The Analysis Of The Misunderstanding Of Business Language From The Perspective Of Cognitive Pragmatics

Misunderstanding occurring in the Business Language has aroused much attention from linguists, sociologists, business experts, etc. In the present paper, the phenomenon, consequence, cognitive reasons and some ways to tackle with the misunderstanding occurring in business world have been given a detailed study under the framework of Relevance Theory.Many examples drawn from business occasions have been chosen for detailed analysis so that the reasons of misunderstanding behind the phenomenon can be revealed. The author also proposes several advices to reduce or even avoid the misunderstanding occurring in Business Language. The research has the following two major findings.On the one hand, under the framework of the Relevance Theory, several reasons leading to the misunderstanding on business occasions are given. According the theory, both parties involved in the business conversations will be liable for producing misunderstandings. The utterance produced by the speaker will not be ostensive and relevant enough for the hearer’s inferential interpretation if the speaker hasn’t provided a proper presupposition concerning the hearer’s business contextual assumptions. In that situation, the misunderstanding will occur. On the contrary, the addressee’s business knowledge discrepancy, business experience and attention variation also influence his choices. Therefore, all these cognitive factors will cause the occurrence of misunderstanding in Business Language.On the other hand, some methods to reduce or even avoid the occurrence of misunderstandings have been given by the author. Both the speaker and the hearer should pay certain effort to avoid the occurrence of misunderstanding. Firstly, the speaker should provide sufficient ostension in business context; secondly, the speaker should provide sufficiently clear and explicit presupposition for the hearer’s inference; thirdly, both sides should pay attention to the change of the business subject; lastly, they should pay great attention to the business cognitive context.The analysis on the cognitive sources of misunderstanding in Business Language will not only deepen our understanding of the creation of misunderstanding, but also increase the academic value of the Relevance Theory. In addition, the analysis of reasons of misunderstanding occurring in the process of business communication and the methods to reduce them will definitely be valuable to the research of misunderstanding existing in other languages and in intercultural business communication.