摘 要

随着全球化进程的加快，科技和通讯手段的不断发展让来自世界各地的人可以更加轻松便捷地交流，跨文化交际已成为不可阻挡的时代潮流。然而，有着不同文化背景的人却经常遇到交流上的障碍，导致交际失败的发生。跨文化语用失误就是造成交际失败的重要原因之一。

语用失误是语用学和跨文化交际学研究的一个重要领域，由英国语言学家Thomas于1983年提出，主要包括语用语言失误和社会语用失误两方面。前者主要指语言表达方式的误用，后者则是指因不了解或忽视交谈双方的社会文化背景而造成的表达失误。本文简要回顾了国内外对跨文化交际及语用失误的研究成果，运用问卷和访谈调查法，来探讨大学生的跨文化交际能力和语用能力现状，研究大学生语用失误的表现及成因，并提出能解决这一问题的协商策略，以求能够减少跨文化交际中语用失误现象的发生，保证跨文化交际的顺利进行。

关键词：跨文化交际；语用失误；协商策略

Abstract

With the development of globalization, the continuous advancement of science and technology has made it easier for people from all over the world to communicate with each other. Intercultural communication has become an irresistible trend of the times. However, people with different cultural backgrounds often encounter obstacles in the communication and communicate unsuccessfully. One of the important reasons is exactly the pragmatic failure.

Pragmatic failure is an important area of pragmatics and intercultural communication research. It was proposed by British linguist Thomas in 1983,including pragmalinguistic failure and sociopragmatic failure. The former mainly refers to the misuse of the language expression, while the latter refers to the expression errors caused by not understanding or ignoring the social culture of both parties. This paper has briefly reviewed the domestic and international studies on intercultural communication and pragmatic failure. With the methods of questionnaire and interview, it explores the status of college students’ intercultural competence (hereafter this text will be abbreviated as ICC) and pragmatic competence, discusses the performances and causes of pragmatic failure, and finally proposes the solution to this problem—— Negotiation Strategy. The purpose is to reduce the occurrence of pragmatic failure in intercultural communication and ensure its smooth progress.

Key Words: intercultural communication; pragmatic failure; negotiation strategy

Contents

1 Introduction 1

1.1 Research Background 1

1.2 Research Purpose and Significance 2

2 Literature Review 3

2.1 Intercultural Communication 3

2.2 Pragmatic Failure 4

2.3 Negotiation Strategy 5

3 Research Methodology 7

3.1 Subject 7

3.2Method 7

3.2.1 Questionnaire 7

3.2.2 Interview 8

3.3 Data Analysis 8

4 Result and Discussion 9

4.1Result 9

4.1.1Result of the ICC Assessment Scale 9

4.1.2Result of the Test of Pragmatic Competence 13

4.2 Discussion 13

4.2.1 The Causes for Pragmatic Failure 13

4.2.2 The Negotiation Strategy for ICC 15

5 Conclusion 18

References 19

Appendix 1 21

Appendix 2 26

Acknowledgements 27

Study on Pragmatic Failure and Negotiation Strategy in Intercultural Communication

1 Introduction

• 1. Research Background

In the 21st century when economic globalization is increasingly developing, communication and cooperation between different countries in politics, commerce, education, and culture have become much closer. More and more people have chosen to work for the multinational companies or go abroad to work and travel. Therefore, as cross-culture communication becomes an irresistible trend of history, it is especially necessary to enhance the knowledge about culture and improve the intercultural communication skills. Even though the interculture communication has been paid much attention, we should also notice that different values,behaviour patterns, ways of thinking and cultural concepts often cause communication barriers. People with different cultural or social backgrounds often encounter conflicts, misunderstanding or contradictions when they communicate with each other, even though they feel it easy to understand the literal meaning of others’ expressions. This phenomenon often happens, not owing to the non-native speakers’ grammatical incompetence such as the poor pronunciation or grammatical errors when they communicate with others, but because of their pragmatic inability which can be called pragmatic failure.

In1983,British linguist Thomas firstly put forward the term “pragmatic failure” in her research paper Cross-cultural Pragmatic Failure. Pragmatic failure can be divided into pragmalinguistic failure and sociopragmatic failure. The former mainly refers to the misuse of the language expression, while the latter refers to the expression errors caused by not understanding or ignoring the cultural or social backgrounds of both parties. The theories of Thomas laid a solid foundation for a series of subsequent analysis and research later.

• 1. Research Purpose and Significance

Though the scholars from both home and abroad gave different point of views on the pragmatic failure and their researches were still feasible even today to some extent, we need to discuss it further since there are still many shortcomings. This article will briefly introduce the phenomenon of pragmatic failure in intercultural communication, review the studies of pragmatic failures both home and abroad, elaborate the pragmatic failure from the perspective of college students’ performances and explore its causes. By means of questionnaire, interview and careful analysis of the results, it will reveal what is the general situation of college students’ ICC and pragmatic competence at present? And what are the causes for students’ pragmatic failures? What is the negotiation strategy and its effect? How to use this method? Finally it recommends the useful method to deal with this problem—Negotiation Strategy. This paper will help English language learners improve their intercultural communication knowledge and skills, reduce the occurrence of pragmatic failures and ensure the smooth progress of intercultural communication.

2 Literature Review