Cross-Cultural Pragmatic Failure

Abstract

/ have given the term pragmatic failure' to the inability to understand 'what is meant by what is said'. In this paper I argue that pragmatic failure is an area of cross-cultural communication breakdown which has received very little attention from language teachers. I suggest that there is one area of pragmatic failure ('pragmalinguistic failure') which is fairly easy to overcome. It is simply a question of highly conventionalized usage which can be taught quite straightforwardly as 'part of the grammar'. The second area ('sociopragmatic failure') is much more difficult to deal with, since it involves the student's system of beliefs as much as his/her knowledge of the language. I argue that it is essential to avoid prescriptivism in this very sensitive area of language in use. To do so we must draw on insights from theoretical pragmatics and develop ways of heightening and refining students' metapragmatic awareness, so that they are able to express themselves as they choose.