Pragmatic Failures In Current Junior High English Textbooks

Since the notion of pragmatic failure (PF for short) was put forward by Jenny Thomas in 1983, many scholars and researchers have studied it from different perspectives such as cross-cultural communication, second language acquisition, foreign language teaching, cognitive linguistics, pragmatics, etc. However, most of the studies mentioned above focus on the analysis of PF in the actual communication, especially the verbal communication and there is no systematic research on the PF in the English textbooks.The author finds 145 PFs in the five English textbooks (Go for it!) of junior high. There is no doubt that the data and materials in the textbooks are the main vehicles for students to acquire English, so the PF in the textbooks are main sources that affect students'pragmatic proficiency. In this sense, the study of PF in the textbooks is not only necessary but also significant. Under such circumstances, the author attempts to do a systematic research into the PF in the five books, which aims to improve the teachers and students'understanding of PF, their pragmatic consciousness and their (especially the students') English communicational skills. Moreover, this thesis also attempts to provide the textbook compilers reference information for their future work.The main contribution of this thesis is that: firstly, considering the particularity of PF in textbooks, the author defines and classifies PF from the perspective of the Adaptation Theory (AT for short) and then investigates the causes of PF in the five textbooks by pointing out that those PFs mainly result from the compilers'lack of dynamic adaptation to the communicative context, the linguistic context and the linguistic structure. Moreover, on the basis of her classification standard, the author classifies the PFs into three categories according to the different textbooks individually for the sake of discussion, criticism and correction in the future. Finally, some practical suggestions for teachers and compilers respectively are touched upon. This thesis can be divided into five chapters:Chapter One is a general introduction of the rationale, motivations, objectives and organization of the thesis.Chapter Two is devoted to review the previous studies on PF from the perspectives of cultural communication, second language acquisition etc. to find out the research gap.In Chapter Three, the author introduces AT in detail and puts forward the view point of analyzing the PF in the five junior high English textbooks with AT considering the deficiency and scope of the researches in the past.In Chapter Four, according to the working definition and standard of classification, the 145 PFs in the five books are collected, analyzed and classified into three categories in the light of AT.In Chapter Five, this thesis comes to the findings that there are much more LSPFs than LCPFs and CCPFs in the five textbooks, which should be a focus job for compilers in the future. And there are also limitations and suggestions for the future relevant studies.