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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.