A Study On Socio-pragmatic Failure In Context And Teaching Strategies

In addition to the adequate knowledge of the target language, language users also need to master the necessary pragmatic competence of the language. However, under the influence of structuralism, English teaching in China has long paid insufficient attention to the cultivation of pragmatic competence. Even though many Chinese learners of English acquire a good command of English linguistic knowledge and grammatical rules, they still fail to interpret the language correctly or use it appropriately. The phenomenon is referred to as pragmatic failure. With the increasing development of cross-cultural communication between cultures and common occurrence of cross-cultural communication breakdowns, it is important and urgent to analyze the pragmatic failure deeply and systematically. Research on pragmatic failure can let teachers and learners see the essence of it, then improving teaching approaches and learners' pragmatic competence and cross-cultural communicative competence as well."Pragmatic failure" is adopted from the article "Cross-cultural Pragmatic Failure" by Thomas (1983). She believed that pragmatic failure refers to the inability to understand "what is meant by what is said". According to Thomas, there are two types of pragmatic failure:pragma-linguistic failure and socio-pragmatic failure. Pragma-linguistic failure is simply a linguistic question of highly conventionalized usage which can be taught as part of grammar. Socio-pragmatic failure is caused by socio-pragmatic mismatches between communicators'different socio-cultural backgrounds, which is a far more delicate matter and hard to be noticed. Socio-pragmatic failure is designed to be the main studying target in this thesis.Based on the research of J. Thomas, many linguistists abroad and at home have done quite a few researches in this field with fruitful results which are of great significance to English language teaching and learning.However, these researches are all about the elements of language itself, ignoring the determining function of context. Context determines the speaker's use of language and also the hearer's interpretation of what is said to him. Without considering this knowledge, linguistic communication cannot be satisfactorily accounted for in a pragmatic sense. In cross-cultural communication, context seems to be especially significant. Socio-pragmatic failure is committed in the verbal and non-verbal utterances due to the lack of the capability of accurate interpretation or of effective use of language in different contexts or the inadequate knowledge about the communicators'identity and status, psychological states and cognition. The ultimate goal of English language teaching is to make learners to be capable of communicating with people from different cultures. Therefore, in order to avoid socio-pragmatic failure in cross-cultural communication and achieve the goal of successful communication, the determining function of context must be taken into consideration. It is of great help for cross-cultural teaching of which the goal is successful communication and improving students'cross-cultural communicative competence to research socio-pragmatic failure in different communicative contexts and study the relationship between context and socio-pragmatic failure.Chapter one in this thesis is an introduction in which the author presents the current situation and the goal of Chinese college English teaching, and the significance of the thesis. Chapter two is literature review. The author reviews some theories about pragmatic failure such as the definitions and classification, putting more emphasis on socio-pragmatic failure. Then the author reviews the definition, classification and features of context, pointing out the determining function of context to communication. At last the author reviews some typical socio-pragmatic failure in context and indicates that all factors of context have an influence on cross-cultural communication. In Chapter three a survey in the form of questionnaire on the situation of Chinese students'socio-pragmatic failure is conducted to learn about the situation of socio-pragmatic failure. The author describes and analyzes socio-pragmatic failure usually occurred in cross-cultural communication from many aspects such as social-cultural backgrounds, communicators, styles of language, pragmatic principles and non-verbal communication and then the author studies the relationship between context and socio-pragmatic failure. Through the analysis and studies it is hoped that the causes and some implications of teaching and learning may be found. Based on those phenomena in chapter four the author studies the causes of socio-pragmatic failure from negative pragmatic transfer, different cultural backgrounds, value system and thinking patterns, inappropriate teaching approaches and some other aspects. In chapter five strategies of English teaching are studied on the basis of the above analysis and research, and the author tries to make some suggestions in order to correct and avoid socio-pragmatic failure in English teaching and learning.Chapter six is a conclusion in which limitations of this thesis and suggestions for further research are pointed out.