A Study Of Pragmatic Failure From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

Pragmatic failure is a hot topic for researchers to work on for its lasting value andimportance. The researchers have studied this issue from various perspectives in thepast decades, such as cross-cultural communication, second language acquisition,foreign language teaching and cognition. Fruitful findings have been achieved by thepersistent efforts of the researchers.However, these approaches have the following drawbacks and limitations. Firstly,most of the approaches are confined to cross-cultural communication, overlookingintra-cultural pragmatic failure. Secondly, previous studies overemphasize pragmaticfailure on verbal and word level, overlooking pragmatic failure at other levels. Lastly,the conclusions from various approaches to pragmatic failure unavoidably overlap witheach other.In light of these limitations of the previous researches, a theoretical andinterdisciplinary framework which should be more comprehensive and generalized isneeded to systematically interpret the causes of pragmatic failure.Verschueren’s Adaptation Theory offers us a coherent and systematic approachwe are looking for to pragmatic failure. Verschueren is not in favor of the traditionalapproach to pragmatics. He argues that it is impossible to assign and identify specificunits of analysis in pragmatics because pragmatics is involved with the full complexityof linguistic behavior. Pragmatics is defined by Verschueren as “a general cognitive,social, and cultural perspective on linguistic phenomena in relation to their usage informs of behavior.” Pragmatics is not seen as a branch of linguistics, but the range of ithas been expanded into every level of structure of linguistics. At any level of structure,pragmatic perspective is of value and necessity in interpretation of linguistic phenomena,ranging from speech sound, word levels, and semantics to syntax. The theoreticalframework presented by Verschueren in his book offers us a brand-new perspective toinvestigate linguistic phenomenon.The core concept of Verschueren’s perspective on language is Adaptation Theory,namely using language is a process of continuous making choices. It interprets the useof language from the integration of cognition, social and cultural functions. The three properties of language, variability, negotiability and adaptability, enable human beingsto make continuous choices in the language communication. Adaptability enables us toinvestigate any given linguistic phenomenon from the four distinct aspects, which arecontextual correlates of adaptability, structure objects of adaptability, the dynamics ofadaptability and the salience of adaptation process. Within the framework of AdaptationTheory, pragmatic failure, a commonly-seen linguistic phenomenon, is qualified to beanalyzed from these four aspects. However, this thesis will focus on the contextualcorrelates of adaptability and structural objects of adaptability, with the other twoaspects omitted owing to the fact that they are too cognitive for this thesis to researchon.Firstly, the contextual correlates of adaptability. Any communicative factor,ranging from physical environment, social relationships to state of mind of theinterlocutors, has the potential to be regarded as element of communicative context. Thelanguage users choose from these elements in their lines of vision and activate them tobecome relevant correlates, which are subject to variation and negotiation in theunfolding utterance. The result of choice-making is adaptation to the communicativecontext for the sake of communicative purpose. This thesis intends to make asystematical research on the causes of pragmatic failure based on the components ofcommunicative contexts, which are mental world, social world, and physical world. Theevidences of pragmatic failure exist in any aspect of communicative context. This thesisfinds that the root cause of pragmatic failure is the language users’ failure in adaptationto communicative context, such as, the language users’ personality, emotion, value andbeliefs, intention, social status, religion and so on.Secondly, the structural objects of adaptability. Since the linguisticchoices-making takes place at all possible levels of linguistic structure that showvariability of any kind, the processes in question have to be situated with reference tospecific structural objects of adaptability. Pragmatic phenomena can be related to anylayer or level of structure, from sound and word to discourse and beyond, or to any typeof inter-level relationship. Not only “structures” are involved, but also principles of“structuring”. This thesis further examines pragmatic failure at the levels of soundstructure, morphemes and words, and sentences and gets the conclusion that failure inadaptation to structural objects is another main cause of pragmatic failure. Since the root causes of pragmatic failure have been identified, it is natural for usto ask for measures to reduce and avoid this phenomenon, namely, how to enhance thelanguage users’ pragmatic competence. After analyzing the background information forthe current EFL students’ poor pragmatic competence in China, this thesis puts forwardthree suggestions on improving students’ pragmatic competence: to advocate theexplicit teaching of pragmatic knowledge, to use authentic teaching material and to addand reform the oral test for the needs of testing students’ pragmatic competence.