A Study Of Pragmatic Failure From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

Nowadays, the entrance of WTO and globalization of economy have necessitated both intercultural and intra-cultural communication, which makes great demands on not only good linguistic competence, but also high pragmatic competence, that is, to use the language in a proper way, and to be able to achieve one's intention successfully. In the recent years, researchers have made great efforts to improve foreign language teaching, and it is thought that the pragmatic competence of foreign language learners has been improved a lot. This thesis attempts to analyze the causes of pragmatic failure, and then proposes some measures to be taken so as to reduce or avoid the occurrence of pragmatic failure. The author carried out a questionnaire test among three groups: sophomores and freshmen in university and high school students of Grade Three, to prove that students'pragmatic competence is in parallel with their language proficiency. However, the data collected in this research shows that the pragmatic competence of the language learners is far from satisfactory. Then the author tries to analyze pragmatic failure from the perspective of Adaptation theory with gradients of communicative context—the mental world, social world and physical world---and linguistic reality, with emphasis on the aspects in which language learners are easily to create pragmatic failure. Finally, the author draws a conclusion that pragmatic failure occurs when language users unconsciously fail to make adaptation to communicative context and language reality. Thus, adaptation is an effective way to avoid pragmatic failure in communication. Suggestions and measures to reduce and avoid pragmatic failure are proposed in the conclusion section.