A Study On The Acceptability Of Linguistic Deviation Based On Adaptation Theory

The phenomenon of linguistic deviation is very common in communication between native and non-native speakers. Due to the rapid development of communication and transportation technology over the last decades, more and more Chinese speakers of English have been involved in contact with native speakers of English. Yet not all of them are able to speak English as idiomatically as native speakers do. They often use some words or expressions sounding quite strange and exotic to native speakers or pragmatically inappropriate utterances in given context. Many scholars and researchers have made incisive criticisms of such deviant English. However, some others believe that it is too demanding to require non-native speakers to use English in a totally idiomatic way as native speakers do. Also, some surveys reveal that native speakers tend to be tolerant of linguistic deviations emerging from communication with non-native speakers. Moreover, a large number of originally seemingly deviant English words and expressions have been accepted into English vocabulary bank.This thesis, from a dialectical perspective, believes that linguistic deviations taking place in cross-cultural communication are acceptable with certain limits. Yet reasons why they are acceptable and why such acceptability is limited are too intricate to be explained clearly only from one single aspect. Linguistic deviations can be attributed either to the non-native speaker’s deficiency in language or to differences in culture of native and non-native speakers. Thus, the acceptability must be related not only to language itself but also to cultural elements and language users and even more factors. So a comprehensive analysis is necessary and rational.Jef Verschueren put forward a new theory about pragmatics in the late20th century, namely, adaptation theory. This theory extends the concept of context and provides a new insight into linguistic behavior from the pragmatic perspective. It establishes a scientific and coherent theoretical framework for pragmatic analysis and can be used as an effective tool to study linguistic phenomenon in communication. According to adaptation theory, using language includes continuous making of linguistic choices. In communication process, contextual correlates and structural objects can adapt to each other dynamically through the function of language users’ mind. Hence, this thesis tries to account for the acceptability of linguistic deviations as well as limits of such acceptability in a relatively comprehensive way within the theoretical framework of adaptation theory. The investigation will be carried out from the perspective of mutual adaptation of language structure and contextual correlates, especially from the adaptation of native speakers of English to communicative context, which, according to Verschueren, is constituted of language users, mental, social and physical world.The dialectical investigation into the acceptability of linguistic deviations in cross-cultural communication may hopefully give us some meaningful implications on how to deal with the linguistic and cultural differences between Chinese and English in actual communication, as well as pragmatic rules in language teaching.