Analysis Of Pragmatic Failure In Chinese-English 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 the 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 committing pragmatic failure---failing to understand counterparts'intentions and transmit their actual ideas. Through an analysis of the pragmatic failure, the author aims to find a way of tackling the problems in Chinese-English communication from the perspective of negative pragmatic transfer.Pragmatic failure has such a serious consequence that it is urgent to make an investigation on it. Till now, many researchers have made contributions to this area and have achieved much progress, especially in the study of cross-cultural pragmatic failure. In spite of the achievements made through present studies, there are still a lot to do in the research of this issue for there are some deficiencies in present studies. Pragmatic failure is a complicated question, so its occurrence cannot only be attributed to cultural differences or improper foreign language teaching, although these are indeed causes to pragmatic failure. Furthermore, communication is a process of meaning production and meaning interpretation between participants, so both speaker and hearer are responsible for the success of communication. Once pragmatic failure arises, we cannot only put the blame on speaker for its occurrence though speaker's inappropriate utterances can cause pragmatic failure. Sometimes it is the listener's failure to properly interpret the utterances that cause pragmatic failure. What's more, many linguists seldom take the subjects of language learning, namely learners, into account. As far as learning is concerned, learners are the subjects of language learning, and language learning is considered as the active processes of learners, so our attention should be shifted to investigating learners'processes of using languages rather than the outside factors. Then how to overcome the shortcomings of previous learning methods and therefore improve the learners'pragmatic competence, decrease the instances of pragmatic failure are the problems this thesis would like to solve. The research on negative pragmatic transfer and Chinglish contributes to the improvement of pragmatic competence, especially avoiding pragmatic failure.This thesis is composed of introduction, the main body and conclusion.Introduction supplies the purpose, meaning and theme of this thesis, as well as the way of research. It also gives a complete and brief introduction to the research of linguists'in this field and explores the feasibility and necessity for the study of it. The main body consists of three chapters, which respectively deal with the problem, the reason that brings about the problem and strategies to solve the problem.Chapter one begins with defining the term pragmatic failure. Several definitions of pragmatic failure are given by experts at home and from abroad. On the basis of these definitions, the author sums up its own one in this thesis. Then two types of pragmatic failure are expounded, namely pragmalinguistic failure and sociopragmatic failure. Pragmalinguistic failure concerns with the language-specific usage or highly conventionalized usage. And it can be thought of as the inappropriate transfer of speech act strategies from source language to target language. Sociopragmatic failure is a far more delicate matter, since it involves the speakers'system of beliefs, desires, intentions as much as their knowledge of language, and it can be regarded as the result of cross-culturally different assessments of social parameters having negatively affected our linguistic choices. In this chapter, pragmatic failure is also analyzed from perspective of pragmatic principles, such as Speech Act Theory, Conversational Implicature, Politeness Principle and Relevance Theory.Chapter two attempts to demonstrate the main cause of pragmatic failure--- negative pragmatic transfer. This chapter begins with the introduction of pragmatic transfer followed by the definition and categories of pragmatic transfer. It can be both divided into pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic transfer and separated into positive and negative pragmatic transfer. Liu Shaozhong extended Kasper's dichotomous framework and put forward pragmarhetoric transfer. It is a kind of pragmatic transfer which occurs when learners rely on their native pragmatic knowledge in realizing desired pragmatic effects in the way or linguistic means used when comprehending and producing a speech act in target language. On the basis of this and with the help of the first-hand data, the author analyzes the features of negative pragmatic transfer in details, in order to find out the strategies to deal with pragmatic failure caused by negative pragmatic transfer.Chapter three offers some strategies such as avoiding Chinglish, strengthening cultural awareness, avoiding stereotype, cultivating pragmatic competence and encouraging learners to think in target language to help communicators tackle or lessen pragmatic failure in Chinese-English communication. On the basis of culture identity, we should enrich our culture attainment of the target language. Cultivating pragmatic competence is the core part of this chapter. With improvement of pragmatic competence, the learners can overcome negative pragmatic transfer bit by bit and avoid pragmatic failure. In this chapter, the author also analyzes the nature and features of Chinglish which occurs frequently in our daily communication. Chinglish is another form of negative pragmatic transfer. In the case of transfer, learners use their previous mother tongue experience as a means of organizing the second language data. Therefore, the further analysis of Chinglish is of great benefit to understanding negative pragmatic transfer and cultivating pragmatic competence.The last part of this thesis is conclusion. This thesis highlights analysis of pragmatic failure from the perspective of several pragmatic principles, explanation of pragmatic failure from the aspect of pragmarhetoric transfer put forward by Liu Shaozhong and considering learners as the subject of language learning to improve their pragmatic competence. Analysis of pragmatic failure in Chinese-English communication in the contrastive way can help English learners find out the reason of occurrence of Chinglish, build up their confidence and promote their English study. In intercultural communication, we can manage English properly and become the real dominators of language.