dly or lack of education.
As the reform and opening up of our country is deepened and thepace of internationalization of economy is quickening, the societyposes higher and higher demand on English learners’ comprehensivepragmatic competence. Hence, how to use appropriate and genuineEnglish to communicate seems to be particularly important.
This paper will analyze the categories and causes of pragmaticfailures and raise some effective suggestions for remedy. It aimsto remind foreign language learners to be more sensitive topragmatic failures and avoid unnecessary inappropriateness andmisunderstanding so as to develop their communicative competence inusing the English language.
2. Demonstration 2.1 Manifestations of pragmatic failure Theresearch on pragmatic failure starts with Jenny Thomas. Shepublished the article Cross-cultural Pragmatic Failure, whichestablished the theoretical framework for analyzing pragmaticfailures and cultural transfer. In Thomas’ view, if a person makesgrammatical mistakes when expressing his ideas, he will beconsidered “speaking badly”. However, the violation ofcommunication principles such as the Politeness Principle will bethought as “behaving badly” or “insincere, deceitful or harboringevil intentions”. (Thomas, 1983) In China, He Ziran holds that allmistakes that lead to unsuccessful communication results are calledpragmatic failure. (He & Chen, 2002:168-169). Sun Ya and DaiLing give a relatively overall definition: Pragmatic failures occurwhen the speaker uses right sentences in communication, but atunsuitable time, in improper ways of speaking or failing to keep upwith the native’s expressive habits, etc. To be specific, thespeaker violates interpersonal standard or social rules, or atunsuitable time, in inappropriate place, neglects the status andoccasions, goes against cultural values of the target language,which result in breakdown or failure of communication and lead tothe failure to achieve expected effect. This kind of mistake iscalled pragmatic failure. (Bao, 2004:453).
Pragmatic failures can be divided into two types: pragmalinguisticfailure and sociopragmatic failure.
2.1.1
Pragmalinguistic failure Thomas points out thatpragmalinguistic failure occurs when the pragmatic force mapped byS(speaker) onto a given utterance is systematically different fromthe force most frequently assigned to it by native speakers of thetarget language, or when speech act strategies are inappropriatelytransferred from L1 to L2. (Thomas, 1983) Pragmalinguistic failureoccurs when speakers or hearers miscode an utterance, which damagesthe pragmatic force mapped onto a linguistic token or structure.Language barrier is the cause of pragmalinguistic failure, that is,English learners fail to follow the native speakers’ expressivehabits, misuse the usual expressing ways of English, or have noknowledge of the right way of expressing English but use English inaccordance with the semantics and structure of their mothertongue.
The following dialogue is performed by the students in class:
Student A: Good morning, sir. What is the business you want todo?
Student B: Good morning. I want to take some money out.
Student A: OK. Please hand me your card, and then you input yoursecret number.
Student B: Thank you.
In this dialogue, the two students only have partial understandingabout the idiomatic use of English and apply their mother tonguemechanically. The native speakers may fail to understand theirmeaning. The appropriate way of doing somebody a favor is “How canI help you?” And people should say “I want to withdraw some money,please” instead of “take some money out”. Also, in English, theexact expression of “密码” is “password” instead of “secretnumber”.
There are many pragmalinguistic failures that we often come across.For example: “I miss you” Vs “I think you”, “I will bring theumbrella to you” Vs “I will take the umbrella to you”, “I will cometo your home tomorrow” Vs “I will go to your home tomorrow”,etc.
Pragmalinguistic failures are very common to see in dailycommunication, but people can avoid them so long as they build up asocial language foundation and pay enough attention to suchlanguage phenomena.
2.1.2 Sociopragmatic failureSociopragmatic failures refer to language expression mistakescaused by having no knowledge or ignoring the differences ofcultural backgrounds between two countries. The root ofsociopragmatic failures lies in that people from different cultureshave different ideas about proper social behaviors. He Ziran pointsout that English learners run into sociopragmatic failures mainlybecause they have no idea about different cultural backgroundswhich influence the choice of language forms. They are related tostatus, register, level of familiarity with the topic, etc,involving people’s concepts and ideas and concerning what peoplecan say and what they should not talk about. They are difficult forpeople to detect. (He, 1988 )
In daily life, people may have different ideas about a sameconcept. There are two reasons for such misunderstanding: One isthat, a word or a term has different ranges of meaning in differentcultures; the other is, different cultures have differentinterpretive bias or understanding about a same word or term. (He,2000:268). For example:
American teacher: You’re a very clever woman.
Chinese student: No, I’m not a woman, I’m a girl.
This is a dialogue between a foreign teacher and a Chinese collegestudent. Customarily, Chinese distinguish “girl” clearly from“woman”. “Girl” refers to a young unmarried woman while “woman”refers to a married female, usually older than girl. In foreigncountries, “woman” and “girl” both refer to a female, whethermarried or not. The only difference is that “girl” denotes naivetywhile “woman” stands for maturity.
Besides, sociopragmatic failures are also related to situationalknowledge. The pragmatic parameters include time and space,register, degree of formality, role and status, informationtransmission medium, subject matter, etc. (Sun, 2001) If oneparameter changes, others will change at the same time. And ifpeople ignore the changes of pragmatic parameters, sociopragmaticfailures arise.
For example, on Chinese wedding, people usually say “恭喜恭喜” to thebride and bridegroom. However, people should not translate itdirectly into “Congratulations”, because according to the Englishculture, people can only say “Congratulations” to the bridegroombut not to the bride, for “Congratulations” means one finally getssuccess through efforts. To the bride, this word may indicate thatshe tries hard and finally seizes someone. It is really rude to sayso. Here, the speaker lacks understanding about the semantics andpragmatic functions of the word “Congratulations” and mixes up theroles of bride and bridegroom in different communication. Thus,sociopragmatic failures occur.
However, it is worth noting that the distinction betweenpragmalinguistic failure and sociopragmatic failure is not soabsolute. In different contexts or judged from different angles ofcomprehension, some mistakes can be seen either as pragmalinguisticor sociopragmatic failure. Moreover, they both may occur in aperson’s speech.
2.2 Cause analysis of pragmatic failure2.2.1 The influence of culturaldifferences
2.2.1.1 Mode of thinkingLanguage is the dress of thinking. Different modes of thinkingbring about different language structures and ways ofcommunication. The characteristics of Chinese mode of thinking arevivid and comprehensive. They tend to grasp the general nature ofsomething directly through intuition. By contrast, westernersemphasize abstract and analytic thinking. This kind of thinking isto know by logic and reason. For example, when in cross-culturalcommunication, westerners always ask “Why” about an issue. But theChinese usually put emphasis on experience and feelings whenlooking at things. At this time, westerners will make repeatedinquiries like “Why do you think so?”. Then the Chinese may finallyfeel at a loss what to answer.
In addition, Chinese culture is in the traditional style ofcircumference while western culture is in the style of straightline. When dealing with things, Chinese people tend to foreshadowfirst, allowing the hearers to be mentally prepared, and then go tothe point. It seems that if they don’t talk in a roundabout way butcome straight to the point, matters will not be effectively dealtwith. However, in westerners’ opinions, too much foreshadowing maycause mental confusion or is just evading the matter. From Englishidioms such as “Don’t beat about the bush”, “Go to the point”, wecan see westerners’ style of setting about solving problemsdirectly. For example, a Chinese student A wants to discuss withhis foreign teacher B some academic questions. As is the Chineseusual practice, A asks: “Are you very busy?” B, however, taking itas a usual inquiry, answers: “Yes, I’ve been very busy recently”and then leaves. Here, A doesn’t come straight to the point and Bfails to understand his intended meaning. Therefore, pragmaticfailure occurs.
2.2.1.2 Value orientation and moralethics As the cores of cultures, values of different nations mayalso cause pragmatic failures when a cross-cultural communicationis taking place.
Chinese people esteem collectivism, focus on team spirit and moralethics, respect the old and pay great attention to mutual love. Thewesterners esteem individualism, have strong self-awareness,emphasize privacy, lay stress on personal value and pursueequality, independence and freedom. For example, in China, if one’scolleagues or friends get sick, they often say “Take care ofyourself” or “Drink more water” to show their concern, butwesterners are different. Here is a dialogue between a Chinesestudent and a foreign student studying in China.
A: You look pale. What’s the matter?
B: I’m feeling sick. A cold, maybe.
A: Go and see the doctor. Drink more water. Did you take anypills?
B: You are not my mother. Are you?
At the end of this dialogue, we can obviously see that the foreignstudent feels unhappy. In his opinion, feeling sick is his personalaffair and he doesn’t like to be warned. The appropriate expressionshould be “Take care of yourself and I hope you will be bettersoon”. This is enough.
Besides, westerners hold the view that if someone offers help whenhe is not asked to, others may have the feeling that he is showingbenevolence and looking down on others’ ability. For example:
—Pardon me, sir, will you do me a favor? Let me purchase you one ofthese puddings. It would give me such pleasure
—Excuse me, I don’t believe I have the pleasure of knowing you;undoubtedly you have mistaken me for someone else.
It is a dialogue taken from the text The Sampler, which reveals thesocial mentality of offering and accepting/refusing help. Althoughthe young man offered help out of sympathy, yet the old manarrogantly refused: “You have mistaken me for someone else.” Theunderlying meaning is “You are looking down on me.
Values and moral ethics are so important in communication that theyguide perceptions and behaviors. So, to avoid embarrassment, peopleshould pay more attention to differences of values betweendifferent countries.
2.2.1.3 Customs and religious beliefEvery country has its own customs which are different from others,such as festival customs, catering customs, politeness andetiquette, privacy and taboo, greetings, religious belief and soon. They have gone deep into the social members’ minds andbehaviors and they are inevitably embodied in the language. What’smore, every country has special sacred feelings about its customs.So in cross-cultural communication, ignorance of customs andreligious beliefs usually causes pragmatic failures or evenconflicts.
For example, the usual Chinese greetings among friends are “Whereare you going?”, “What are you doing?” or “Have you eaten?”. Tonative speakers of English, such kind of greetings will make themfeel antipathetic, because they think “Where are you going?”threatens their privacy. On certain occasions, “Have you eaten?”will give others a feeling that the speaker is inviting them fordinner.
For another example, the number 13 and the day of Friday are taboosfor westerners. If one day happens to be the 13th and Friday,people will not go out to handle any affairs because this day is anunfortunate day in the history of religion. It was recorded in theBible that at the last supper, Judas in the thirteenth seatbetrayed Jesus and the latter was killed on Friday. From then on,the number 13 and the day of Friday have both become unfortunatethings for westerners.
The ways of sending gifts are also different between westerners andthe Chinese. When receiving presents from others, a westerner oftenopens the gift at once and shows his or her appreciation. If not,people who send the gifts will think that he / she dislikes thegift. However, Chinese people will not open gifts in front ofothers unless they are asked to. The Chinese do so to show thatthey regard friendship as more important than materialbenefits.
Every country has its special feelings about its customs, pride orsacredness. People should be familiar with other countries’ customsand religious belief in order to avoid unnecessary culturalconflicts and learn to “Do in Rome as the Romans do”.
2.2.2 The influence of improperlanguage learning and teaching methods
2.2.2.1 Negative transfer of mother tongue Incross-cultural communication, language learners are prone totransfer from their mother tongue into the target languageexpressions that are semantically or syntactically equivalent, buttotally different in pragmatic force. Negative transfer of mothertongue involves the use of patterns or rules of the nativelanguage. It shows transfer in many aspects.
Using polite and appropriate addressing forms are very necessary incommunication. Due to cultural differences, different countrieshave different addressing forms. In China, people often use “old”and addressing modifiers to show respect and cordiality, butwesterners use “elderly” or “senior” as substitution because “old”is taboo for them. If one transfers it directly from Chinese toEnglish in accordance with Chinese expressing habit and call aforeigner “Old Tom”, the foreigner will feel offended andunhappy.
Pragmatic failures also arise when speech strategies areinappropriately transferred from one language to another. Forexample, if a foreigner visits his Chinese friend. The Chinese hostmay offer him a cup of tea or an apple and say, “Please have a cupof tea” or “Have an apple, please.” On this occasion, the foreignguest may think the host is insincere, because in English, “please”means the speaker is asking for a favor. But in China, “请”(please)can be used both in offering and requesting situation to showpoliteness. Here in this situation, the proper expression should be“Would you like a cup of tea?” or “Would you like an apple?”
Again, on some occasions, some Chinese often use “Of course” toshow confirmation to others’ questions. For instance, when aforeign guest asks “Is the restaurant in this same building?”, theChinese waiter often replies: “Of course.” However, this answer maymake the foreigner feel unhappy because it may imply that he isignorant.
From the above examples, we can clearly see that in cross-culturalcommunication, negative transfer of mother tongue may easily giverise to misunderstandings and result in pragmatic failure. It istherefore important for Chinese English learners to try their bestto avoid negative transfers in language use.
2.2.2.2 Classroom English teachingLanguage teaching in China sometimes doesn’t help students to avoidpragmatic failures but make it worse. The related aspects aretextbooks, teaching methods and teachers.
The role that textbooks play in language learning is self-evident.In recent years, language materials for English textbooks havebecome more authentic and plentiful in China. However, it is commonto see many cases ignoring cultural backgrounds and pragmatic rulesin the training of language structures, especially in primary andsecondary textbooks. The following example is a dialogue taken froma primary school textbook:
A: Are you writing a letter to your wife?
B: Yes, I am.
A: How often do you write to her?
B: Once a week.
Such kind of dialogue actually does help students to grasp languagestructures, but it is seldom used among native speakers, for it mayoffend others’ privacy. However, in the students’ minds, textbooksare authority, so they think they can communicate with westernersthis way, which will make the latter feel unhappy andoffended.
In China, exams mainly focus on the correctness of languageknowledge and in order to handle exams, students usually drill inlanguage structures and have no knowledge of pragmatics. As aresult, in cross-cultural communication, pragmatic failure occursand conversations may break down.
Teachers themselves and their teaching methods are also animportant factor leading to pragmatic failures. Some teachers donot know much about pragmatics but teach the students linguisticknowledge only. They stick to textbooks and neglect the pragmaticmistakes or they just misunderstand that pragmatics is notimportant. As time passes, students form a wrong idea that they cantalk with foreigners that way and have no awareness of pragmaticfailures even when they have come across them. Therefore, Englishteaching should not lose connection with its culture. When teachinglanguage knowledge, teachers should attach importance to culturalbackgrounds of the English-speaking countries and pay attention tocultural differences.
2.3 Tactics for overcoming pragmaticfailure 2.3.1 Consolidatinglanguage knowledge and competence Due to differences in history,beliefs and customs, people of China and western countries may havedifferent understanding of a same word. Take “drugstore” as anexample, Chinese students find it hard to imagine that they can buyfood, drinks and articles of daily use from a drugstore. Themedical system established in China makes people form the idea thatdrug can only be bought in hospitals or drugstores. The word “drug”will make Chinese students think of narcotics instead of commongoods or something that can be sold everywhere just like drinks.Also, “dragon” is a symbol of sacredness in China. There are manyidioms about dragon, showing people’s worship and love for it.However, in western countries, dragon is a symbol of fierceness andevil. Therefore, westerners often say “Four tigers of Asia” insteadof “Four dragons of Asia”. Another example is, the image of dog inmany Chinese’s minds is loathsome and negative, but in westerncountries, dog is considered as one member of the family. Except afew negative idioms such as “go to the dogs” “feel like a dog’sdinner”, the majority is positive. People often describe a man byusing “dog’, such as “gay dog” “lucky dog” “old dog” “top dog”,etc.
Since the lack of language knowledge and abilities may lead topragmatic failures, then in order to avoid pragmatic failure incross-cultural communication, we should do our best to consolidatelanguage knowledge and competence. Visiting English websites,communicating with foreigners through the internet, reading Englishnovels and learning foreign countries’ histories are all activitiesthat can help us understand western culture vividly and directly.Through them, we can effectively avoid cultural intervention andimprove our cross-cultural abilities.
2.3.2 Enhancing cross-culturalawareness Developing the students’ cross-cultural awareness is veryimportant in coping with pragmatic failures. As the term used todescribe sensitivity to the impact of culturally-induced behaviorson language use and communication, cross-cultural awarenessinvolves beliefs, values, world outlook, feelings and so on.
The following measures can help students to enhance cross-culturalawareness. Firstly, teachers should consciously guide theirstudents to use appropriate language in different contexts in thecourse of teaching. They should not just focus on the grammaticalusages. Secondly, teachers themselves should enrich theircross-cultural knowledge and be familiar with cultural backgroundsof western countries. If possible, they should be given theopportunity of being trained in the country of the target culture.Thirdly, lectures about the target language should be provided byschools and foreign teachers should be invited to introduce theircultures. And students should also be encouraged to communicatewith native speakers. Fourthly, textbook compliers should providelanguage materials for the training of appropriate language use indifferent contexts instead of focusing on grammar and usage only.They should add more cultural information so that students can getto know more about western culture and develop their awareness ofcultural differences. The very reason is, cultural misunderstandingwill lead to greater offences in cross-cultural communication thangrammatical mistakes.
2.3.3 Developing cross-culturalcommunicative competence Western scholars such as Ruben have done alot of studies on cross-cultural communicative competence in thelatest several years (Jia, 1997:502). It is a multi-dimensionalconcept, mainly due to the multifaceted nature of culture and thecomplexity of the phenomenon of cross-cultural communication. Itrefers to not only a body of social cultural knowledge andcompetence of a foreign language, but also a power of perceivingand interpreting cultural encounters as well as an internalcapability of perfecting one’s own personality through the processof cross-cultural interaction.
Teachers should make full use of books, films, videos and TVprograms in the original. Through imitating real interactions,students can be encouraged to use language creatively to expresstheir thoughts. By so doing, students can truly experience culturaldifferences and learn some rules about social intercourse from thenative speakers’ points of view.
Nowadays, with the development of science, technology and economy,the society poses higher demand on students’ cross-culturalcommunicative competence. It has become the evident feature of the21st century. Hence, developing students’ cross-culturalcommunicative competence has become a urgent task on hand.
3. Conclusion Pragmatic failure, whichincludes pragmalinguistic failure and sociopragmatic failure, is acommon phenomenon in cross-cultural communication. It may give riseto language barriers and failures to achieve the communicativepurpose. There are several reasons contributing to pragmaticfailure in cross-cultural communication, namely, mode of thinking,value orientation, customs, negative transfer of mother tongue andclassroom English teaching and so on. The study about pragmaticfailure therefore has great significance for cross-culturalcommunication and English learning. On the one hand, it can helppeople of different cultural backgrounds understand each otherbetter, find out communicating barriers and take remedial measures.On the other hand, it makes us recognize that correct language formalone is insufficient to achieve the goal of cross-culturalcommunication and appropriate ways of expression must be adopted.Therefore, in English learning, students should focus on not onlythe grasp of basic language knowledge but also the development ofpragmatic competence and cultural awareness.
