英语论文-A Study on Pragmatic Failure in Cross-munication.doc

. Thesis


A Study on Pragmatic Failure in Cross-munication




. Candidate: Zhang Lili
Advisor: Zheng Sanliang


Foreign Language Department
Jiaying University
May 20, 2008
Acknowledgements
After a long painstaking period of work, I now have finally finished my thesis. I would like to take this opportunity to express my wholehearted gratitude to Ms Zheng Sanliang. It is she who has given me the most precious suggestions. She was willing to take the pain of reading drafts after drafts and to take time off her busy schedule to help me revise them. I would also like to give my thanks to all my friends who have been standing by me during my hard times, especially April, who has given me many suggestions and help on my studies as well as on my life.
Abstract
With the rapid development of globalization and frequent contacts among different countries, cross-munication is getting more and more important and es one of the most prominent and significant activities today. Communication breakdowns still happen all the time when we try municate with people from different cultural backgrounds.
Pragmatic failure is one of the several factors which influence cross-munication. Pragmatic failure is a term given by British linguist Jenny Thomas to “the inability to understand what is meant by what is sad”. Thomas (1983) divided pragmatic failures into two types, pragmalinguistic failure and sociopragmatic failure. Pragmalinguistic failure refers to the inability in interpreting the linguistic meaning caused by mistaken beliefs about pragmatic force of utterance, and it is generally categorized into the following three kinds of failures: failures in literal meaning, failures in structure and failures in style, which mainly revealed as confusing the literal meaning with pragmatic meaning, plete structure and violating the language rule of speaking. While sociopragmatic failure refers to the expressive inappropriateness resulted from the misunderstand