| Cross-cultural communication is a newly developing interdisciplinary subject, having close connection with anthropology, sociology, linguistics, sociolinguistics, and foreign language teaching. It is a new field of the study of communication.R. Lado published his famous book Linguistics across Cultures in 1957; and he was the first scholar to put forward the concept of cross-cultural communication. Since then, many treatises on cross-cultural communication have been published in western countries. In china, although we have long emphasized the importance of the role culture plays in foreign language teaching, we did not attach any importance to the study of cross-cultural communication until the 1980s'.Since China began to carry out its policy of reform and opening up, it has witnessed an increasing number of publications on cross-cultural communication. Researches are being done on the comparison between cultures, pragmatic failure, and the relationship between cross-cultural communication and language teaching. Their achievements allow us to analyze miscommunication from a socio-cultural perspective.Linguistic competence is conventionally taken as of capital importance in communicating with the target language-speaking people. However, most learners are not adaptive and cannot use the language in the appropriate situation at the appropriate time, though they have a good command of the vocabulary and rules of grammar. D.Hymes proposed the concept of communicative competence, pointing out that, in addition to linguistic competence, the competent communicator must also have a knowledge of how to use language appropriately and effectively. We must know when and where to speak, what to talk about, and in what manner to speak. All these have something to do with culture.Culture makes society unique. All of us are molded and shaped by the experiences of our culture and automatically develop the habit of evaluating all other cultures by these unique experiences, either consciously or unconsciously. When there are incompatible cultural concepts that underlie expressions, pragmatic failure in cross-cultural is inevitable. Pragmatic failure resulting from cultural unawareness is rarely recognized by non-linguists, and is most likely to be attributed to boorishness or ill-will. Therefore, it is hard to overcome if we do not raise our cultural awareness.Analyzing and explaining pragmatic failure have been tried mainly on the basis of pragmatics theories. In recent years Chinese scholars have begun to realize that in Sino-American communication pragmatic failure is often made because of the lack of the knowledge of culture.This dissertation aims to explore the following problems: the main causes of pragmatic failure, the relationship between culture and pragmatic failure, and enhance pragmatic competence and raising cross-cultural awareness.This dissertation consists of six chapters.Chapter One serves as an introduction, Introduction part states the necessity and the significant of choosing this topic, and also the whole structure of this thesis and elaborates the concepts and the classification of pragmatic failure, the resources are explored respectively.Chapter Two displays a case study, the objects, subjects, material, method and data analysis will be involved specifically.Chapter Three analyzes the results of the the research, focusing on the problems and resources of the pragmatic failure in cross-cultural communication.Chapter Four offers some measures to avoid pragmatic failures, cause the lack of pragmatic competence and the unawareness of culture can cause bad effect on communication. Pragmatic competence, intercultural awareness and correct attitude towards pragmatic failure are critical in cultivating the freshmen of non-English majors'ability in intercultural communication.At last, conclusion is provided to summarize the whole thesis, in which the pragmatic competence is stressed in English teaching courses.
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