对在华英美留学生跨文化交际失误的研究

1、学学 号：号：201094620148HEBEI UNITED UNIVERSITY毕毕 业业 论论文文GRADUATE THESIS论文题目：论文题目：对在华英美留学生跨文化交际失误的研究对在华英美留学生跨文化交际失误的研究学生姓名：学生姓名： 专业班级：专业班级： 学学 院：外国语学院院：外国语学院指导教师：指导教师： 2014 年 05 月 31 日A Study to British and American Students in China on Intercultural Communication FailuresByPan FeiA graduate thesissubmit

2、ted in partial fulfillment of the requirementsfor the degree of Bachelor of Arts to theCollege of Foreign LanguagesHebei United UniversityMay 31st, 2014摘 要随着中国经济的腾飞与国际地位不断提高，世界各国与中国的来往也越来越密切。同时随着国际形势的深刻变化，全球化经济的到来和中国的进一步深化改革开放，英美留学生来中国学习的人数逐年增加，我国已成为留学大国。英美留学生在华学习期间，与汉语的接触是不可避免的，但因为西方国家与中国的文化和语言方面存在

3、很大差异，双方之间的交流中，留学生难免会出现失误。其失误不仅包括语言交际方面的，也包括非语言交际方面的。引起失误的原因主要有文化，习俗，思维还有个人原因等。本文以来华英美留学生交际中的失误为例，研究其失误的原因及对策，帮助在华留学生在交际中能更好地避免出现交际失误，达到最好的交际效果。同时促进我国留学教育的发展，为吸引更多留学生创造条件。论文正文由五个章节组成。第一章引言部分，首先介绍跨文化交际与跨文化交际失误等一些概念，然后介绍研究的相关文献；第二章从语言交际层面上对跨文化失误的表现进行分析；第三章从非语言交际层面上对跨文化交际失误的表现进行分析；第四章重点分析跨文化交际失误的原因和避免的措

4、施；第五章对整篇论文再进行总结。关键词 英美留学生；跨文化交际失误；原因；对策ABSTRACTWith the rapid development of China economy and the continuous improvement of China international status, the communication becomes more frequently between China and the other countries. As the international situation is changing deeply with the arrival

5、 of the economic globalization and Chinas further reform and opening up, American and British students coming to study in China increase, rendering China to become one of the biggest destinations for study oversea. During the time of foreign students studying in China, contacting with Chinese cannot

6、 be avoided. However, due to the differences on languages, cultures and any other aspects, foreign students may have a large number of failures when they are communicating with Chinese people. Those failures are divided into the verbal and nonverbal aspect, mainly because of the culture, custom, dif

7、ferent thoughts and personal ability etc. This article studies the example of failures caused by foreign students to analyze the reasons and to advocate measures to communicative failures. I hope it can help foreign students to achieve the best communicative effects by avoiding the miscommunication.

8、 At the same time, it may promote the development of Chinas education for studying abroad, and create the conditions to attract more students.Its body consists of five chapters. Chapter one, as the introduction, introduces these concepts, such as intercultural communication, intercultural communicat

9、ion failures in some details; chapter two is to analyze communication failures on the verbal of intercultural language; chapter three is to analyze the communication failure on the nonverbal of intercultural language; the focus of chapter four is on analyzing the reasons and the ways to solve the in

10、tercultural communication failures; the last chapter is to summarize the whole article.Keywords American and British students overseas; intercultural communication failures; the reason ; measure CONTENTS摘 要.IABSTRACT .IICONTENTS.IIIChapter 1 Introduction.11.1 Theoretical Backgrounds.11.1.1 Definitio

11、n of Intercultural Communication.11.1.2 Definition of Intercultural Communication Failures.11.2 Literature Review.21.2.1 Research in the U.S.31.2.2 Researches in China .4Chapter 2 Analyses of Pragmatic Failure on Intercultural Verbal Communication .52.1 Pragmalingustic Failures.52.1.1 Lexical Failur

12、e.52.1.2 Syntactic Failure.62.1.3 Textual Failure .72.2 Sociopragmatic Failure.72.2.1 Form of Address.72.2.2 Invitation and Response .82.2.3 Visiting.92.2.4 Daily Conversation.9Chapter 3 Analyses Pragmatic failures on Interculteral Nonverbal Communication .11 3.1 Body Language.113.1.1 Facial Express

13、ion .113.1.2 Posture.123.1.3 Gesture.123.2 Paralanguage.123.2.1 Vocal Qualifiers and Vocalizations.133.2.3 Temporal Language.13Chapter 4 The Reasons and Ways to Deal With Intercultural Communication Failures154.1. Intercultural Conflicts.154.1.1 Individual or Collective.154.1.2 High Content or Low C

14、ontent.154.1.3 Morals and Values.164.2. Ways to Deal with Intercultural Communication Failures .164.2.1 Developing Cultural Adaption Skill.174.2.2 Intercultural Communication Training.18Chapter 5 Conclusion.20BIBLIOGRAPHY.22ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .23 Chapter 1 IntroductionThis chapter mainly introduces th

15、ose concepts of intercultural communication and briefly introduces the development of intercultural communication study in the U.S. and China.1.1 Theoretical BackgroundsIntercultural communication, as we knew, is the link between human, and normal exchanges between countries. Confucian said: “human

16、beings draw close to one another by their common nature, but habits and customs keep them apart.” Cultural communication is dependent on language, because language is the most important human communicational tool, is the carrier of cultural transmission. Under the different cultural backgrounds, peo

17、ple always follow their own rules when they are in communication. 1.1.1 Definition of Intercultural CommunicationThere are a lot of definitions of intercultural communication. Intercultural communication is a form of communication; its purpose is to share information in different cultures and social

18、 groups. It is used to describe the wide range of communicational processes, and will naturally appear from different religious, social, ethnic, and educational backgrounds of people within the organization. That is to say, intercultural communication must have the following aspects: first of all, b

19、oth parties have different culture backgrounds. Such as what happened on the Silk Road, Zheng Hes seven voyages to the Western Seas in the past, and now the American and British students cross the oceans to study in China; secondly, under the different cultures, they must use the same language to co

20、mmunicate to make sure they can understand each other; the last one is during the time when they communicate, both sides should communicate directly with verbal communication and are suppose to be face-to-face. Intercultural communication can be understood as a phenomenon, or as a discipline. It was

21、 the term first used by Edward T. Hall in 1959 and simply defined as interpersonal communication between members of different cultures.1.1.2 Definition of Intercultural Communication Failures In communication between people of the same culture, the person who receives the message interprets it on th

22、e basis of values, beliefs and expectations for behavior similar to those of the person who sends the message. When this happens, the way the message is interpreted by the receiver is likely to be fairly similar to what the speaker intended. However, when the receiver of the message is a person from

23、 a different culture, the receiver uses information from his or her culture to interpret the message. The message that the receiver interprets may be very different from what the speaker intended. In another way, intercultural communication problems usually come from problems in message transmission

24、.There are tow different aspects of intercultural communication failures:1.Failures on intercultural verbal communication. Because intercultural communication failures are caused by different reasons, we can mainly divide interculture verbal communication failures into two aspects-pragmatic failures

25、 and sociopragmatic failures according to Jenny Thomas. (1) The most frequent pragmalinguistic failure is the transplant of words, phrases and structures of the mother tongue. For example, its common in Chinese to give a response to thanks by saying “没关系”. If we translate “没关系” into English as “Neve

26、r mind”, the English addressee would not be able to interpret the utterance as an acknowledgment of thanks. Though the literal meaning of “Never mind” is equal to the Chinese “没关系”, the communicative conversion behind the two expression is different. (2) Sociopragmatic failures occur when communicat

27、ion deliver inappropriate messages due to lack of knowledge in respect of other culture. Sociopragmatic failures can be found in many ways of daily communication, such as the way of addressing and greeting people; the view of value system as privacy etc. For example, people living in western countri

28、es tend to verbalize their gratitude and compliments more than the Chinese speakers and they tend to accept thanks and compliments more than Chinese. 2.Failures on intercultural nonverbal communication. Nonverbal communication is also like verbal communication which is the carrier of culture. Theref

29、ore different nations have different understanding of their nonverbal behaviors. There is no doubt that they might have some mistakes when they use their body language. For example, American in public or teachers in classroom would like to distance him from others farther than two or three meters. I

30、t is very different from people in China. 1.2 Literature ReviewThis part will show literature review on intercultural communication and intercultural communication failures. The review will be divided into two aspects, including research abroad and research in China.1.2.1 Research in the U.S.Intercu

31、ltural communication is as old as history. In ancient times, wandering nomads, religious missionaries and conquering warriors had encountered people different from themselves. The alien differences lacking the same cultural knowledge, often led those meetings confusing and quite hostile. Intercultur

32、al communication is a common phenomenon in todays society with the development of science. However, its history is short as a discipline. Intercultural communication as a new field of study first emerged in America in the fifties of the 20th century. Edward Hall was considered the father of intercul

33、tural communication with his publication of The Silent Language in 1959. The Silent Language was considered the founder of intercultural communication study. As stated in the Handbook of International and Intercultural Communication, 2nd edition: “After World War , the United States established a fo

34、reign aid program, the Marshall Plan, to help rebuild Europe. Based on the success of this program, U.S. President Harry S Truman proposed in 1949 the United States should offer its technical and scientific expertise to the then developing nations in Latin American, Africa, and Asia to assist their

35、development process. The FSI was established by the U.S. Congress in the U.S. Department of State to train American development technicians and diplomats. Hall was the key intellectual in the FSI training program from 1950 to 1955.” ( Gudykunst and Mody, 2002, p.2 ) The study stated in United States

36、 in order to adapt to the national conditions, such as enhancing economic growth and dealing with ethnic contradictions. And during the period of 1960s, there was a series of masterpieces coming out continuingly, such as Culture and Communication by R.T.Oliver in 1962, Communication and Culture by A

37、.Smith in 1996, The Psychology of Human Communication by I.Parry in 1967 etc. At the same time, some colleges in America established intercultural communication courses. In 1970, intercultural communication was recognized by the International Communication Association and by the National Communicati

38、on Association in 1971. The 1970s showed the rapid development and the conceptualization of the field by communication scholar and the serious training in the field of intercultural communication begun. In 1980s the study moved to integration and a clearer identity. Since then, intercultural communi

39、cation has reflected in the publication of numerous studies in America. Today intercultural communication not only has become one of the major academic disciplines in the United States but also is widely acknowledge and extensively researched in all parts of the world.1.2.2 Researches in ChinaThe re

40、searches of other countries are later than America, as China. Intercultural communication in China started in the early 80s in 20th century, whose history is much shorter than United States. The short history of intercultural communication in China can be divided into three different periods accordi

41、ng to Professor Hu Wenzhong, the leading scholar of intercultural communication: the first period from 1979 to 1987, while there was an emphasis on foreign language teaching. The years from 1988 to 1994 made the second period when a new discipline called intercultural communication was starting to b

42、e introduced as an area of interest, while foreign language teaching was still growing and becoming important one in the field. The third period began when China held the 5th “International Conference on Cross-cultural Communication, East and West”, at the same time the China Association for Intercu

43、ltural communication was established. There were 400 or so literatures published since 1981 till now, and some of them are outstanding academic monographs, such as Intercultural Communication Series in 1999 and Encountering the Chinese in 1999 by Hu Wengzhong, current president of China Association

44、for Intercultural Communication. As more and more frequently international communication, some scholars started to notice problems and difficulties during intercultural communication. Ding Xi published The Cause and Types of Communication Failures in 1998 which examined intercultural communication f

45、ailures caused by many elements. Intercultural communication can be classified mainly into intercultural verbal communication and intercultural nonverbal communication. Up to now, many universities have developed courses in intercultural communication for both graduates and undergraduates. Whats mor

46、e, intercultural studies have been applied to other fields as well. For example, intercultural training and consultation are gaining popularity in some Chinese developed cities.Chapter 2 Analyses of Pragmatic Failure on Intercultural Verbal CommunicationVerbal communication happens when people from

47、different cultural backgrounds communicate with each other by verbal means i.e. communication with oral use of words or a written way. One minute talk with a classmate, using words to express views, expressing feelings, and making a speech are all cases of verbal communication. During intercultural

48、communication, it always happens when a native speaker cant understand the meaning of the sentences that the language leaner has said, however the sentences have no grammatical mistakes. In this chapter, pragmatic failure is split into two categories: pragmalinguistic failure and sociopragmatic fail

49、ure.2.1 Pragmalingustic FailuresPragmalinguistic failures happened when the pragmatic mapped on to a structure or linguistic token is systematically different from native speakers. For example: an American student had a talk with Chinese students, and they had a wonderful conversation. The American

50、student might remark to his classmate: “Your English is excellent, quite fluent.” The Chinese student demurred, “No, no, my English is just so so.” The American student was quite confused, since he had not expected such answer. What happened in the example is mainly because both sides ignored the di

51、fferences among their cultures, which is called pragmatic failure. According to the various definitions of pragmatic failure, it can sum up the pragmatic failure into three characteristics: Firstly, pragmatic failure isnt cause by the misuse of words, sentences, tenses, or grammar rules. Secondly, t

52、he communicative partners cant talk effectively，as they find it hard to understand each other, therefore the sender cant deliver the message he wants to express to the receiver, or they may take offence and even become angry. Thirdly pragmatic failure always happens between two person in different c

53、ulture, that we so-called “intercultural pragmatic failure”. What s more, pragmatic failure happens due to different culture with different customs, values, expression ways, ways of thinking and so on. The pragmalinguistic failure falls into three categories: lexical, syntactic and textual.2.1.1 Lex

54、ical FailureLanguage is used to inform and describe things, it also reflects the environment we live in, custom and lots of aspects, meanwhile a word can elicit many meanings. Lexical failure occurs if the message of its sender and its receiver attributes different meanings to the same word or uses

55、different words though intending the same thing. While there is a problem that all learners have to solve: Does the words in one language remain the same meaning when the word is translated into another language? To deal with this problem, American and British students should knew exactly the denota

56、tion meanings and connotation meanings of the words, the culturally loaded words. Example 1: Anne was an American student in China. She was confused that why Chinese name always had some meanings. Her friend told her, “In China, the parents are more likely to make a decision for their children, they

57、 do it for the sake of their children since all the parents in China hope their children will be dragons. ” After hearing that, Anne felt very surprised, “Dragons? Why do your Chinese parents hope their children be monsters?”The conflict of the case results from the negative lexical transfer. In Chi

58、nese culture, “dragon” is a totem with many loyal association, such as “龙凤呈祥，望子成龙”, while “dragon” in English refers to a very fierce, terrible beast. In this case, both of them use their own cultural concept to understand the target language, which causes a breakdown in communication. Whats more, C

59、hinese has thousands of years history. Every word has more than three meanings, which increases the difficulty of learning Chinese. Example 2: An American student rode to a picnic with his Chinese friend. On the way, the Chinese friend found the tires of the bicycle breakdown, Chinese friend said: “

60、我们先打气，再出发吧。 ” American student was puzzled : “打气？ 气看不见又摸不着，怎么打？”From the example, we can learn that American student did not master the word “打”, since polysemy is very common in Chinese, the function of context is important in determining the meaning of certain phrases. For learners of Chinese, mos