Cross-cultural Pragmatic Failure Analysis Of Theoretical Perspective

Pragmatic failure is an academically hot issue in pragmatic and cross-cultural study at home and abroad. In cross-cultural communication, people from different cultures speak the same language, but their communication may break down due to pragmatic differences in ways of thinking, rules of speaking, social values, lexical connotation, and other factors. Pragmatic failure was first proposed by Thomas (1983: 91) to refer the inability to understand what is meant by what is said. In China, He Zi ran first started the research in this field. Research in this area is of significance for building up foreign language learners' language knowledge, pragmatic competence, and competence of cross-cultural communication.It is generally realized that for efficient communication and correct understanding, it is not enough for language learners to know only the formal rules, but the rules of use, that is, the pragmatic principles and sociopragmatic conventions. A further study of the nature and causes of pragmatic failure will make us more aware of the importance of the sensitivity to cross-cultural pragmatic differences and the urgency of developing pragmatic competence.The thesis summarizes the literature concerning the research of pragmatic failure both at home and abroad, clarifies the definition of pragmatic failure, points out the existing problems, offers a theoretical perspective on pragmatic failure from culture, cognition, context, speech acts, politeness in cross-cultural communication with contrastive analysis, and suggests further improvement for pragmatic failure study.