A Study Of College Students’ Pragmatic Failure In Linguistic Taboos

With the development of globalization, cross-cultural communication becomesmore and more important. Language is a part of culture and culture is passed downthrough language. It is not enough for people to communicate only withgrammatically right sentences but disregard of the cultural background of the targetlanguage. Being aware of different contexts for which the uses of taboo language areinappropriate can avoid unnecessary misunderstanding and unexpectedcommunication breakdown in cross-cultural interaction.The thesis mainly focuses on the issue of the pragmatic failure caused by misusinglinguistic taboos. After the theoretical framework of the thesis introduced, theliterature review will be discussed. Then, a questionnaire on the linguistic taboos wasgiven to117college students of Shanghai International Studies University, amongwhom20students were interviewed.The results indicate thatCollege students’ pragmatic failures have been reduced and their pragmaticcompetence has been improved.College students tend to have an unfavorable awareness of pragmatic failurecaused by misusing linguistic taboos. Among the main three types of linguistictaboos, college students make relatively least mistakes in the form of addresswhile they misuse taboo words most frequently.Then, reasons for these pragmatic failures in taboos will be further analyzed in thethesis. The research on pragmatic failure by the misuse of linguistic taboos can castlights on English teaching and learning in China and to a broad sense, it may providesome enlightenment on cross-cultural communication.