Pragmatic Failures In Cross-cultural Business Negotiation: An Adaptation Approach

Business negotiation is a very crucial part of business activities. It is of great practical significance to do some research about how to conduct cross-cultural business negotiation successfully. This thesis studies and analyzes pragmatic failure in cross-cultural business negotiation from the perspective of language use by applying the Adaptation Theory of Verschueren in pragmatics in combination with other linguistic theories such as phonology, syntax, semantics and social linguistics. The author studies the communicative context of cross-cultural business negotiation and aims at showing how business negotiatiors adapt sounds, words, stress, intonation, codes,verbal and nonverbal language to the context on the negotiation occasions by analyzing some linguistic phenomena in cross-cultural business negotiation.This thesis consists of seven parts, including the introduction and the conclusion.The introduction tells the reason why the author chooses this subject as well as the purpose and significance of this thesis.The theoretical framework of this thesis is based on Jef. Verschueren's Adaptation Theory. Chapter Two is a general description of the Adaptation Theory, which mainly introduces some basic features of making choices and three properties of language: variability, negotiability and adaptability. And in the rest of Chapter One, four angles of investigation of language use are discussed: Contextual correlates of adaptability, structural objects of adaptability, dynamics of adaptability, salience of adaptation processes.Chapter Three is an introduction to pragmatic failure in cross-cultural business negotiation. The definition of business negotiation is first introduced within which the...