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With the developing of economy and society, English is becoming increasingly popular and widespread. In China, English is not only a foreign language for students to study but a compulsory course in primary and middle schools. However, the traditional English teaching methods mainly focus on English knowledge and skills instead of its application. Students may not know how to express themselves appropriately even if they can comprehend the surface meaning of others’ speeches with ease in a real communicative environment. Sometimes they make mistakes not because of their syntactical errors or inaccurate pronunciation, but because of their insufficient pragmatic knowledge. A study on cross-cultural pragmatic failure is of significant value for Chinese students. After learning some pertinent knowledge about pragmatic failures, Chinese students might improve their communicative competence, and thus build up a substantial foundation for their application in English.
In this thesis, the following items are explored: the typical types of cross-cultural pragmatic failure in Chinese students’ English learning, the causes of students’ cross-cultural pragmatic failure and the strategies to reduce their cross-cultural pragmatic failure.
Since the 1980s, many scholars have applied themselves to the study on the reasons causing cross-cultural pragmatic failure and the methods to develop the learners’ communicative competence in second-language learning.
Internationally, a British linguist named J. Thomas (1983) carried out a study on pragmatic failures firstly. In her paper Cross-cultural Pragmatic Failure, she put forward the conception of pragmatic failure and pided it into two parts: pragmalinguistic failure and sociopragmatic failure. Later, the research of Blumkulka and Olshtain (1986) indicated that pragmatic failures would come into being when the non-native speakers made mistakes in the process of applying each principal of Grice's conversational implicatures due to their cultural differences. Then, Byram (1997) proposed some methods to develop learners’ cross-cultural communicative competence, which he thought an important part in foreign language teaching.
At home, the Chinese scholar He Ziran (1986) made a research on the phenomena of Chinese English learners’ pragmatic failures in cross-cultural communication. He found that language transfer was the main reason causing the English learners’ cross-cultural pragmatic failure in English communication. Then, Wang Dexing (1990) explicated the reasons for cross-cultural pragmatic failure and proposed some methods to reduce them. Jia Yuxin (1997) pointed out that it was cultural differences that led to the English learners’ cross-cultural pragmatic failure. Tang Hongfang (2007) analyzed the phenomena of foreign language learners’ pragmalinguistic failure and sociopragmatic failure and also proposed the strategies to reduce their pragmatic failures in English communication. Dai Weidong and He Zhaoxiong (2002) noted that cultural migration was the major cause of pragmatic failure. According to their opinion, cultural migration contained the migration in surface structure and the migration in deep structure. And pragmalinguistic failure belonged to the former one while sociopragmatic failure belonged to the latter one. Based on English classroom teaching practice, Chen Yue and Gu Yurong (2014) also proposed the ways to cultivate Chinese students’ pragmatic competence.
In conclusion, a large number of studies have indicated that it is pragmatic failure that caused breakdowns in cross-cultural communication. And researches on the main causes of pragmatic failures and some effective strategies to improve learners’ pragmatic competence remain to be further explored and refined.