Pragmatic Failure And Face Conflicts

Pragmatic failure is an important part of cross-cultural pragmatics, normally occurring in intercultural interactions. The occurrence of pragmatic failure will arouse communication breakdown, and even face conflicts. In interviews of public figures,two sides involved in the conversation represent not only themselves, but also communities behind them, and sometimes nations. Therefore, the study of pragmatic failure can reflect the pragmatic competence of interlocutors, its influence on “face”and the fundamental reason behind it.The thesis chooses three representative public figures respectively from different fields, a total of 6 interviews, which are transcribed into text word for word. A synthesized theoretical model based on such approaches in discourse analysis as the speech act theory, the cooperative principle and the politeness principle is employed to discuss pragmatic failure by Chinese public figures in English interviews1 from the perspective of discourse. It is found that Chinese public figures reserve a higher percentage of pragmalinguistic failure than sociopragmatic failure. The failure have features as follows: with regard to the speech act theory, it mainly present in unnecessary words and the roundabout way of expression; in terms of the cooperative principle, it is realized by the violation of quantity and relation; from the politeness principle, it is marked by an overuse of honoring others by demeaning self and the discrepancy of “face”. In a word, pragmatic failure does harm to communicators’ “face” and brings about conflicts. Simultaneously, it is also discovered that the leading cause of pragmatic failure can be attributed to the different modes of thinking between Chinese and English, the negative transfer of language and culture and the discrepancy between politeness principles. Accordingly, the author suggests some strategies such as raising awareness of the cultural differences, perfecting the system of cross-cultural pragmatics and heightening the quality of teaching so as to help English learners avoid pragmatic failure and improve pragmatic competence.