A Study Of Nonverbal Pragmatic Failure: Forms, Causes, And Avoiding Strategies

With the development of globalization, intercultural communication has become the important feature of today's world. International scientific cooperation is at all-time high. International trade and tourism is an increasingly common phenomenon. When we interact with someone from a different culture, verbal language and nonverbal language are of equal importance in communication. However, all kinds of communication failure would still occur in interpersonal and intercultural communication because communicators can't master enough foreign knowledge or acknowledge the cultural feature of foreign nations. This thesis is focused on nonverbal pragmatic failures in the intercultural and interpersonal communication.First, the author of this thesis gives the four forms of nonverbal pragmatic failures according to Bi jiwan's theory. They are the pragmatic failures of body language, paralanguage, object language and environmental language.Then, the thesis goes on to analyze the causes of these failures. From the objective angle, the differences of cultures lead to the nonverbal pragmatic failures of various kinds. We are well aware that different cultures use different languages and dialects, and differences in languages make communications more difficult. Nonverbal communication is rooted in culture, because first, most of our nonverbal behaviors are learned, passed on from generation to generation, and involve shared understandings. Secondly, they represent what a collection of people deem important enough to codify and transmit to the members of that group. From the subjective angle, the people in interpersonal and intercultural communication themselves may become the cause of pragmatic failures. There are so many psychological tendencies which may cause the failure: seeking similarities, uncertainty reduction, stereotyping and prejudice, ethnocentrism, for the people are the product of culture.In the following part, some strategies are given to help to overcome the failures. We can deal with this problem from the macroscopic angle and microscopic angle. From the macroscopic angle of culture, we should be aware of cultures' differences and cultures' equality, avoid inappropriate cultural attitudes, view cultural norms dynamically. From the microscopic angle, we should first know ourselves, consider the physical and human settings, know diverse nonverbal message systems, develop empathy, encourage feedback, develop communication flexibility.