A Study On Pragmatic Failure From The Perspective Of Cross-Cultural Pragmatics

Nowadays, with the rapid development of international economy, science，technologyand trade, people with different cultural background begin to communicate with each othermore frequently than ever before. It is an universal and acknowledged fact that China, as thelargest and dynamic developing country, has become one of the economic and trading centersin the world. Intercultural communication has become one of the most frequent and importantactivities in the21th century. Countries around the world have different cultures, values andreligious beliefs, which often leads to various of pragmatic failures in interculturalcommunications and may pose negative effects on intercultural communication.Communicators who are deeply influenced by their native culture always take their owncommunicative patterns, thinking patterns, cultural traditions and language customs intointercultural communications. As a result, communicators may not get a better understandingof each others’ communicative intentions and are not able to precisely express their thoughtsand feelings. Therefore, research on pragmatic failures in intercultural communication havebecome an important scientific topic, which has great theoretical significance and practicalvalues.The research studies make a questionnaire with the subject of60non-English majorstudents in Shanxi Normal University. The questionnaire contains9kinds of pragmaticfailures in terms of speech act. These speech act are addressing, greeting, parting, compliment,invitation, refusal, requesting, apology and thanks. Through analyzing various kinds ofpragmatic failures in intercultural communications, the thesis concludes the reasons causingthe pragmatic failure and tries to find some solutions to avoid or reduce them in interculturalcommunications from the perspective of cooperative principle.This study addresses the following three questions:1) What is the general situation ofpragmatic failures committed by non-English major students?2) What kind of pragmatic failures do they often make?3) What are the potential causes of the pragmatic failures?The results show that: requesting, parting, greeting are relatively higher, which are morethan50%. Among them, the failure rate of requesting is the most highest, which is up to69.2%. The following speech acts are compliment, apology and thanks. The lowest failurerate are the speech act of offering and inviting, refusing and addressing. These failures arecaused by the different culture between China and western countries and lacking theknowledge of cultural context. Therefore, students should pay more attention to the culturalbackground and conventions of western countries in the process of English acquisition.Besides, students should cultivate their pragmatic competence and interculturalcommunication.