A Study Of Negative Pragmatic Transfer From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

Via the study of English daily expressions between Chinese and Americancollege students, this thesis aims to discover two questions:(1) In the aspect ofEnglish everyday expressions, what kinds of differences are there between ChineseEnglish learners and American English native speakers?(2) If their expressions havesignificant differences which can prove the existence of negative pragmatic transfer,how to explain this phenomenon from the perspective of Adaptation Theory?The data used in the present study is adopted from the Discourse CompletionTest (DCT), which originally applied to compare the forms of realizing interculturalcommunication between native speakers and the learners of this language. Thequestionnaire involves three kinds of speech acts: refusals, compliments and requestsand totally9situations. In order to backup further study, questionnaire is designed inEnglish, and subjects are asked to answer in English as well (except “Reason” part,which is asked answer in native language), as all the subjects of Chinese collegestudents learn English as their second language or foreign language. By classifyingand generating the semantic formulas in their answers, data analysis proceeds andfinally obtains the corresponding results.Data analysis shows a great difference between Chinese English learners andAmericans in refusals, compliments and requests, which identify the existence ofnegative pragmatic transfer. The phenomena mainly reflected in:(1) in refusals,Chinese prefer to use indirect way to reject and show their self-criticism of beingunable to help the others instead of criticizing the others’ impolite requests;(2) inorder to perform their modesty, most Chinese choose to weaken the power ofcompliments or attach explanation when express their gratitude;(3) when requestsomething, the form of politeness is over emphasized so that courtesy language always appears in any situation as long as they think necessary. In reaction to thesephenomena, this thesis then discusses the reason of causing them.In previous pragmatic transfer study, experts and researchers explain these phenomenacome down to the problem of “face” or social and cultural matter. While in this study, it isfound that the reason of “face” unable to explain all the phenomena, at least it soundsfarfetched in the aspect of requests. And social and cultural factors are too broad to explainappropriate. Therefore, this study attempts to understand the occurrence of negative pragmatictransfer from the perspective of Adaptation Theory as inspired by the “Reason” part subjectsfulfilled. According to the definition of adaptability in Vershueren’s UnderstandingPragmatics, the process of negative pragmatic transfer is a process of adapting to nativelanguage under the effects of individual recognition and related context to “approach points ofsatisfaction for communication needs”.As the speech acts of refusals, compliments and requests are all concerned in thestudy and the phenomena of negative pragmatic transfer are nearly found in everyspeech act in some degree, it is proved that negative pragmatic transfer universallyexists among Chinese English learners. It’s a first attempt to shed light on the processand the cause of negative pragmatic transfer from the perspective of AdaptationTheory, and this thesis may provide a broad view for future negative pragmatic study.