论文总字数：50208字

摘 要

在过去数十年间，中美两国之间的贸易谈判日益频繁。但影响一场谈判过程和结果的因素有很多，文化因素就是其中之一。由于缺乏对彼此文化和语言的了解，语用失误现象在谈判过程中十分普遍并已成为阻碍国际商务谈判成功的巨大阻碍。为了能够收获理想的谈判效果，了解掌握造成语用失误的原因及失误类型和其对谈判的影响对于双方来说是十分必要的。本文运用文献研究法追溯国内外语用失误的研究历程并先后阐述语用失误的定义及其在国际商务谈判中的表现，然后揭示其类别，尤其是中美贸易谈判中的语用失误种类和表现形式。之后本文通过结合案例分析造成语用失误的文化因素并最终提出相应的策略来帮助中美谈判双方尽可能规避语用失误。

关键词：国际商务谈判；语用失误；跨文化交际

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 2

2.1 Intercultural communication and business negotiation 2

2.2 Pragmatic Failures 3

3. Classification of Pragmatic Failures in Sino-American Business Negotiations 6

3.1 Pragmalinguistic failures 6

3.2 Sociopragmatic failures 7

3.3 Pragmabehavioral failures 8

4. Causes of Pragmatic Failures in Sino-American Business Negotiations 9

4.1 Causes of pragmalinguistic failures 9

4.2 Causes of sociopragmatic failures 11

4.3 Causes of pragmabehavioral failures 13

5. Strategies to Avoid Pragmatic Failures in Sino-American Business Negotiations 15

5.1 Enhancing negotiators’ intercultural pragmatic accomplishment 15

5.2 Cultivating dynamic pragmatic thinking abilities 16

5.3 Developing negotiators’ non-verbal communication skills 17

6. Conclusion 17

Works Cited 20

1. Introduction

With the rapid development of globalization, the intercultural business negotiation has been an inescapable issue for the traders who are ready to compete in the global market. As the two largest economies in the world, China and America are becoming increasingly important trading partners. In 2017, Sino-American trading accounted for more than 12% of China’s total trade volume and America and China were each other’s largest trading partners. However, although so much trade and investment between these two economies has proved their close relationship, the growing number of business disputes alert us to pay attention to the factors which may decide the process and results of international negotiations and intercultural barriers are some of the most important factors among them. Obviously, negotiators from America and China have their own cultural backgrounds, the process of their business negotiation is also a process of the conflict between two entirely different cultures. Nevertheless, the data shows that about 62% Chinese merchants are not familiar with western values and costumes, and 51% Chinese merchants can not accept western negotiation styles. (Yang 59) As a result, it is highly possible for the negotiators to be interrupted by several problems arising from intercultural communication, such as pragmatic failures, easy to be neglected, impeding two parties from receiving and understanding the counterpart’s meaning appropriately. So, researches on pragmatic failures in Sino-American business negotiations to avoid potential risks has been rich in practical significance. It is expected that this thesis could inspire merchants from both China and America to realize the existence and impacts of pragmatic failures. Moreover, participants in these international trading negotiations should try their best to bridge up this intercultural gap by taking proper actions in the future.

This thesis is made up of six chapters. Chapter 1 chiefly presents the purpose, background and structure of the thesis. Chapter 2 retrospects previous researches on the intercultural communication, negotiation and the relationship between them. Also, it briefly reviews former researches on pragmatic failures, especially those arisen in international business negotiations. Chapter 3 generally introduces the classification of pragmatic failures in Sino-American business negotiations. Chapter 4 analyzes the causes of three different types of pragmatic failures respectively through case study. Chapter 5 puts forward some coping strategies that negotiators can use to handle or avoid such errors in negotiations. Finally, chapter 6 reaches a conclusion of this study by summarizing the main ideas, research significance and innovation of the thesis. Besides, it refers to the expectation on the future researches and inadequacy existing in this study.

2. Literature Review

Since the reform and opening up from 1978, China has become the “the workshop of the world” (Roberts amp; James 13). At the same time, frequent trades with other countries bring about more and more interactions between diverse cultures, which are particularly noticeable in Sino-American business activities. Facing increasing trading conflicts between the two most dynamic economies in the world, the traders or scholars from America and China have been aware of the impact of cultures on the international business negotiations. In 1977, the famous American anthropologist Edward Twitcheel Hall stated that culture is the total accumulation of beliefs, customs, values, behaviors, institutions and communication patterns that are shared, learned and passed down through the generations in an identifiable group of people. Meanwhile, it is undeniable that as a main communication pattern, language has an indispensable relationship with the culture, as Boas pointed out in 1911 that a kind of unity must exist in language and culture. (Wang 140)

Besides, many scholars hold that the language is not only the component, but also the reflection and the cream of the culture. In addition, cultures constantly constraint the form of languages, endowing languages with essence. Gradually, cultures have become the connotation and basic content of languages. It is noteworthy that language mistakes sometimes seems to blend into cultural mistakes due to the restriction culture imposes on language.

2.1 Intercultural communication and business negotiation

Intercultural communication means the communication between different cultures. (Li amp; Zhou 144) It first appeared as a discipline in America and it is the product of global economic integration and has been the necessity for the strategic decisions of multinational companies. The parties involved in intercultural communication come from different cultural backgrounds, so they have different languages, costumes and thinking modes. Therefore, it is unavoidable for them to express their opinions or behave in quite different ways. In 1964, Fred Ikle professed that negotiation parties must have common interests and conflicts of interests because the former are what to negotiate for and the latter are what to negotiate about. (Ikle 67) So, it can be safely concluded that business negotiations are negotiations taking place in commercial environment where business people discuss together, arguing for their own interests. Chaney and Martin define intercultural negotiations as “discussions of common and conflicting interests between persons of different cultural backgrounds who work to reach an agreement of mutual benefit.” (Chaney amp; Martin 196)

In recent years, the relationship between cultures and negotiations has drawn increasing attention from academia, particularly conflicts caused by huge cultural gaps between China and America. Negotiators from high context culture like Chinese culture are not used to expressing their thoughts or emotions openly and explicitly. On the contrary, people from low context cultures like American culture are inclined to embrace openness and directness without caring about hidden contexts. (Miller amp; Lin 288) When merchants cross the border sitting together to negotiate for their own benefits respectively, it is common for them to hold quite different assumptions or expectations arising from cultural differences, thus when negotiators spare no efforts to reach goals, cultures influence the process of negotiation in varying degrees. Hence, realizing the existence and impacts of cultural differences is vital for effective communication between participants in international business negotiations.

2.2 Pragmatic Failures

Globalization has set higher requirements for its participants and one of the most conspicuous signs is that people are always faced with communication disorder in intercultural communication, which is obvious in international business negotiations. Therefore, more and more scholars have devoted themselves to exploring how such barriers take shape and how we push them away. The pragmatics, as a new branch of linguistics which focuses on the ways in which the context contributes to the meaning, has become of great importance. Certain language mistakes in intercultural communication that scholars call “pragmatic failures” later are particularly noticeable. Therefore, studies of pragmatic failures have risen considerably since 1980s.

2.2.1 Definition of pragmatic failures

The first scholar who studied pragmatic failures systematically is the English linguist called Jenny Tomas. In 1983, Tomas published an article named Cross Cultural Pragmatic Failures, where she analyzed the roots of pragmatic failures and the way to classify pragmatic failures and what she sated in this article had laid the foundation of the study on pragmatic failures nowadays. According to her, pragmatic failures means the inability to understand what is meant by what is said. (Thomas 91) To be specific, it refers to the errors in our speech communication because we fail to accomplish a perfect communicative effect. (He 226)

In China, the first scholar putting forward the concept of “pragmatic failures” was Huang Cidong, who detailed ten different types of pragmatic failures and pointed ou that we should not only be familiar with pronunciation, grammar and vocabularies, but also should have a good grasp of how to apply different patterns of languages in different non-language contexts or backgrounds. (Huang 15) He Qiran and Qian Guanlian deemed that pragmatic failures were not common errors made in language usage, instead, they appeared under the following circumstances: speakers made comments inappropriately or expressing opinions without conforming to customs. Moreover, they could be caused by unconscious violation of interpersonal norms. All above were likely to hinder language communication, preventing us from achieving desired results. (Chang Li Literature 100) Beside, some scholars believed that we could attribute pragmatic failures to the lack of both pragmalinguistic and sociolinguistic knowledge. (He Yan Pragamatic 3) Furthermore, Ge Linlin held that the main reasons accounting for pragmatic failures were different cultural backgrounds owned by speakers as well as cultural transfer. (Chang Li Literature 100)

2.2.2 Pragmatic failures in international business negotiations

Business English is a kind of English variety with strong social function which integrates practicability, speciality and purpose in order to serve commercial activities in the certain field and has been widely recognized and accepted by the participants in business activities. (Ruan 121) With the number of international business activities growing, business English has become an indispensable communicative style in the world. International business communication involves communication between languages as well as the collision of different cultures like other forms of intercultural communication.

To deal with challenges brought about in intercultural business communication, Business English Linguistics has emerged as a new and independent discipline with Business English Pragmatics as one of its branches. Business English Pragmatics aims to study how to achieve goals of communication by proper manners and appropriate languages in the business context. Besides, its two core concepts are business contexts and business pragmatic abilities. (Li 600) Hence, speakers can not use business English without considering the certain business context which can restrict and prompt communicators at the same time in intercultural business English communication. Accordingly, pragmatic failures in business English are always generated in certain business context. In addition, business contexts are the important basis for the judgement of pragmatic failures in business English, because certain kind of verbal or nonverbal expression which is acceptable for the negotiator A in his business context is very likely to be taken as unacceptable by the negotiator B in his own business context. Therefore, pragmatic failures in business English can be defined as disruptions and failures in intercultural business English communication caused by non-native speakers due to differences in cultural backgrounds, verbal and nonverbal expressions, thinking modes and values, which will lead their verbal and nonverbal expression or interpretation to offend against the counterparts’ contexts. So, business English negotiators must be capable of identifying business contexts and conveying messages properly by utilizing these contexts. (Li 601)

Former scholars had paid numerous efforts to define what pragmatic failures are and they had briefly pointed out several factors which might lead to pragmatic failures. However, researches on the specific cause of each type of pragmatic failures are much fewer, let alone researches on causes of pragmatic failures in Sino-American business negotiations. Besides, although some scholars had confirmed that the causes of pragmatic failures in international business had their own uniqueness which was generated in certain business contexts, business negotiations taking place between America and China also has their own features which may be quite different from other kinds of international commercial events. Hence, studying peculiar causes of different types of pragmatic failures in Sino-American business negotiations will be of great research significance and this thesis intends to fill this gap to a certain degree.

1. Classification of Pragmatic Failures in Sino-American Business Negotiations

Based on the opinions of Jenny Thomas, later scholars often classified pragmatic failures into two main categories: pragmalinguistic failure and sociopragmatic failure. They both are errors made in verbal expressions, but people can tell one from another based on factors contributing to them respectively.

However, Jenny Thomas and many other scholars have overlooked non-verbal level in communication. In 1974, some data has showed that in communication, the information carried by the verbal codes only accounts for 35 per cent of the total volume, in comparison with 65 per cent carried by nonverbal codes. (Raymond 116) Thus failures and conflicts resulted from nonverbal expression communication are inseparable parts of the study of pragmatic failures and the conclusion reached by Li Yuansheng seems more comprehensive and convincing: two communicating parties’ failures in understanding or expressing verbal and nonverbal information because of lack of accurate interpretation and the ability to use language effectively. (Li 112) Therefore, pragmatic failures can be classified into three types: pragmalingusitic failures, sociopragmatic failures and pragmabehavioral failures, all of which can be found in Sino-American business negotiations.

3.1 Pragmalinguistic failures

According to He Ziran, pragmalinguistic failure is only the problem at language level and arises when non-native speakers apply the meaning of one word or one syntactic structure from his own mother language to the target language indiscriminately or convey messages in a way that is inconsistent with the habits of native speakers. (He 207)

Therefore, pragmalinguistic failure has two levels of meaning. The first level means the hearer misunderstands the certain conversational implicature of speaker due to the use of some words or expressions which may lead to ambiguity. In this situation, we can find that same expression from different languages usually have different meanings. In the meantime, the same meaning conveyed by different expressions belonging to different languages do not necessarily mean they have the same pragmatic meaning. The second level means the implication the speaker wants to convey has not been expressed clearly, which leads to the misconception. The following case taken from Du Panpan’s On Pragmatic Failures in Business English Interpretation contains a typical pragmalinguistic failure arising in Sino-American business negotiations.

One city in China planned to absorb foreign investment to boost the local economy, so its government organized a press conference to propagandize related policies. During the conference, the government spokesman said to several delegates from American companies: “Our city’s economic zone is piece of fat meat.” In Chinese, “a piece of fat meat” means something lucrative or tempting. Nevertheless, in English, “fat meat” has nothing to do with benefits, conversely, it is highly possible for native speakers to associate it with things which is unimportant or even need to be deserted. Consequently, Americans could not understand the meaning of this promotion and they showed no interests in this economic zone. (Du 90)

3.2 Sociopragmatic failures

The sociopragmatic failure is the problem at cultural level and it is related to many factors such as identities of speakers, the register and speakers’ familiarity with topics. Besides, it arises when the communicators are not familiar with or even ignore the differences in two sides’ social and cultural backgrounds. (He 207) It is acknowledged that because people from different cultural backgrounds, they tend to acquire different cultural influences and have diverse social norms, but these differences have usually been ignored and soicopragmatic failures are easy to be resulted. In general, sociopragmatic failures are common in the following contexts: greetings, apologies, thanks, compliments invitations, humility and requests. The following is a case point for soicopragmatic failures in Sino-Ameican business negotiations extracted from Wu Aixing’s Analysis of Pragmatic Failures in Business English Interpretation Based on Cross-cultural Perspective.

During one Sino-American business negotiation, the Chinese delegate said, “I sincerely hope that our future trade cooperation will be a complete success and we sincerely wish you all the best and a happy family.” Although in Chinese, blessing others’ families has always been a good etiquette to show humanistic care, American people believe that the family belongs to privacy and talking about this topic is informal and unprofessional, which tends to cause sociopragmatic failures. (Wu 148)

3.3 Pragmabehavioral failures

The pragmabehavioral failure can also be called the nonverbal pragmatic failure and it refers to failures caused by non-native speakers’ inappropriate selection or misinterpretations of nonverbal behaviors due to cultural differences. Additionally, scholars divide nonverbal communication into body language, paralanguage, object language and environmental language, so we can classify pragmabehavioral failures into body language, paralanguage, object language and environmental language. Beside, the first two kinds are common in Sino-American business negotiations.This kind of pragmatic failures is obvious in the following case taken from Li Wanwan’s The Definition and Classification of Pragmatic Failures of Business English.

Zhang Cheng is an assistant manager from Chongqing Import and Export Corp and he was assigned to meet Mr Brown who was the manager of an American trading company to negotiate cooperation. It was the first time for them to meet with each other, so out of habit, Zhang Cheng greeted Mr Brown with smile and gave his business card reverentially to him. However, Mr Brown just put the business card into his pocket without a glance at it, which made Zhang Cheng felt insulted because in Chinese and even Asian cultures, exchanging business cards is an indispensable etiquette in commercial activities to show respect. As a result, Mr Brown’s behavior seemed to indicate that he was indifferent to Zhang’s identity. In contrast, Mr Brown just put Zhang’s business card into pocket for convenience. (Li 603)

1. Causes of Pragmatic Failures in Sino-American Business Negotiations

The process of Sino-American business negotiations is the process of exchanging information of both parties with profound influences of cultural factors, which deeply reflects the unique features of Chinese and American respectively. However, if negotiators lack necessary cultural knowledge of the target language country, communication barriers and misunderstanding will be caused with pragmatic failures. Therefore, understanding the causes of pragmatic failures in business negotiations will be extremely beneficial for traders from these two countries.

• 1. Causes of pragmalinguistic failures

One main factor resulting pragmalinguistic failures is the negotiator’s lack of the counterpart’s language knowledge. In practice, this kind of lack mainly embodies in not gaining proficiency in grammar, vocabularies and intonations. In this part, the thesis demonstrates causes of pragmalinguistic failures through two cases excerpted from Li Wanwan’s The Definition and Classification of Pragmatic Failures of Business English.

• • 1. Differences in grammar

Chinese grammar and English grammar are quite different from each other and in Sino-American business negotiations, it is quite common to see conflicts resulted from two parties’ inappropriate usage of syntactic structures. The following case reveals main differences in grammar of Chinese and English.

An American exporter exported a batch of goods to a Chinese importer. As stipulated in the contract, the exporter must deliver goods on June 2rd, but due to the conflict with the shipping company, the exporter did not send out goods until July. Consequently, the representative named A from the American company had to explain to the representative named B from the Chinese company for this issue. Surprisingly, the conversation between two sides’ representatives made the thing worse.

A: We are sorry we have not delivered the goods on time because of our own problems and we are willing to make up losses caused by our delayed delivery for you.

B: You have promised to effect the shipment on June 2rd, but it is July and you still have not made the delivery. You should take our losses in consideration. (Li 603)

In this case, the Chinese importer directly blamed the counterpart for not shipping goods on schedule, which led his American partner to feeling that he focused on expressing disaffection instead of solving the problem. A a result, the Chinese representative’s statement was not euphemistic enough, seemingly threatening the American delegate. Unavoidably, his response would lead to more conflicts. In Chinese grammar, sentences widely consist of pronouns or active voice as subjects and it is not uncommon to find sentences without subjects. Although in Business English, the active voice is called business voice as well, using passive voice when solving conflicts can help avoid making expressions too direct. Beside, passive voice enables the negotiator to focus on existing issues rather than criticizing others. Thus, this kind of unnecessary pragmatic failures entirely arises from grammar discrepancies.

• • 1. Differences in vocabularies

As vocabularies are largely influenced by costumes, traditions, politics and thinking modes, different nations have formed their own etymological meanings, idioms, allusions and motivation of creating words. In Sino-American business negotiation, due to the existence of many inconsistencies in the macroscopic correspondence of words and expressions, pragmatic failures are easy to be made. Here is the case:

One importer from America planed to import wine from one famous Chinese wine manufacturer and a salesman from this Chinese company was responsible for introducing his company’s products to American. The salesman said, “The white wine produced by our company has a good reputation for its high quality and delicacy.” However, the American delegated replied that they were interested in liquor but not white wine.

In this case, it is obvious that the Chinese salesman did not know that wine in English means nonalcoholic beverages and white wine equates amontillado. Hence, in Sino-American business negotiations, overlooking the asymmetrical phenomenon that one single word from one’s mother language may has a completely different meaning compared with that from the target language can easily give rise to pragmatic failures.

Furthermore, both in Chinese and English, many words have been endowed new cultural connotations, which have created more challenges for negotiators involved in Sino-American business negotiations. For example, in one business negotiation between one Chinese importing company and one American exporting company, the manager from the Chinese company wanted to know the funding condition of his counterpart’s marketing department, so he asked the sales director form the American company: How large does your company invest in the marketing department? The American sales director responded: our department receives the lion’s share of our cooperation’s total expenditures. Nevertheless, the Chinese manager has not heard about the saying “the lion’s share” before and he was so confused that he assumed that the American delegate was unwilling to tell him the truth. In fact, “the lion’s share” originated in Aesop’s Fables, which in English means the best or the greatest part. (Li 603) Therefore, in Sino-American business negotiations, the non-native speakers ought to have a good grip of the words, allusions and idioms which have been given unique cultural connotations, only by this way can they avoid pragmatic failures mentioned above.

• 1. Causes of sociopragmatic failures

Sociopragmatic failures are mainly resulted from negotiators’ unfamiliarity with the culture of each other. It contains what should be said or what should not be, the relationship between the speakers and their rights and obligations. Therefore, the complexity of cultures and communicative behaviors will decide that of sociopragmatic failures. The rest of this sub section analyzes two main cultural factors contributing to sociopragmatic failures through the case taken from Gu Wenming’s The Impact Analysis of Cultural Differences on Sino-US Business Negotiations: A Case Study of the Business Negotiation between the US Company Canwall and a Chinese Wallpaper Factory.

• • 1. Differences in thinking modes

In terms of thinking modes, Chinese people always focus on the whole and intuition, so they are conditioned to open up the conversation from the periphery of the topic, leading the listener approaching to the theme gradually. Moreover, only after achieving the agreement with the listener will Chinese people get to the point. By contrast, American thinking modes emphasize analysis and logic, so they prefer to go straight to the theme. This discrepancy is reflected in the negotiation style and it stands out in the following case:

Canwall is an American manufacturer of wallpaper printing equipment whose president is Charlie Burton. On behalf of Canwall, Burton and his marketing director came to a town in the province of Jiangsu, China, to negotiate a deal to a new wallpaper production manufacture factory there. This was the first time for him to sell products outside his motherland., but the process of the negotiation had been beyond his expectation. During the first day and the second day after their arrival, although they were eager to begin the negotiation, they were taken to see the sights near the town and given a lot of time to rest by Chinese representatives. At the third day, they finally sat down to meeting. But what made Burton surprised was that ten Chinese members sat across the table, facing them, in contrast, there were only two of them. Progress seemed very slow, with either side giving general introduction about themselves, which seemed unrelated to the deal itself. After listening to various apparently tangential issues, the American speculated that it was the time to discuss the deal. To his surprise, the Chinese also spent a lot of time talking about the American trade agent who had been in their town earlier. Burton was not able to tell them much about that person, since he had never met him personally. The byzantine process appeared above led Burton to feel confused and unnecessary misunderstanding came one after another. On the other hand, Chinese representatives were very disappointed as they had not created a intimate and relaxing atmosphere by talking about other topics as expected. Unfortunately, this mutual misunderstanding has been the beginning of two parties’ unhappiness. (Gu 31)

• • 1. Differences in values

Every culture has its own distinctive social norms and values. Values always guide people’s views and behavior. Besides, they form the deepest level of the culture, becoming the core of intercultural communication. Consequently, differences in values are likely to give rise to pragmatic failures in Sino-American business negotiations especially soicopragamtic ones as negotiators are inclined to transfer their own values to the negotiating table intentionally or unintentionally. These differences can also be found in the negotiation between US company Canwall and the Chinese wallpaper factory.

After several days’ negotiations, Chinese delegates started to be worried about later maintenance problems because they were not sure whether they can repair the equipment by themselves if it broke down. To minimize the potential risks and costs, the Chinese side suggested delicately that Burton should leave several engineers in the town for some time to train some Chinese engineers. However, Burton and his marketing director has not realized that and they repeatedly emphasized that the manual has covered all potential problems, thus Chinese would be able to maintain the equipment on their own. In addition, Burton pointe out directly that leaving employees in the town would bring about more expenses and difficulties. As a result, both parties were unhappy with each other’s responses. At last, when a Japanese company promised that it would arrange some engineers for fixing the equipment in China after the deal visited China, the Chinese manager chose to import the equipment from Japan. (Gu 33)

Through this case, one huge difference in Chinese and American cultures is easy to be noticed: Chinese people are used to expressing their opinions implicitly and euphemistically to avoid conflicts, which is the way for Chinese people to regard interpersonal relationship but also causes American people to take Chinese people as elusive. Conversely, American people give most priorities to how to get their jobs done, so they always express true feelings outright.

4.3 Causes of pragmabehavioral failures

Through a lot of experimental exploration, Mehrabian worked out a famous calculation formula about communication: among the total effect engendered by a piece of information, speech, voice and facial expressions account for 7 percent, 38 percent and 55 percent respectively. (Li 601) Although he only mentioned facial expressions, his demonstration has affirmed the important role played by pragmabehavioral failures and factors contributing to this kind of pragmatic failures can not be ignored in Sino-American business negotiations. Likely, this section dissects two causes of pragmabehavioral failures through the case from Gu Wenming’s The Impact Analysis of Cultural Differences on Sino-US Business Negotiations: A Case Study of the Business Negotiation between the US Company Canwall and a Chinese Wallpaper Factory.

4.3.1 Differences in body language

剩余内容已隐藏，请支付后下载全文，论文总字数：50208字