跨文化商务交际中的语用失误

A Study of Pragmatic Failure in Cross-cultural BusinessCommunication1. Introduction1.1 Back g roundWhen business people from distinct language and culture background communicate with each other, cross-cultural business communication comes into being. Language is the carrier of the culture, and is in turn influenced by language. Both of them affect each other. With the development of society and the growth of civilization, there are frequent contacts in the international business fields. Especially China has joined in the WTO by the year of 2001, and more and more multi-national corporations have been flooding into china. The foreign value of trade is steadily on the increase with time going by. Mutual respect and pleasant cooperation are the two partie s’ wishes in the process of the international business communication. But the hindrance to business communication largely originates from deep-seated culture problems, namely thinking pattern, negative transfer of mother tongue etc.1.2 Research Rationale and ObjectivePragmatic Failure in Cross-cultural Business Communication, as a pragmatic failure phenomenon, has drawn much attention from scholars and experts at home and abroad. Definitely, they have made a large number of fruitful research findings. Previously, PFCBC has mainly been studied within the theoretic framework of Cooperative Principle Theory, Context Theory, politeness principle, to name just a few. This study will make a detailed analysis of CBC based on the theory—Thomas’s Cross-cultural Pragmatic Failure Theory, which can explain the phenomenon of pragmatic failure comprehensively.Hence, this study is built upon Thomas’s Cross-cultural Pragmatic Failure Theory. This theory aims at exploring the causes of CBC. And this study will collect the data from journals and books, websites etc, helping people gain a better understanding of CBC. Through this study, people would pay more attention to CBC and can have more awareness about PFCBC. Simultaneously, they should adopt somemeasures to decrease and avoid the unnecessary misunderstanding between them. If so, people are able to perform their normal commercial activities more smoothly.1.3 Organization of the dissertationThe thesis consists of five chapters.Chapter One presents a brief introduction to the research background, including the rationale, objective and organization of the analysis.Chapter Two reviews the related literature on CBC both at home and abroadChapter Three introduces the theoretical framework of the study—Jenny Thomas’ Cross-cultural Pragmatic Failure.Chapter Four is the core part of this thesis. In this chapter, the writer will find out how PFCBC is reflected in cross-cultural business communication.Chapter Five is the concluding part of the research. It summarizes the thesis and provides some suggestions for the future.2. Literature ReviewWith the development of globalization, the international communication is becoming more and more frequent especially in the commercial communication. So many people attach great importance to the pragmatic failure of cross-cultural business communication. A large number of scholars and experts at home and abroad have kept doing some research on it from different angles.2.1 Foreign ResearchForeign scholars and experts have mainly carried out their studies on CMC from the pragmatic failure perspective. The representatives are Jenny Thomas’s cross-cultural pragmatic failure respectively; Kasper’s pragmatic negative transfer; Leech’s politeness principle.Jenny Thomas comes up with the idea of cross-cultural pragmatic failure in her essay in Applied Linguistics in the year of 1983 at the first time. She defines that the hearer does not have the capacity to have a good understanding of the real meaning. Thomas divides the pragmatic failure into two types, namely pragmatic failure, socio-pragmatic failure. Pragmatic failure owes to fail to master the context ofutterances, and does not comply with the language habits of destination language, make use of expressing structure of mother tongue indiscriminately or some other expressions. Pragmatic failure is a phenomenon where communicators do not get acquainted with the distinctions of social and cultural background among themselves. The former lies on the level of language, and the latter is social. The concrete criteria to distinguish them are unique.Kasper (1993) puts forward that pragmatic failure is caused by pragmatic negative transfer. To be specific, the speaker puts to use the target language, and they are not familiar with the expression way of destination language, and they are possibly affected by their mother tongue making use of the native language forms definitely.In order to explain that people utilize the indirect language during the communication and make up the weakness of Grice´s Cooperative Principle, Leech observes the polite phenomenon and analyses other expert’s study. Leech (1983) put forward politeness principle in the book of Principles of Pragmatics called human modification. The most fundamental of the six politeness principles is strategy principle, or even the supreme principle. He holds the view that politeness principle is the main factor to show the great respect for the hearer at the extreme.2.2 Domestic ResearchDomestic scholars and experts have been making some research of CBC mostly from the perspective of thinking pattern , pragmatic negative transfer of mother tongue, taboo words and associative meaning，politeness principle .To begin with, at home Huang Cidong (1984) puts forward the concept of pragmatic failure in the passage of pragmatics and pragmatic failure in the year of 1984 at the first time. He sets forth ten diversified types of pragmatic failure in detail In addition; he states briefly people should master some necessary language knowledge such as phonetics, grammar, and glossary. More importantly, they are supposed to have a good command of distinct language forms which was applied in different languages and background.Furthermore, from the perspective of thinking pattern, Peng Honglan (2005) publishes her essay in Hunan TV University Journal. People are more likely to connect the thinking pattern of mother tongue culture and language expressions with the target language naturally due to pragmatic transfer under the cross-cultural communication. Simultaneously the transformation is correct by chance. However, sometimes we probably make jokes in business occasion, more seriously it could bring about a number of business pragmatic failure.Apart from that, Qin Xiaohong（2010）refers to the concept of pragmatic negative transfer of mother tongue in Gansu University Unite Journal. While the previous experiences come across a distinct language, people are easily influenced by original mother tongue. This will result in the situation of negative transfer of mother tongue probably.Fourthly, Mu Yanfang（2010）points out the associative meaning differences in her book. Different culture has distinct taboo words. Different culture background may produce distinct association towards the same objects or words. Some words hold glorious symbols or qualities, but in a different culture there are totally distinct meaning.The last but not the least, Gu Yueguo (1992) brings forth the concept of five politeness principles depending on china culture features. In routine communication, what people hold most important is self-belittling and others-esteeming. What is more, the typical characters of politeness in Chinese culture is decent salutation, therefore salutation principle also reflects Chinese polite habits.3. Theoretical Framework3.1 Definition of Cross-cultural Pragmatic Failure3.2 Classification of Cross-cultural Pragmatic Failure3.2.1 Pragma-linguistic Failure3.2.2 Socio-pragmatic Failure3.2.3 Pragma-behavioral Failure4. Pragmatic Failures in Cross-cultural Business Communication4.1 Examples in CBC categorized as Pragma-linguistic Failure4.2 Examples in CBC categorized as Socio-pragmatic Failure4.3 Examples in CBC categorized as Pragma-behavioral Failure4.4 Possible Causes of PFCBC and Strategies for Its Avoidance4.4.1 Possible Causes4.4.2 Strategies for Its Avoidance5. Conclusion5.1 The Summary of the Thesis5.2 Some Suggestions for the Future Study。