A Study Of Negative Transfer In Intercultural Communication

The rapid development of economy and technology has brought us into an age of globalization in which we are increasingly in contact with people from other cultures. There is a great potential for communicators to suffer communication breakdowns in intercultural context because of cultural differences. In intercultural communication, communicators, being deeply influenced by their native cultures, are inclined to negatively transfer their native cultural conventions and linguistic knowledge into communication, thus causing communication failures—failing to understand counterparts' intentions and transmit their actual ideas. Through an analysis of negative transfers in intercultural communication, the author aims to find a way of tackling the problems in intercultural communication.This paper begins with defining the terms like culture, communication, intercultural communication, and describing the components and characteristics of them. According to some sociologists and anthropologists, culture is communication. In intercultural communication, cultural interference is inevitable as long as there exist cultural differences; not only verbal communication process but also non-verbal communication process should be paid attention to.Transfer is originally a psychological term. And now it is among one of the most popular topics being discussed in the field of interlanguage pragmatics. Transfer refers to the influence resulting from the similarities and differences between the target language and any other language that has been previously (and perhaps imperfectly) acquired. Transfer falls into two categories: positive transfer and negative transfer. Positive transfer, as its name suggests, plays a positive role of facilitating the process of target language acquisition. Negative transfer, on the contrary, impedes it. Negative transfer from learners' any acquired language to the target language has been repeatedly evidenced in cross-linguistic comparisons of speech acts.From the perspective of negative transfer and with the incorporation of comparison between Chinese and English culture, much emphasis has been laid on the analyses of negative transfers in intercultural communication so as to help communicators or English learners understand the problem.Finally, the author makes some tentative suggestions about communication strategies such as cultivating cultural awareness, avoiding stereotype etc. to help communicators...