A Study Of Pragmatic Failure In The Use Of English By Chinese High School Students From The Perspective Of Cultural Transfer

With the development of globalization,the communication between people from different cultural backgrounds is becoming unprecedentedly frequent.In intercultural communication,cultural transfer often happens when people from different cultures apply their cultural systems and values to conduct their behaviors in intercultural communication,and often use the similar cultural criterion or values to judge the behaviors of others whose cultural backgrounds are quite different.Due to the negative influence of cultural transfer,pragmatic failures frequently occur in intercultural communication.English,as a lingua franca,plays a vital role in intercultural communication.Therefore,the ability of using English appropriately in communicative situations is of great significance in English learning.In the field of second language acquisition,there is no shortage of studies concerned with pragmatic failure in the use of English;however,few of them are based on the perspective of cultural transfer.More often than not,the subjects of these studies are not high school students.Therefore,this thesis is intended to research the pragmatic competence of Chinese high school students,exploring the deep-rooted reasons behind the pragmatic failures they make in the use of English from cultural transfer perspective.The thesis aims to emphasize the significant influence of cultural factors on pragmatic competence and provide some pedagogical implications.Based on the theory of cultural transfer,200 Chinese high school students' English pragmatic competence questionnaires and related theories of pragmatic failure,this thesis aims to explore the following issues: firstly,the types of pragmatic failure that Chinese high school students frequently commit;secondly,the reasons leading to each type of pragmatic failure from cultural perspective;thirdly,the difference between the English pragmatic competence of students in two high schools in Eastern China and Western China,the difference between the English pragmatic competence of male students and female students;fourthly,relation between students' linguistic competence and pragmatic competence.At the end of the thesis,theimportance of cultivating students' pragmatic consciousness and awareness of cross-cultural differences are emphasized,and some innovative teaching suggestions are put forward according to the English teaching situations so as to minimize the students' pragmatic failure in the use of English.