论文总字数：43648字

摘 要

长期以来，虽然我们一直学习英语、参加各种等级考试，然而因为各种主观、客观因素的影响，我们在很多跨文化交际的场合里却屡屡遭受失败使交际无法顺利进行。因此，我们应该采取一些措施，如培养学生的社交语用能力、提高学生的跨文化意识等来避免这些失败，从而提高学生的语用能力。

本文以跨文化交际背景下大学课堂上的社交语用失误为出发点， 分析了社交语用失误的类型和产生的原因，并且针对其提出了相关解决对策，以期能提高中国学生的跨文化交际能力及英语学习能力。

关键词：跨文化交际；社交语用失误；语用能力

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 2

2.1. Cross-cultural Communication 2

2.2 Sociopragmatic Failure 3

2.3 Previous Studies 4

3. The Classifications of Sociopragmatic Failure in College Class 5

3.1 Greeting 5

3.2 Appellation 6

3.3 Introduction 7

3.4 Thanks 7

3.5 Appreciation 8

4.The Reasons of Sociopragmatic Failure in Cross-cultural Communication in college class 9

4.1 Subjective Reasons 9

4.2 Objective Reasons 11

5. Strategies for Avoiding Sociopragmatic Failure in Cross-cultural Communication 15

5.1 The Development of Cross-cultural Understanding 15

5.2 The Development of Cross-cultural Communicative Competence 17

5.3 The Cultivation of Sociopragmatic Competence 19

6. Conclusion 20

Works Cited 22

1. Introduction

As we all know, the ultimate goal of English language teaching is to cultivate students’ communicative competence. One of its essential components is the competence to choose appropriate linguistic forms in different contexts. In other words, it means the ability to use English correctly in social contacts, and the most representative one is the ability to use it in cross-cultural communication.

With the development of economy and technology, global village is becoming into reality. The communications among different regions and countries reveal its great importance gradually. Thus the ability to communicate with people from different cultures becomes more and more important.

However, cross-cultural communications are not simple and many factors may lead to its breaking down. And pragmatic failure is one of its fatal causes. Thus, it is important for us to probe the sources of pragmatic failure. In our country, the research of pragmatic failure started in 1980s. Many linguists, such as Hu Zhuanglin, Gu Tongqing and Hong Gang, have already made many studies on it. What’s more, many of them have ever made researches on college students’ pragmatic failure. However, few of them have focused their studies on college students’ sociopragmatic failure, not mention to put forward elaborate strategies to solve it.

Therefore, this thesis mainly aims to analyze sociopragmatic failure shown by college students in cross-cultural communication and then puts forward several strategies to avoid it by probing the classifications and reasons. This thesis tries to explore the causes of sociopragmatic failure in college and find elaborate methods to solve it in order to improve learners’ communicative competence.

The thesis consists of six parts. Part one introduces relevant knowledge about this thesis and puts forward the problems needed to discuss as well as this thesis’s purpose and meanings. Part two elaborates the literature review. This part reviews previous studies and defines what are cross-cultural communication and sociopragmatic failure. Part three shows the classifications of sociopragmatic failure in college class. Part four is the reasons of sociopragmatic failure in college class from the perspective of cross-cultural communication. Part five is the strategies for avoiding sociopragmatic failure in cross-cultural communication. Part six is the closing part, a conclusion.

2. Literature Review

2.1. Cross-cultural Communication

In order to understand cross-cultural communication, we need to know two concepts: communication and culture.

Defining communication is a difficult task. Samovar and Porter (1994:8) defined communication as follows: “communication occurs whenever meaning is attributed to behavior or the residue of behavior.” This means communication occurs when someone perceives our behavior or its residue meaning to it, no matter our behavior is conscious or unconscious, intentional or unintentional. Guided by previous studies of communication, in my eyes, it refers to the interactions among people. In general, it means the process where two or more people interchange their views, feelings and information by language or gesture.

Giving a definition of culture is also not so easy. As for culture, there has been a large number of different definitions of culture so far. Porter and Samovar(1994) defined it as “knowledge, experience, meanings, beliefs, values, attitudes, religions, concept of self, the universe, the self-universe relationships, hierarchies of status, role expectation, special relationships and time concepts acquired by a group of people.” Some scholar expanded the range of culture. He thought that it included not only the behaviors, but also not-always-obvious rules, beliefs, attitudes, values and so on which govern those behaviors. In my opinion, culture means the total way of life of particular groups of people, including all the results of material and mental products. It is a complex system consisting of all the elements in a society.

Culture is everywhere and it affects all aspects of human life, including communication. Culture controls the circumstances where information may or may not be sent or exchanged. When cultures differ, communications differ as well. They are bound so closely that communication may break down if speakers’ cultural backgrounds are different.

After explaining the concepts of communication and culture and their relationship, it’s time to make out what is cross-cultural communication.

Cross-cultural communication, just as its name implies, it means the communication between people from different cultures. It’s not a new concept. It has been studied for a long time. Samovar (1994:8) holds that cross-cultural communication appears “whenever a message that must be understood is produced by a number of one culture for consumption by a member of another culture”. More precisely, cross-cultural communication is the communication among people whose cultural perspectives and symbol systems are different enough to change the communication event. (Samovar, Porter and Stefani, 2000:48). In my opinion, cross-cultural communication means that people with different cultural backgrounds exchange their information by using one language (first language or target language) in particular contexts. Besides, nowadays, cross-cultural communication has developed a lot. New technology, population explosion and economic growth have contributed to its development.

2.2 Sociopragmatic Failure

Sociopragmatic failure is one branch of pragmatic failure. So, in order to understand sociopragmatic failure, we need to make clear what pragmatic failure is. According to Thomas (1983:91), pragmatic failure refers to “the inability to understand what is meant by what is said.” It is mainly composed of pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic failure.

When the pragmatic force relied on a linguistic term is systematically different from that assigned to it by the natives, pragmalinguistic failure appears. It means the failures produced by the inappropriate transfer of speech act strategies. Different from pragmalinguistic failure, sociopragmatic failure occurs when speakers show socially incorrect behavior because of different understandings of customs, taboos, relative rights and obligations and so on, which is deeply associated with cultural backgrounds. In another word, pragmalinguistic failure is simply a question of highly conventionalized usage which can be taught straightly as “part of grammar”, so it is easier to teach but sociopragmatic failure is much more difficult to overcome because it includes students’ cultural backgrounds, such as value systems and beliefs.

2.3 Previous Studies

Since Thomas put forward the idea of “sociopragmatic failure”, many scholars have shown great interests in sociopragmatic failure. They have summarized some reasons for it, such as the different value systems and different politeness principles.

Affected by these scholars, more and more Chinese scholars have had an increasing interest in the study of pragmatic failure in recent years. In 1982, Hu Wenzhong, regarded as a pioneer to advocate the culture teaching in foreign language teaching. In his paper the Teaching of Culture in Foreign Language Teaching, he first explained the necessity of culture teaching in FLT by analyzing five cultural errors Chinese students tend to make in intercultural communication, and then concluded that language and culture are inseparable.(Gao Defang, 2003:11)

Huang Cidong (1984) has first discussed “pragmatic error”. He has analyzed ten pragmatic errors and held that the learning of a language is not just the mastering of linguistic knowledge, such as words or grammar. When learning a new language, one should apply it into use. He suggested that we need to take the contexts into consideration.

In 1986, He Ziran and Yan Zhuang, made a conclusion that the learners’ pragmatic failure may not develop with the time they learn English in college.

Another important and influential study on pragmatic competence was put forward by Hong Gang (1991). He not only studied some fields where Chinese English learners are inclined to fail in cross-cultural communication, but also elaborated the relationship between pragmatic competence and linguistic competence. He suggested that pragmatic and linguistic knowledge should be taught at the same time in order to improve learners’ pragmatic competence.

From above studies, we can find that some scholars focused on the study of pragmatic failure and its causes, some of them emphasized pragmatic competence, but few of them paid attention to sociopragmatic failure, not mention to its causes or strategies. This is the very field this thesis wants to present.

3. The Classifications of Sociopragmatic Failure in College Class

Sociopragmatic failure is ubiquitous that we can find its traces in many places, such as in translation and advertisement. These are fields where many scholars have focused on. But few of them have focused on the study of sociopragmatic failure in college class, not mention to present the classifications of it. This is what the following wants to show.

There are five kinds of sociopragmatic failure in college class, and greeting comes first.

3.1 Greeting

In a class, an American teacher and one of his Chinese students imitate a situation. They come up with each other accidentally.

A: Good afternoon, Tom.

C: Good afternoon, dear professor. Have you ever eaten your lunch?

A: Oh... Yes.

C: Where are you going? It seems you are in a hurry.

A: Oh... I have something to deal with.

C: If any necessary, please call me if I can give you a hand.

A: You are very nice, thank you.

It seems that their conversation goes very smoothly, however, there still exists some problems. When the student asks his American teacher whether he has eaten his lunch or not, his teacher will be very confused because he doesn’t know why he asks so, he may feel his student wants to eat with him together or treat him a lunch. What’s more, the American teacher feels he is disturbed when his student asks where he is going. Americans are very cautious about their privacy. They will feel very uncomfortable if someone intrudes their personal affairs. Besides, questions about age, marriage, salary, religion also can be seen as a disturbance of privacy. In general, when Americans meet, they prefer to talk about the weather to start a conversation.

If a Chinese student uses the addressing words wrongly also can give rise to confusion.

A Chinese student greets the American teacher like this:

C: Hi, Professor Brown.

A: Yes?

C: ...

In China, it’s common for us to greet our teachers like “Teacher Wang” “Professor Zhang”. However, if the student greets the foreign teacher in the same way, the professor won’t say “hi” as a reply. What behind his “Yes?” is “Do you have any problems?” When greeting foreign teachers, “hi” or “hello” will be fine.

3.2 Appellation

Not clearly understanding the subtle differences of some words, especially the appellation, confusion may also occur.

In a class, an American teacher wants one of his girl students to answer his question. “Ok, this beautiful woman, please have a try.” At that moment, the girl he points at may feel very embarrassed and awkward. “Woman”, we always transfer it as “女人” . In Chinese, “女人” means “妇女”, someone who has already been married. However, in English, woman just means an adult female human. The American teacher may view that girl student very charming and mature. Not knowing this, sociopragmatic failure arises.

Another example can indicate it as well. Mrs. Smith is an American and she is teaching in a college. She is knowledgeable and easygoing so her students all love her very much and she also gets along well with them. There has been a dialogue between them:

C: Hi, Mrs. Smith. Good morning.

A: Hi, son.

C: ...(confused )

In western culture, “son” is used to express one’s love for younger generation. However, in China, calling “son” may put others to shame. So, in the above example, Mrs. Smith only wants to show her love and intimacy, but in the student’s eye, it is irriated and unacceptable.

3.3 Introduction

Different ways of introduction can also lead to sociopragmatic failures.

A Chinese teacher is introducing a new American teacher to students. He says “This is teacher Smith. Let’s welcome him with warm applause.”

In our eyes, the introduction is right and normal, but the American will be puzzled. A fluently used form of introduction in China is professional and administrative titles like director, nurse, driver, teacher, manager, professor, etc, often after the surnames. Some people will feel unhappy when not introduced with their administrative titles or educational degrees. However, in America, it is opposite. When introducing a foreign teacher, we need to call him or her Mr. or Miss. plus his or her surnames.

3.4 Thanks

“Thanks” or “Thank you” in English-speaking countries are very common. It’s wrong for you to think it’s easy to reply to one’s thanks. It also results in misunderstanding.

A Chinese student (B) helps his foreign teacher (A) to clean the blackboard.

A: Thank you for your help.

B: It is my duty to do so. 这是我的职责。

It seems very correct and appropriate in China; however, his answer makes his teacher very uncomfortable because in his eyes, such a modest reply means he is not willing to clean the blackboard if it is not his duty. Actually, we can answer it with “It is my pleasure”(我很高兴为您效劳). It will be ok.

Some students are used to answer other’s thanks with “Never mind”, it may result in failure in certain context. For example:

A: Thanks a lot. That’s a great help.

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