语用学期末论文

2014-2015学年第一学期
语用学与英语教学课程考核
（研究报告）
题目：An analysis of Pragmatic Failure with Cross-cultural Communications
学号（准考证号）：1230100054
姓名：焦凯丽
专业：英语(教法方向)
年级：2012级
学院：外国语学院
完成日期：2015年 1 月10日
Introduction
The Cross-cultural Pragmatics is a relatively young linguistic branch compared with the Traditional Linguistics and Structural Modern Linguistics. It attaches great importance to the research of cross-cultural characteristics. And the cross-cultural pragmatic failure is a common phenomenon in cross-cultural communication process. This paper focus on the analyzing of different kinds of pragmatic failures in our cross-cultural communication, at the same time, giving reflections and feedbacks on our English learning and Language teaching. Being in the rapid developed century of our human society, we should heighten the awareness of appropriating use of pragmatic language in our cross-cultural communication.
Part I Theoretical basis
Before Noam Chomsky, Traditional Linguistics and Structural Modern Linguistics regarded language as a system of completely self-sufficient blocking structure, which put an emphasis on the vision field of language researches on the description of linguistic entity and put the language teaching on a cultural vacuum to conduct a rigid practice. But this failed to attach the expected research on the Social culture which affects the language how it affects the construction, comprehension and expression. As a result, linguistic theories couldn't resolve realistic problems of language. And often communicators who have learned some basic knowledge such as phonetic, lexicon and grammar still couldn't carry out proper and effective communication. The birth of sociolinguistics breaks through the research restriction of traditional linguistics and pragmatics and structural. It deepens people’s realization to linguistic social nature and construct a high qualified platform for the study of the Intercultural Communication. However, all kinds of failure still occur in the intercultural communication which influences the quality of international communication because communications cannot master enough foreign knowledge or acknowledge the culture feature of foreign nation. So the research of pragmatic failure in the cross-cultural communication has become a problem of important theoretic meaning and realistic value in the contemporary linguistic study.
Cross-cultural Pragmatics is a relatively young linguistic branch, growing out of pragmatics and comparative linguistics, and introducing cultural factors into the research scope of pragmatics. It attracted great importance to the research of cross-cultural characteristics. Cross-cultural pragmatics is the study of the use of second language in cross-cultural speech communication when the pragmatic problem occurs. The conception pragmatic of pragmatic failure was formally proposed by the famous British scientist Jenny Thomas in her thesis "Cross一Cultural Pragmatic Failure" in 1983 which established a theoretical framework for the analysis of pragmatic failure and cultural transfer. She defines pragmatic failure as "inability to understand what is meant by what is said." Thus, Cross-cultural pragmatic failure
can refer to the misunderstanding and even conflict arising in the communication process because of the hearer's failure to catch discourse implication of the speaker accurately and because of his following improper output of utterances, which may be proper in his culture. The pioneer study of pragmatic failure in China goes to He Ziran and his fraternity. In 1984, they launched investigation into pragmatic differences between English and Chinese in reference to Thomas theory, and made known their results of investigation together with explanations about pragmatic failure. Cross-cultural pragmatic failure is a common phenomenon in cross-cultural communication process, in this process, the speaker disobeys the communication standard and social customs, ignores hearer's identity or status, harms the special cultural value of target language, causes the breaking off or failure of communication, makes communicating obstacles, then communication cannot achieve the expected results. Though there is no grammatical error, the wrong way of speaking or the improper performance makes the communication lose the expected effect.
Part II Case studies
There are many kinds of pragmatic failure in our cross-culture communication. First is about the phonetic pragmatic failure. A teacher who teach Chinese in England recalled that, ”My student, John is a typical English gentleman. When we walk down stairs, he always said that '请小心裸体（楼梯），下流，一起下流（下楼）吧。

‘（Please be careful of the stairs, let's walk down together.) " Such phonetic pragmatic failure could cause misunderstanding and confusion. And to some extent, it is also very impolite of saying such words to our Chinese people. Another pragmatic failure is about the vocabulary. V ocabulary is the basic element of language. Choosing the correct and proper vocabulary is the critical factor for successful cross-cultural communication. Because the vocabulary not only has its conceptual meaning, but have the connotative meaning, stylistic meaning, affective meaning and so on. For example, the word "dog" has a totally different pragmatic meaning in different culture. In English, dog is regarded as man's best friend, with the expressions like " Every dog has his day; Love me, love my dog; Dog does not eat dog; Help a lane dog over a stile." Well, in our Chinese culture, dog is almost given all the bad synonyms, like "走狗、狗汉奸、狗腿子、狗眼看人低". In our cross-cultural communication, if we use this kind of vocabulary improperly, conflict will occur. And when talking about the aspect of grammar, there still has pragmatic failure. The most common grammatical pragmatic failure is people cannot comprehend the multiple communicated functions of language. Like, "Couldn't you just eat up your dinner?" (你能不能把饭吃完？) This sentence does not simply acquire whether you have the ability to finish off your dinner. In most cases it expresses a complaint to other people’s behavior. The last one is about the social-cultural pragmatic failure. People from different cultural background may form their own different cultural pattern. If people just inset their own cultural pattern to other people who have a totally different cultural background, misunderstanding will occur. For example, a Chinese student says hello to his English foreign teacher, "Good morning, you must have had a tiring job." Such expressions
will cause misinterpretation. The foreign teacher may comprehend this greeting as a humiliation. Because if a teacher feels tired after class that means he is very weak. Giving only one lesson exhausts all of his energy. Such pragmatic failure may break down our communication with others.
Part III Reflections on English learning
As an English Language learner, realizing the pragmatic failure in our cross-cultural communication is not enough. The most important is we should have the awareness about the cross-cultural communicated ability. We have learned English for more than 10 years. We have acquired a large number of vocabulary and grammar rules. However, we still cannot communicate fluently with foreigners about the basic topic of our daily life. We should have a deep thinking about this phenomenon. Our language learning is not just a skill learning but an competence training. Cultivating the cross-cultural communicated ability is very essential for our further language learning. So, how to cultivate this communication ability? From my own perspective, especially from the Second language acquisition theory, the contrastive analysis could play an important role. We usually hear the native speaker's conversation like this: A: Why did not you go to work yesterday?
B: Well, it was a blue Monday.
Such conversation could confuse our Chinese speaker. We think there is no cause-and-effect relationship between the question and answer. Our normal answer of this question is "Well, i had a bad cold, so...". However, in the natural communication of native speakers, there are not always the common cause-and-effect conversations. The word "blue" has its specific meaning in this sentence. It is used to described something bad or a person' bad emotion and feelings. Well, the word "blue" in our culture does not have such meaning. Our Chinese students may feel confused when we hear such answer. So, the contrastive analysis between our culture and western culture is very essential in the process of our language. Apart from the contrastive analysis to enhance our cross-cultural communicated ability, there are still many other methods to cultivate such ability. Like the non-linguistic communication also helpful when we communicate with foreigners. Some non-linguistic features have specific meaning in different culture, like the body language. So, the non-linguistic features also play an important role in our cross-culture communicated ability. Finding out the
different meaning of the same non-linguistic language in different cultures become essential.
Part IV Reflections on English teaching
Learning and teaching are totally the different aspects. We will be an English teacher in the future. So, how to instruct students to have the cross-cultural pragmatic awareness is as important as the language skill teaching. First and foremost is about the spoken language teaching. Some teachers think the speaking is the most easy one among the four language skills. However, it is the most difficult and complicated one in our teaching process. When students practice spoken language with their partner, they often produce sentences like: Have you had your meal? Where are you going? How much did the clothes cost you? Such sentences are very common in our culture. However, it is very impolite in western culture for such sentences involving the secret of people. So, as an instructor, we should heighten students' awareness of the improper expressions in spoken language. Furthermore, we need to draw students attention about the pragmatic failure in grammatical domain. There is a typical conversation between teacher and student.
T: Tom, would you like to read the passage for us?
S: No, I wouldn't.
T: ......
Such conversation is failure because student thinks it is a question. And he has the freedom to say "Yes" and "No". However it is just an euphemistic request. So, our teacher's aim is not just to teach the grammatical form, at the same time does not ignore the communicated function of grammar. The last is about the reading instruction. Reading comprehension is regarded as the most difficult skills for students. They always cannot comprehend a reading material very well. Some teachers attribute this problem to the unfamiliar vocabulary. However, the cultural knowledge in the reading material plays an important for their incomprehension. So, passing on the cultural knowledge is the teacher's duty. For example, when the students read some information about "Spring Festival", teacher could introduce the western festival for them. Through the contrastive of the different cultural custom, students could have a
better understanding of the "Spring Festival".
Part V Conclusion
Cross-cultural communication is a quite complicated process, and sometimes it can be quite painful. At present, as the globalization of world economy is developing faster than before, with the Internet breaking off national boundaries, cross-cultural communication is part of our daily life. At the same time, the cross-cultural pragmatic failure is occurring. As an English learner, only by paying attention to the pragmatic failure can we achieve success in cross-cultural communication.
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