Pragmatic Failures in Intercultural Communication

1、pragmatic failures in intercultural communicationabstract: with the globalization of economy and the rapid development of high technology, international communication has become a significant concern in the world nowadays. however, there is a great potential for communicators to suffer communication

2、 breakdowns in intercultural context because of the cultural differences. pragmatic failures are arisen therefrom. the thesis aiming at expounding pragmatic failures in international communication, explains the definitions of intercultural communication and of pragmatic failure, illustrates the expr

3、essing forms of pragmatic failure in the intercultural communication, analyzes the reasons of pragmatic failure in the intercultural communication, and deals with precaution strategies of pragmatic failure in the intercultural communication. all above can help foreign language learners acquire sound

4、 linguistic and communicative competence, and participate in international communication flexible and properly.key words: pragmatic failure; intercultural communication; precaution strategies跨文化交际中的语用失误中文摘要：随着经济的高速全球化以及高科技的迅猛发展，跨文化交际已成为当今世界的一个重要特征。但是文化差异常常会给不同文化背景的人们带来交际障碍。语用失误由此而生。本论文将跨文化交际做为研究对象，解

5、释跨文化交际以及语用失误的含义，阐述跨文化交际中语用失误的表现，浅析造成语用失误的原因，进而提出跨文化交际语用失误的防范对策,使学习者的文化从文化知识层跨越到文化理解层，从而有效地克服跨文化交际中的语用失误。关键词：语用失误；语用失误；防范对策。table of contentsabstract()introduction.()1 brief review of relevant theories.()1.1intercultural communication.()1.1.1 culture and communication.()1.1.2 definition of intercultu

6、ral communication()1.1.3 three elements of intercultural communication.()1.2 pragmatic failure in intercultural communication.()1.2.1 definition of pragmatic failure.() 1.2.2 classification of pragmatic failure.()2. expressing forms of intercultural pragmatic failure.()2.1 pragma-linguistic failure.

7、()2.2 socio-pragmatic failure.()2.3 the relationship between them.()3. the causes of intercultural pragmatic failure.()3.1 different cultural values and norms.()3.1.1 modesty vs. self-denigration.()3.1.2 privacy vs. mutual care.()3.1.3 directness vs. indirectness.()3.2 inappropriate transfer.()4. pr

8、ecaution strategies of intercultural pragmatic failure.()4.1 cultivating our pragmatic competence()4.2 strengthening cultural awareness.()conclusion.()references.()中文摘要()acknowledgements()introductionnowadays, the development of worldwide transportation and communication networks, the growth in fore

9、ign travel for pleasure, study and business, the expansion of international trade and the migration of people seeking work in the multinational companies have naturally led to a concomitant increase in contacts across national boundaries. the international and domestic changes in the past few decade

10、s have brought us into direct or indirect contact with people who, because of their cultural diversity, often behave in ways that we do not understand. it is no longer difficult to find social and professional situations in which members of once isolated groups of peoples communicate with members of

11、 other cultural groups. now these people may live thousands of miles away or right next door to each other. in other words, intercultural communication prevails in the so-called global village.1 brief review of relevant theoriesin this chapter, brief review of intercultural communication and pragmat

12、ic failure in intercultural communication will be made. this hopefully provides theoretical background for analyzing the causes of intercultural pragmatic failure in chapter four and dealing with precaution strategies of intercultural pragmatic failure in chapter five.1.1 intercultural communication

13、in this section, such concepts as culture, intercultural communication and pragmatic failure will be discussed one by one.1.1.1 culture and communicationaccording to sociolinguists and anthropologists, culture refers to the total patterns of beliefs, customs, institutions, objects and techniques tha

14、t characterize the life of a human community. in communicative process, culture is a critical factor. but what is culture? culture is omnipresent. what people talk about, how they talk about it, what they see, attend to, or ignore, how they think and what they think about are influenced by their cul

15、ture. culture consists not only of such material things as cities, schools and organizations, but also of non-material things such as languages, ideas, family patterns and customs. put it simply, culture refers to the entire way of life of a society, “the ways of a people” (klineberg 1935). in order

16、 to suit the goal of this thesis, i adopt the concept of culture defined by samovar, porter and stefani in their book communication between cultures (2000), that is, “we define culture as the deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religions, notions of t

17、ime, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe and material objects and possessions acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving”(samovar, porter & stefani, 2000:36).everyday when people share ideas and emotions with others they are commun

18、icating, regardless of their gender, age, occupation, or even culture. despite the differences in culture, they are in fact performing the same communicative activity. the methods and the results may be different, but the process is the same. communication occurs whenever meaning is attributed to be

19、havior or the residue of behavior-those things that remain as a record of our actions (samovar and porter, 1994:8). it is also the basis of all human contact. but it is not enough, and this term needs further explanation. it is impossible for people to share their feelings and experiences by means o

20、f direct mind-to-mind contact. people all isolated from one another by the enclosure of their skin, so what they know and feel remains insides of them, unless they communicate. in fact, whenever people interact they must communicate.hall once noted, “culture is communication, and communication is cu

21、lture” (hall, 1977:14). the link between culture and communication is crucial to the understanding of intercultural communication. culture and communication are inseparable. communicative behavior is largely dependent on cultures, and culture is the foundation of communication. whenever people inter

22、act they communicate. to live in societies and to maintain their cultures they have to communicate. culture is learned, acted out, transmitted, and preserved through communication. culture and communication act on each other. as the carrier of culture, communication influences the structure of a cul

23、ture, and culture is necessarily manifested in our communication patterns by teaching us how we should talk and behave. the relationship between culture and communication is the key factor to understanding intercultural communication.1.1.2 definition of intercultural communicationonce we understand

24、the meaning of communication and culture it becomes clear that intercultural communication refers to the communication between people from two different cultures. (chen guoming & starasta, 1998:28) intercultural communication refers to communication between different socio-cultural groups. samovar (

25、1981:19) claims that intercultural communication occurs “whenever a message that must be understood is produced by a member of one culture for consumption by a member of another culture”. precisely speaking, intercultural communication is the communication between people whose cultural perceptions a

26、nd symbols are distinct enough to change communication events.the term “intercultural communication” includes the entire range of communication across boundaries of groups or discourse systems, form cultural groups to the communication which takes place between men and women. in linguistic, one can

27、explain intercultural communication as taking place whenever participants introduce different knowledge into the interaction which is specific to respective socio-cultural groups. increasing the shared cultural knowledge is essential in communication, because language is intrinsically ambiguous. sin

28、ce meanings are constructed jointly by the speaker and the listener, it is always necessary for the receiver to draw inferences about the intentions of the sender.1.1.3 three elements of intercultural communicationculture is very complex and influences peoples life in every aspect. there are many im

29、portant elements contained in the study of intercultural communication. among them, perceptual process, verbal process and nonverbal process are three main elements. perception is the internal process by which people select, evaluate, and organize stimuli from the external environment. it is the pro

30、cess by which people construct their unique social realities by attributing meanings to social objects and events they encounter in their environment. it is an extremely important aspect in communications. there are three major elements that have direct influences on the development of peoples perce

31、ption; they are belief/value/attitude systems, world view and social organization. as far as belief is concerned, there are no right or wrong judgments in matters of intercultural communication. if someone believes that voices in the wind can lead ones behaviors in the right way, no one can say the

32、belief is wrong. people should be able to recognize and to deal with different beliefs if they wish to obtain satisfactory and successful communications. value is the valuative aspect of belief/value/attitude systems. although everyone has his/her personal values, cultural values penetrate personal

33、values. cultural values are a set of organized rules for people to make choices, reduce uncertainty and conflicts within a certain society. these values are generally normative, which inform the member of a culture what is good and bad, right and wrong, true and false, etc. they also specify what be

34、haviors are important and what should be avoided. belief and value contribute to the development of attitudes. an attitude may be defined formally as a learned tendency to respond in a constant manner to a given object of orientation. in other words, people tend to avoid those things they dislike an

35、d to keep those they like.world view is one of the most important elements formed in the perceptual aspect of intercultural communication. it deals with a cultural orientation toward such philosophical issues as god, humanity, nature and the universe. world view has a deep influence on culture and i

36、ntercultural communication. social organization is the place in which a culture organized its institutes and affects how members of the culture perceive the world and how they communicate. family and school are two dominant social organizations which influence the development of values and the pursu

37、ing of goals.the second element of intercultural communication is verbal process, which includes not only how people talk with each other, but the internal activities of thinking to interact with others. verbal language is an organized system used to represent human experiences within a geographic o

38、r cultural community. in fact, language is the primary vehicle by which one culture transmits its beliefs, values, and norms.the third element of intercultural communication is nonverbal process. although verbal process is the primary means for communication, nonverbal process is important in interc

39、ultural communication as well. nonverbal process consists of the following topics: gestures, facial expressions, eye contact, silence, space, time and paralanguage.1.2 pragmatic failure in intercultural communicationlearning a foreign language well means more than merely mastering the pronunciation,

40、 grammar, words and idioms. it means learning also to see the world as native speakers of that language see it, learning the ways in which their language reflects the ideas, customs and behavior of their society, learning to understand their ”language of mind”. because of cultural differences, misun

41、derstandings and miscommunications may arise in spite of grammatically correct utterances. the same words or expressions may not mean the same thing to people from different cultures. a serious question may not cause seriousness, and a happy statement may cause unhappiness or anger because of cultur

42、al differences. among these errors, pragmatic failures derived from cultural transfer are more serious in that they contribute to communicative failure directly in intercultural communication.1.2.1 definition of pragmatic failureif people fail to achieve the desired communicative effect in communica

43、tion, pragmatic failure will be likely to occur. it can be summarized that they are unable to understand what is meant by what is said. jenny thomas (1983:91-94) defines pragmatic failure as “the inability to understand what is meant by what is said” and she notes that pragmatic failure has occurred

44、 on any occasion ”on which the hearer perceives the forces of the speakers utterances as other than the speaker intended he or she should perceive it”. li yuansheng (2004: 27) defines pragmatic failure as follows: pragmatic failure is those failures (excluding linguistic errors such as ungrammatical

45、ity and misspelling) committed in the process of understanding or expressing utterances (both verbal and non-verbal).the definition of pragmatic failure can be understood from four aspects. firstly, pragmatic failure can be studied in two senses. in a broad sense, it includes all the errors in langu

46、age use, such as spelling mistakes, grammatical mistakes and discourse mistakes. in a narrow sense, it indicates not grammaticality but acceptability of language use. secondly, appropriateness is the most important principle of language use(li, r. h., no. 3, 1994), therefore pragmatic failure can be

47、 considered as the result of language users violation of the principle of appropriateness. in other words, language users violate interpersonal norms and neglect social cultural context and concrete communicative occasions out of unconsciousness or for the purpose of obtaining certain effect. thirdl

48、y, the judgment of pragmatic failure is speaker-oriented without consideration of the hearers comprehensive ability and process, though the ultimate judgment of failure depends on perlocutionary act. thus, whether communication is successful or not depends on whether the communicative value (a) of t

49、he language used is equivalent to the intended meaning (b) of the speaker. if c is used to stand for the unintended meaning of the speaker, pragmatic failure can be formulated as: a=b+c or a=c (sun y and dai l., no. 3, 2002). finally, the categorization of pragmatic failure is in terms of different

50、criteria. in intercultural communication, according to jenny thomass theory, pragmatic failure is often divided into pragmalinguistic failure (on account of language users improper assurance of linguistic context) and sociopragmatic failure (on account of language users improper assurance of social

51、cultural context). pragmalinguistics, in leechs definition, refers to our linguistic knowledge of language use, and sociopragmatics is related with how our sociological knowledge influences our interaction (leech, 1983:10). in china, according to the criterion of whether communication occurs in the

52、same cultural context or in cross-cultural context, pragmatic failure is divided into intralingual pragmatic failure and interlingual pragmatic failure. since this thesis mainly deals with intercultural communication, jenny thomass theory is adopted.1.2.2 classification of pragmatic failureas thomas

53、 pointed out, pragmatic failure refers to the inability to understand “what is meant by what is said”. she further divided pragmatic failures into two types: pragmalinguistic failure and sociopragmatic failure (thomas, 1983:95). this distinction can, of course, cover any sort of pragmatic failures a

54、nd therefore is adopted by many scholars (e.g. hu wenzhong, huang cidong, etc.) in their study of pragmatic failures. sun ya and dai lin (2002) distinguished pragmatic failure in the broad sense and in the narrow sense in their survey of pragmatic studies in china. qian guanlian (2001) noticed that

55、pragmatic failure can be divided into pragmatic failure in intercultural communication and pragmatic failure within the same mother tongue communication, or in sunyas term inter-lingual pragmatic failure and intra-lingual pragmatic failure. based on their research findings, the author arranged and g

56、rouped the data collected into 3 categories, namely, pragmalinguistic failure, sociopragmatic failure, and value-related behavioral failure.2 expressing forms of intercultural pragmatic failurethere are various expressing forms of pragmatic failure. and we will discuss some of them in this section.2

57、.1 pragma-linguistic failurepragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics belong to two sub-branches of general pragmatics. leech (1983:11) points out the distinction between pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics. in leechs definition, the term pragmalinguistics “can be applied to the study of the more linguistic end of pragmatics- where we consider the particular resources which a given language provides for conveying particular illocutions”. pragmalinguisti