropriate or unacceptable to most native speakers, and he considers that cultural mistakes are often worse than linguistic ones and tend to create ill feeling between native speakers and Chinese speakers of English.In order to obtain further information about the pragmatic competence among Chinese college students, and to enhance English language teaching, this paper probes into the pragmatic failures of the College English students. The study includes a test and an interview. 160 participants from a university took part in it. Based on the data analysis, the author finds:(1) The students' pragmatic competence is surprisingly low no matter whether they have passed CET-4 or not; there is an imbalance between linguistic proficiency and pragmatic competence.(2) The insufficient knowledge of the target culture is the most important reason for the students' low level of pragmatic competence;(3) Linguistic proficiency and pragmatic competence are positively related, but higher linguistic proficiency does not guarantee higher pragmatic competence.(4) Students lack of systematic instruction on pragmatic knowledge. This dissertation includes six chapters:Chapter one serves as an introduction. It surveys the current situation of College English Teaching in China and states the significance of studying pragmatic failures.Chapter Two is literature review. It reviews the existing studies on pragmatic failure and explains the values of the present study.Chapter Three records the empirical study on pragmatic failures, which includes a designed test and an interview with 160 students from a university.Chapter Four is the results and analysis of the investigation. Some important theories, such as speech act theories, politeness principle, are used to analyze the data. And the results are reported.Chapter Five lists the implications for developing students' pragmatic competence. Some suggestions on classroom teaching and syllabus making are forwarded.Chapter six is the conclusion. It stresses the importance of putting more currency on learners' pragmatic competence in College English Teaching.