Research On The Pragmatic Failure Of Cross-Cultural Communication Between Chinese And English In View Of Adaptation Theory

Pragmatic failure has been the important research subject in the field of cross-cultural communication and pragmatics. The occurrence of pragmatic failure tends to end up with communication breakdown and becomes the main obstacle in people’s communication. Wolfson (1983) points out:"In interacting with foreigners, native speakers tend to be rather tolerant of errors in pronunciation or syntax. In contrast, violations of rules of speaking are often interpreted as bad manners since the native speaker is unlikely to be aware of sociolinguistic relativity"(Chen Zhi’an&Huang Ming2002:269). Therefore, the survey on pragmatic failure can help both the utterer and the interpreter reduce the misunderstanding to facilitate communication, pointing out the clear direction for the foreign language learners and teachers.The term pragmatic failure first appeared in the Cross-Cultural Pragmatic Failure written by Jenny Thomas, who made the research mainly oh the reasons for pragmatic failure and classified the pragmatic failure into two types:one is pragmalinguistic failure; the other is sociopragmatic failure, laying the solid foundation for the further research in this field. At present, most of the scholars attribute the pragmatic failure to cultural differences. In this thesis, the author analyzes the reasons for pragmatic failure involving cognitive, social and cultural factors based on Jeff Verschueren" s adaptation theory, and offers the measures for reducing or avoiding pragmatic failure from foreign language teaching and foreign language learning. According to the adaptation theory, language use is a process of making choices because language has such features as variability, negotiability and adaptability. Four aspects can be adopted to study language from the aspect of adaptation, covering contextual correlates, structural elements, dynamics as well as salience.In this thesis, the author mainly adopts the qualitative research method to analyze and illustrate the collected cases from communicative context and linguistic structure, and contrasts the cultural differences if necessary to explore the reasons of pragmatic failure and measures for tackling it. Communicative context involves language user, mental world, social world as well as physical world; when it comes to linguistic structure, it concerns sound level, word level, sentence level and discourse level. Through detailed analysis and contrast, the author provides such measures as creating authentic context for learners, integrating pragmatic knowledge and culture in foreign language teaching, regarding the teaching of language and culture as the whole body and fusing them into the process of English learning; as foreign language learners, the most difficult thing is to understand and master the foreign culture profoundly, which is also the significant barrier because the advanced English learning is the cultural learning. The optimal language choices are made according to culture, and the language uses reflect the cultural features. As a consequence, foreign language learners should expand the channels to obtain cultural information, strengthen cultural awareness and acquire cultural empathy to experience and accept the foreign culture from the angle of foreign culture, offering the effective ways to reduce or avoid pragmatic failure. In cross-cultural communication, teachers enable students to realize which factors should be considered and adapted to make proper language choices and achieve the expected communicative effect.The author concludes that the adaptation theory has certain explaining force and application value, as the pragmatic theory, it digs out the reasons for pragmatic failure from cognitive, social and cultural aspects, and the corresponding measures established on this basis will play a positive and effective role, facilitating the cross-cultural communication. The limitation is that only two aspects of the adaptation theory are used in this thesis, the author expects that the promising scholars will probe pragmatic failure from four aspects in the future and make a new leap.