Foreigners To Learn Chinese Pragmatic Failure

Language is always the language of a definite nationality. A definite language of a nationality must be the product of a definite culture. As a tool of communication, the cultural background of the language and the cultural psychology formed by the long-term accumulation under such background, including communicative format and communicative regulation, etc. will certainly influence the language deeply. Language employment in cross-cultural communication is no diffrrent. It is influenced by the cultural background of the target- languages communicative psychology, cultural conventions and so on. Therefore, it can produce pragmatic failures of non-language factors. This paper will outline from two aspects the commonly appearing types of pragmatic failures by foreigners while learning Chinese: (1 )the embodying of the relationship among language culture and style of thinking in the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language; (2) language pragmatic t~ilure and socio- pragmatic fuilure. 1 have atter pted to analyze the essence and traits of these two types of ~iilures and the causes of pragmatic failure from subjective and objective aspects. This paper contains five chapters excluding Foreword and Conclusion. The first to the third chapter are the main body of this thesis. The first chapter mainly discusses the close relationship among languages culture and style of thinking. From this analysis we can understand that the employment of language cannot exist independent of culture. While using the language, people are often influenced not only by the language itself but also by language context .. personal expressive habit, understanding capability, etc.. Therefore, both communicative parties may come from cultural backgrounds of great disparity, and will be influenced and restricted by different cultural backgrounds considering on cross-cultural communication because of difference of culture. The second chapter illustrates the types of pragmatic failure most commonly experienced by foreigners in learning Chinese. Adopting predecessor studies on classification of pragmatic iilures as language pragmatic failure and socio-pragmatic failure, this paper will sum up the pragmatic failure of the tone. intonation vocabulary, grammatical syntax etc. as language pragmatic failure; and sum up the pragmatic failure influenced by mother-tongue culture and resulted in the unmastered Chinese culture as the second sort of failure. Meanwhile, it classifies pragmatic failures into even smaller units and makes careful and concrete analysis of the types and traits of pragmatic failures. The third chapter discusses the following six parts one by one on the causes of formation of pragmatic failures by foreigners in learning Chinese: (1) the disturbance from the mother-tongue culture; (2) the unskilled mastery of Chinese culture; (3) the inappropriateness and deficiency of the teaching of Chinese culture and pragmatics to foreigners; (4) the tolerance of Chinese people; (5) the contradiction of approved cognition to Chinese culture by foreigners; (6) the Chinese language proficiency of foreigners.