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Undergraduate Thesis

An analysis of English pragmatic failure from the perspective of culture

Luo Qing

Supervisor： Prof. Gan Chengying Major：English Student Number：20065805

School of Foreign Languages and Cultures
Southwest University of Science and Technology
June, 2010
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本科生毕业论文

从文化角度分析英语语用失误

罗情

指导教师：甘成英 专业名称：英语语言文学 学 号：20065805

西南科技大学外国语学院
2010年6月
Acknowledgement

I want to express my heartfelt thanks to my supervisor professor Gan Chengying, who accompanied me through all the processes of choosing the topic, selecting useful materials and finally finishing my draft. Without her help, this research paper can not be achieved. Also I want to extend many thanks to my teacher Tu Chao who gave me a lot of precious tips on how to achieve standard language in paper as well as how to avoid mistakes in delivering information. Apart from my teachers I still own much gratitude to my fellow friends. You helped me rectify grammatical mistakes that appeared in my paper and gave me a lot of encouragement in finishing this paper.
Abstract

According to the current situation of English teaching, the cultivation of the students’ cultural understanding is not paid so much attention to as the basic English knowledge teaching. Due to this fact, many foreign language students nowadays have a good command of grammar, a large vocabulary, but they often fail to communicate well with native speakers with what they have learned. This research paper aims to analyze pragmatic failure from the perspective of culture. It is mainly divided into four parts. The first part is a general knowledge about pragmatics and pragmatic failure. The second part is to focus on the integrity between language and culture, and two types of pragmatic failures with practical examples. The third part is about the causes for pragmatic failure. While the last part is the research results, which is the purpose of my writing this research paper. It summaries effective methods respectively for the students and the teachers to avoid pragmatic failure, helping to achieve good and efficient communication.
Key words: English teaching, pragmatics, pragmatic failure, practical examples, methods.

摘要

据当代的英语教学形式来看，学生外语文化理解的培养没有受到基本英语知识教学同等重视。这造成了如今现象：很多学生掌握了语法，拥有大量的词汇，但是当他们在与本族语人交谈的时候，往往不能将他们所学的东西得以正确运用，以至于产生沟通障碍。 这篇论文旨在从文化的角度分析语用失误。主要分为四部分。第一部分总体介绍语用学与语用失误概念。第二部分着重强调语言与文化的融合关系，引出文化因素导致的两种语用失误，并参照了一些实际例子。第三部分分析造成语用失误的原因。第四部分则是研究结果，该部分为论文的核心部分。它总结出了为避免语用失误学生和教师各自应当采取的有效措施，保证良好和有效地交流。
关键词：英语教学，语用学，语用失误，实际例子，方法。

Table of Contents
I. Introduction 1
II. Pragmatics and Pragmatic Failure 3
III. Two Types of Pragmatic Failure Related to Cultural Factors 4 3.1Culture and Language 4 3.2Two Types of Pragmatic Failure Related to Cultural Factors 4 3.2.1Pragmalinguistic Failure 4 3.2.2Sociopragmatic Failure 6
IV. Causes for Pragmatic Failures 8 4.1The Imbalance Between the Command of Grammar and Pragmatics 8 4.2Lack of Pragmatic Theories in Class 9 4.3Cultural Transfer 10 4.4Poor Examination Systems 10 4.5Mechanical Teaching Methods 10
V. Ways to Avoid Pragmatic Failures 11 5.1Speech Teaching 11 5.2Cross-cultural Awareness 11 5.3Knowledge Inputting 11 5.4Situation Teaching 11 5.5Multimedia Teaching 11
VI. Conclusion 13
I. Introduction

Pragmatics as an important branch of linguistics is now taken more and more seriously in language teaching due to the poor communicative ability among most of the foreign language learners who have possessed the basic language knowledge to communicate. Now the situation tends to continue to become serious unless appropriate measures are taken both in and after classes aiming to develop students’ pragmatic competence. To solve this problem, many linguists both home and abroad have done researches on it and their efforts finally come to fruition. Jenny Thomas defined pragmatic competence as the ability to use language effectively in order to achieve a specific purpose and to understand language in context. In her “Cross-culture Pragmatic Failure” published in 1983, Thomas first coined the term “pragmatic failure” which is divided into pragmalinguistic failure and sociopragmatic failure. As far as pragmatics is concerned, linguists who have done great contributions are George Yule, and J. Lyons. Professor He Ziran(何自然) holds the opinion that in whatever way it is defined, pragmatic competence in essence is the ability to communicate appropriately. He also says in order to achieve appropriate communication and better understanding of language; language learners must get to know common patterns and orders in communication, so that they can employ language in a flexible and reasonable way considering social and cultural factors under certain occasions. So far many scholars have found effective ways to cultivate students’ pragmatic competence, such as Xiang Tuanzhou(项湍舟) from Wuhan who emphasizes the role of reading in acquiring pragmatic competence, and Zhang Juwen(张巨文) from Zhengzhou university with his view that the raising of cross-culture awareness helps a lot. In spite of the important hints that scholars have given to guide teachers and students for the purpose of achieving pragmatic competence, there are still a lot to do to go with the gradually changing circumstances and requirements. Concerning the drawbacks of current language teaching methods that neglect the importance of developing students’ pragmatic competence, and based on the previous achievements the scholars have made on pragmatic competence, this paper, as a complement to the fruits of great linguists and scholars, is to focus on finding out the reasons why students can not do effective communication. According to my research, most of the reasons are the unawareness of the culture of the target language. So this paper mainly focuses on analyzing cultural factors that result in pragmatic failure and give specific and feasible ways to improve the situation.

II. Pragmatics and Pragmatic Failure

Pragmatics is a subfield of linguistics developed in the late 1970s, it studies how people comprehend and produce a communicative act or speech act in a concrete speech situation which is usually a conversation. It distinguishes two intents or meanings in each utterance or communicative act of verbal communication. One is the informative intent or the sentence meaning, and the other the communicative intent or speaker meaning. [1] The ability to comprehend and produce a communicative act is referred to as pragmatic competence (Kasper, 1997) which often includes one’s knowledge about the social distance, social status between the speakers involved, the cultural knowledge such as politeness, and the linguistic knowledge explicit and implicit. Jenny Thomas defined pragmatic competence as the ability to use language effectively in order to achieve a specific purpose and to understand language in context. Contrary to pragmatic competence, Thomas introduced another phrase “pragmatic failure”. [2]

III. Two Types of Pragmatic Failure Related to Cultural Factors

3.1Culture and Language Language is learned to be used. A successful communication of a foreign language requires not only a good command of language points, but also a comprehensive understanding of the culture where the foreign language is formed. Most of the pragmatic failures are caused by lack of cross-cultural awareness. Language is a reflection of its culture. Culture of a specific language is formed through a long historical development. It is quite possible for people from different backgrounds to disobey communication rules leading to serious consequences misunderstandings, and fundamental conflicts of cultural values. So it is quite important to learn the culture of the target language. The next is about pragmatic failure caused by cultural reasons with specific examples.
3.2Two Types of Pragmatic Failure Related to Cultural Factors Pragmatic failure means when the speaker fails to communicate appropriately with the native speakers. Pragmatic failures are not caused by mistakes in the level of grammar and sentence structures, but the inappropriate use of language due to social, cultural and cognitive factors. Jenny Thomas mentioned that pragmatic failure has occurred on any occasion on which H perceives the force of S’s utterance as other than S intended s/he should perceive it. Two types of the failure are pragmalinguistic failure and sociopragmatic failure.
3.2.1Pragmalinguistic Failure Thomas defined pragmalinguistic failure as basically a linguistic problem, caused by differences in the linguistic encoding of pragmatic force. It occurs when the pragmatic force mapped by the speaker onto a given utterance is systematically different from the force most frequently assigned to it by native speaker of the target language, or when speech act strategies are inappropriately transferred from L1 to L2. To put it another way, pragmalinguistic failure occurs when speakers try to express themselves with language structures that do not exist in the target language. Though this kind of pragmatic failure doesn’t seem to be quite related to culture, it basically is originated from cultural differences.
Examples:
(1). occasion: a student helped a teacher carry a heavy box upstairs.
Dialogue:
Teacher: “thanks a lot. That’s a great help.”
Student: “never mind.”[3] Analysis: the phrase “never mind” is misused. Such phrases as “never mind”, “not at all”, “you are welcome”, and “don’t mention it” all represent the same meaning when a speaker replies to others’ gratitude. But they are used in different occasions. “Never mind” is used to console someone who feels guilty after doing something wrong and is asking for apologize. But in this dialogue, it is not proper for the student to reply “never mind” since the teacher hasn’t made any mistakes.
(2). occasion: a customer is looking around in a store
Dialogue:
The shop assistant: what do you want? Analysis: this is a typical example of mother tongue structure. This is ok when used in our own country, but it would be seen as impolite and strange in English cultures. However, they prefer “can I help you?” or “what can I do for you?”
(3). occasion: a diplomatic personnel addressed the wife of an American expert “dependant” when showing his gratitude, which displeased the lady. Analysis: the word “dependant” in western cultures means a person who depends on another for material support. The lady felt insulted because she was a feminist. However, the diplomatic personnel just interpreted “dependant” as “spouse” or “wife”, ignorant of the different contexts they are used respectively.
(4). occasion: at the end of the semester, teachers are waiting anxiously in lines to have their papers printed. A new teacher A is doing the printing while revising her papers. Now one of the teachers B is becoming impatient.
Dialogue:
B: “Are you here long?”
A: “No, I came here last August.”[3] Analysis: B was not interested in when A came to the school, but indirectly reminded A to hurry up and implied his criticism of A’s impoliteness. However, A didn’t understand what B really meant, but just got the literal meaning of the sentence and resulted in pragmatic failure.
(5). occasion: in an English class.
Dialogue:
Teacher: “Are you ready to give your presentation?”
Students: “Of course, I’m ready to give my presentation.”[3] Analysis: the students meant to show respect to the teacher and take the presentation seriously by replying with the full sentence, which, however, gave the teacher the impression that the students were complaining that they had waited so long and became impatient. So the students just needed to reply “Yes” There is another example that happened in my real life, which impressed me a lot. It was two years ago, one day I decided to invite my foreign friend out for a picnic. I wrote the invitation letter like this; dear Jim: I would like to invite you to go for a picnic with me next Saturday; we will meet at 8 am near the bus station outside the campus. The day I wrote the note was Thursday. But Jim called me that Saturday and said he had been waiting for me for almost an hour but still didn’t see me. At that moment I didn’t know how to explain to him. I said sorry to him and asked him to wait there for a few minutes. Then I ran to tell him that what I meant next Saturday in my culture was the second Saturday. However, he was surprised and told me that in his culture the next Saturday meant the very first Saturday from that day on.
3.2.2Sociopragmatic Failure Thomas thought sociopragmatic failure stems from cross- culturally different perceptions of what constitutes appropriate linguistic behavior. It is caused by mismatches which arise from intercultural different assessments within some paramaters affecting linguistic choice: size of imposition, social distance and relative rights and obligation etc.
Examples:
(1).occasion: class is over.
Dialogue:
Student said to the foreign teacher: “You must be tired. You’d better have a rest.” Analysis: it accords with Chinese rules to show care about someone by saying this. But the native speakers don’t appreciate it. They would think it implies they are in such poor health that they feel tired after class.
(2). Occasion: the chancellor extends warm welcome to a foreign teacher at a meeting by saying: “Ladies and gentleman, I’m delighted to introduce to you a very pretty girl, Miss Brown. She is a very good teacher from the US.” Analysis: the chancellor intended to praise the teacher because in the value of Chinese culture, to address people younger than they actually are is a way to compliment. But the foreign teacher would not think so. She thinks the word “girl” has a connotation of naivety and immaturity. She prefers to be called “woman”.

IV. Causes for Pragmatic Failures

4.1The Imbalance between the Command of Grammar and Pragmatics Many students are good at grammar, but they usually don’t know how to use grammar properly. Grammar does not just deal with different tenses and voices. Students must be able to read the implications that lie in it. Professor He Ziran once mentioned that it’s far from enough for the teachers to just to tell the students that different tenses and voices mean only different activities that happen in different times. The students should also be taught about the implications and premises that lie under a certain pattern of sentence structure. For example: at dinner, Mary wants to eat the biscuit in front of Xiao Hong. Here is the dialogue.
Mary: “May I have the biscuit.”
Xiao Hong: “Yes, help yourself.” Obviously Xiao Hong misunderstands Mary’s request as a question, without knowing that “May I have the biscuit.” implies “Please pass me the biscuit.” Grammar is of no use if it is not used properly. So the pragmatic rules are important in language teaching. Students are often required to use specific and definite language. But teachers should also tell them that on certain occasions this can lead to pragmatic failure. Let’s take a close look at this example. Xiao Ming felt sorry for his friend whose grandmother had just died. He said to his friend like this: “I was sorry to hear that your grandma tripped over the cat, cartwheeled down the stairs and brained herself on the electricity meter.” This is a very specific and detailed comment. But just imagine how his friend would feel after hearing this! However, a much shorter and briefer sentence like “I was sorry to hear about your grandma” is more proper. The very reason for this kind of mistake lies in the imbalanced teaching of language points and pragmatics. Most of the teachers today often neglect the importance of pragmatics in language teaching. They hold the wrong opinion that a good English learner is one that can get high score on paper, one that deals with grammar correctly. At the same time, the students follow the teachers’ expectations and studied intensively on language points. But the result is always like this. Students who are praised by teachers as best English learners can’t achieve effective communication with the native speakers, and what’s even worse is that they end up communications with misunderstandings and even offending others.
4.2Lack of Pragmatic Theories in Class Students should know the pragmatic rules and be able to use them. Only when they have commanded the basic rules in different cultures can they avoid defending people from another culture by breaking those rules. It is important to introduce to students the cooperative principles and politeness principles, because they will bring a lot of help to the students to cultivate the ability to find out the connotations behind words when those principles are broken purposely by speakers. Here I would like to introduce some typical examples to illustrate this point.
(1) A: Did Mary go to town yesterday? B: Yes, she spent a whole day shopping in town. She bought a yellow dress, and bought a green dress, and bought a white dress, and bought a red dress. [4] In this example, the speaker B violates the maxim of quantity by replying much more than he should, providing a lot of information that speaker A doesn’t actually need. This shows B is implying A that Mary likes shopping and would buy anything she wants.
(2) Student: Tehran is in Turkey, isn’t it, teacher? Teacher: And London is in America, I supposed. [5] The teacher made a comparison with the student’s question by uttering self-evident false information. The teacher violates the maxim of quality for the purpose of enlightening the student and giving the students much deeper impression. He doesn’t point out directly that the student is wrong, but in a much wiser way.
(3) A reporter A is interviewing a conservative B A: They tell me that you’ve risen the betting to be the next Chancellor of the Exchequer. B: We’ve got an excellent Chancellor of the Exchequer, very unfairly criticized. He’s been laying foundations for the prospect, the exciting prospect I’ve been talking about. [6] The reporter asked about whether it would be possible for the B to be the next Chancellor of the Exchequer. However, B replied something about the existing Chancellor of the Exchequer, indicating that B didn’t want to talk anything about the reporter’s question; he violated the maxim of relation.
(4) First man at bar: My wife does not appreciate me. Does yours? Second man at bar: I wouldn’t know. I have never heard her mention your name. This example is typical of violating the maxim of manner. “Does yours” the first man said is intriguing, it either means “Does your wife appreciate you?” or “Does your wife appreciate me?” the second man in this context, of course, interpreted the first man’s question as the second meaning. It is evident that the first man means the first interpretation. But sometimes in other situations, this can result a humorous effect.
4.3Cultural Transfer Cultural transfer refers to the phenomenon that learners apply mechanically the modes of expression and cultural values in their mother tongue to the target language. Mother tongue especially Chinese can have great disturbance on studying a foreign language. It is estimated that among Chinese students about 51percent of the mistakes made in learning a foreign language is due to the influence of their mother tongue. Students unconsciously apply their traditions, values, and ways of thinking to a new language environment, and cause misunderstandings, which hinders the improvement of pragmatic competence.
4.4Poor Examination Systems Take a brief look through the English exam papers: CET papers, papers for English majors, or whatever. They often lack the parts that test students’ speaking capability and the practical ability to use English on different occasions. This prevents students from developing their pragmatic competence.
4.5Mechanical Teaching Methods Most teachers adopt the boring traditional way of instilling a world of knowledge into the students and taking most of the time in class instead of encouraging the students to talk, to put practice what they have learnt.

V. Ways to Avoid Pragmatic Failures

5.1Speech Teaching Speech teaching means that the teachers should teach the students when and how to use English on what occasions. This method can be applied to any form of English teaching whenever or wherever is possible. By doing this the students can be guaranteed to use English properly, freely and naturally.
5.2Cross-cultural Awareness Cross-cultural communication refers to the verbal or non-verbal communication conducted among peoples of different cultures, which plays a very important role in the international and racial interaction and coordination. We all know that language is a reflection of the culture it belongs to. People from different cultures must have different values, and traditions. A behavior that shows courtesy in one culture may be seen as cruel or impolite in another culture. Many students today when talking to native speakers are often thought to mean to offend them by speaking with fast speed, clear and standard accent, but without knowing the rules in cross-cultural communications. In order to wipe out the obstacles caused by ignorance of cultural differences, it is quite urgent that cultures in different countries be taught and attached importance to in foreign language teaching. The ways are as follows;
5.3Knowledge Inputting During the class teachers should be responsible for the analysis and explanation of culture backgrounds that lie in the teaching materials, such as the rules in addressing, greeting, departure, apologize, and invitations. So that the students can keep in mind the culture differences much easier and become sensitive to cultures of English-speaking countries.
5.4Situation Teaching Since the students have accumulated a certain level of knowledge about cultures in different countries, they should learn to use them appropriately on certain occasions. But it is impossible for all the students to go abroad so as to expose themselves in English. So the teachers should take the lead in organizing different situations and role plays after class aiming to improve the students’ ability to cope with various problems that rise in cross-cultural communications.
5.5Multimedia Teaching Teachers should make the most of the resources online. Films of English are played in class to arouse students’ interest in cultures of English-speaking countries. It is the most direct and easiest way in cross-cultural teaching.

VI. Conclusion

The research on pragmatic failure is still on its way to a further level. The contributions that many linguists both home and abroad have made to promote the cultivation of pragmatic competence can not be ignored. Theories are theories; they can be proved to be useful only when they are carried out practically. I wish this paper can help in some way to solve problems. Truly there is still a lot to do for the teachers and the students. Only when they can cooperate with each other can great progress be made. Hopefully, there are signs that show teachers and students are beginning to realize the importance of culture in a foreign language.

Bibliography

[1]Leech, G. Principles of Pragmatics [M]. London: Longman, 1983.
[2]Thomas, J. Cross-cultural pragmatic failure. [M] Applied Linguistics, 1983, 4(2):91-112
[3]何自然 语用学与英语学习[M]. 上海：上海外语教育出版社，1997.
[4]陈建东 试论格赖斯的会话含义学说《东北师大学报》[J]95.2/82-83,87
[5]吴安萍 叶颖来 《英语语言的合作原则与会话含意》，《宁波职业技术学院学报》[R]，2003（2）
[6] 高树钦 范献辉 从违反合作原则看会话含义[J] 2007：91