A Study Of Pragmatic Failures By English Major Students

Pragmatic failure, as an obvious language phenomenon, is common incommunications across language and culture. Since Jenny Thomas first proposed theconcept of pragmatic failure in her thesis in1982, lots of scholars have paid muchattention to it, especially the Chinese scholars. Thomas defines pragmatic failure as“the inability to understand what is meant by what is said”. In other words, it is notcaused by the hearers’ inability to understand the speakers on the level of literalmeanings, but caused by hearers’ inability to tell the speakers’ illocutionary forceaccording to speakers’ intentions. Afterwards, she classifies it into two types:pragmalinguistic failure and sociopragmatic failure. However, she didn’t classifythem in detail.As we all know, despite a good mastery of linguistic forms and regulations ofEnglish, many Chinese learners still fail to interpret the language correctly or use itappropriately, thus making pragmatic failures or even misunderstandings. Some arenot serious, while others are destructive. Chinese learners have gradually realized theimportance of using the target language appropriately and reducing pragmatic failures.The frequency of pragmatic failures is very high, which even influences thecommunication process. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze it in order to promotethe communication activities and improve the English major students’ pragmaticcompetence.The present study investigates102English major students of a certain NormalUniversity. Following the theory of language transfer and politeness principles, thisstudy adopts questionnaire, discourse completion test (DCT) and interview asresearch methods to solve two research questions:1) What are the types of pragmaticfailures made by English major students?2) What are the reasons for the pragmaticfailures made by English major students? The results indicate that the English majorstudents make lots of pragmalinguistic failures and sociopragmatic failures.Pragmalinguistic failure includes two levels of vocabulary and grammar, whilesociopragmatic failure involves address form, greeting, invitation, gratitude,compliment, refusal and request. The main reasons lie in two main aspects:teaching-related elements and the learning-related elements involving the neglect ofpragmatic teaching, teacher-induced errors, the learners’ inadequate motivation, the influence of negative transfer and the lack of cultural awareness. Finally, the authorattempts to explore its implications both methodologically and practically.The102sophomores mastering in English can not represent all the English majorstudents; their problems arising in the cross-cultural communications can notrepresent the current situation of pragmatic failures, either. Besides, there exist somelimitations to the research instruments. In spite of these, the study still provides somevaluable information of the current state of the present English major students’pragmatic competence and sheds light on how to promote both theoretical researchesof pragmatic failures and practical college English teaching.