Pragmatic Failure Research Articles

The Causes of Pragmatic Failure from the Perspective of Bilingualism and its Implications for Foreign Language Teaching

The Causes of Pragmatic Failure from the Perspective of Bilingualism and its Implications for Foreign Language Teaching

The Causes of Pragmatic Failure from the Perspective of Bilingualism and its Implications for Foreign Language Teaching

The Causes of Pragmatic Failure from the Perspective of Bilingualism and its Implications for Foreign Language Teaching

Cultural Diversity in Native and Non-Native Speakers of English Communication

With the advancement of technology ,the study of cross-cultural communication via on line has become an important and researchable topic in linguistic theory and its applications.The aims of this study are two- fold (a) exploring the influence of cultural diversity on on-line interaction between American native speakers (NSs) and Iraqi non-native speakers (NNSs) of English which, together with other factors might potentially lead to what Thomas(1983) calls "pragmatic failure" (PF), a main cause of communication breakdowns and (b) specifying which type of PF occurs more frequently between the two groups along with the reasons behind such failures. To achieve these objectives , a number of online chats conducted between (10) American speakers of English and (8) Iraqi graduate students of English were collected and analyzed on the basis of Thomas' (1983) division of PF in an attempt to verify the assumption that pragmatic failure is a result of cultural diversity between the two groups of participants.Results revealed that the cultural differences between the two groups could be a major cause of misunderstanding ie. PF., a finding which can be of value to textbook designers and teachers of English as a foreign language (FL)who are required to improve students' pragmatic ability in classroom by focusing not only on their grammatical competence but also on their pragmatic competence.

A tentative analysis of pragmatic failure from the perspective of Relevance Theory

Relevance Theory (RT) assumes that human beings rely on one single interpretive principle, i.e. the principle of relevance, which they invariably use in their attempt to select the interlocutors’ intended interpretation. This principle states that the hearer’s interpretation is a process of relevance searching consistent with the speaker’s presumption of optimal relevance, which provides an optimal balance of cognitive effects and mental effort. As it will be shown in this paper, this claim is valid for any type of ostensive communication. Compared with other pragmatics theories, RT possesses its own advantages in explaining pragmatic failure, giving consideration to both the speaker and the hearer in verbal communication. This paper applies Relevance Theory (RT) to a qualitative analysis and explores the causes of and measures to avoid or remedy pragmatic failure by using RT. It also tries to prove the interpreting force of RT. Based on the principle, we propose the definition of pragmatic failure and divide it roughly into communicators’ misunderstanding of the deixis, propositional meaning and pragmatic force of the utterance. We also find out the root cause of pragmatic failure which is the inconsistency of cognitive environments of the communicators during their relevance-seeking interpretation. Furthermore, we suggest some measures to reduce or avoid pragmatic failure for the readers.

What I Want to Say for the Book A Study on Chinese EFL Learners’ Pragmatic Failure in Verbal Communication

世界科学出版社（World Science Publishing-WSP）立足国际，积极配合中国“走出去”出版战略，大力推进版权输出与引进，并不断拓展国际间的交流与合作，取得显著成绩。WSP国际图书出版项目力倡中国科研人员出版英文图书，出版社具有丰富的国际传播资源与雄厚的编辑、翻译、出版力量，拥有一批著名的中外翻译专家、出版专家，及一支精通国际出版的编辑、翻译和国际营销队伍。探索“科学进步”与“社会进步”是人类永恒主题，WSP推崇以科学信仰引领学术方向，遵循各国法律和地方法规，能够协助您优质、快捷、低

The Pragmatic Functions of Shields “I Think, I Believe” in TV Chat Shows

This article reports on an investigation into the pragmatic functions of shields “I think, I believe” in TV chat shows based on the Linguistic Regulation Theory (LRT). LRT studies how people use language to regulate their social behavior and maintain or improve harmony of different communications. We choose three famous TV chat shows in China as corpus, analyzing how involvers adopt shields in three dimensions: physical, psychological and social to achieve communication goals. The pragmatic failures of shields “I think, I believe” are also explored here.

Pragmatic Failure in the Subtitles of Moonlight Movie

<p><strong></strong><em>This paper aims to find out the types of pragmatic failures that can lead to incorrect understanding of meaning by the audience. Pragmatic failure in translation consists of two failures, namely: pragmalinguistic failure and sociopragmatic failure. Pragmalinguistic failures in translation are analyzed using speech act theory proposed by Searle and deixis theory proposed by Levinson. Sociopragmatic failures in translation are analyzed using the principle of cooperation theory proposed by Grice and the principle of politeness theory proposed by Brown and Levinson. The research method used is descriptive qualitative. One hundred seventy-six pragmatic failures are found in the subtitles of Moonlight movie, which is divided into one hundred thirty-six pragmalinguistic failures and forty sociopragmatic failures. Pragmalinguistic failures that occur are the failures to transfer speech acts and deixis of oral speech into subtitles. Sociopragmatic failures that occur are the failures to transfer principle of cooperation of oral speech into subtitles.</em></p>

A METAPRAGMATIC ANALYSIS: A STUDY OF PRAGMATIC FAILURE FOUND IN INDONESIAN EFL STUDENTS

This research aimed to investigate the possibilities of pragmatic failure done by Indonesian EFL students through their translation. This study employed theories by Thomas (1983) and Muir et al (2011) to answer the research question coming along with the problem concerned. As mentioned by Natrio (2018) that Indonesian EFL students lack pragmatic competence because they don’t recognize the intention of one language transferring is inappropriate. This research used a descriptive qualitative method in collecting the data. The data were coming from students‟ performance in translating short dialogue texts which contained idioms in them. The instrument given was two-way translation, English-Indonesian, and vice versa. As the result, this study found that the respondents experienced pragmatic failure in their performance which happened in several types, namely pragma-linguistic failure and socio-pragmatic failure, both of which were found in all types of texts given. It was also found that the failure that happened in English-Indonesian text was higher in number compared to the other type of text in which in all the data found, the failure in English –Indonesian text translation is 161 while in Indonesian-English text translation is 139. On the other hand, this study also revealed that the factors of the students‟ pragmatic failure that happened in their translation performance were coming from both the pragmatic transfer which influenced by either their native, source language or their understanding and lack of linguistic proficiency.

Pragmatic Failure in Cross-Cultural Communication

There is a phenomenon: a non-native speaker may confront miscommunication even with a good master of the target language, which is known as “pragmatic failure”. Unlike linguistic errors, native speakers often fail to recognize it as such and attribute it to boorishness, which may do more harm to communication. Though pragmatic failure is a primary cause of cross-cultural communication breakdown, it receives little attention, especially in traditional foreign language teaching. This thesis intends to examine Chinese English majors’ pragmatic failure in verbal communication, probes into the causes of pragmatic failures and puts forward strategies in avoiding pragmatic failure.

Connexivity and the Pragmatics of Conditionals

In this paper, I investigate whether the intuitions that make connexive logics seem plausible might lie in pragmatic phenomena, rather than the semantics of conditional statements. I conclude that pragmatics indeed underwrites these intuitions, at least for indicative statements. Whether this has any effect on logic choice (and what that effect might be), however, heavily depends on one’s semantic theory of conditionals and on how one chooses to logically treat pragmatic failures.

Analysis and Translation Strategies of Public Signs from the Perspective of Pragmatics

With the improvement of China’s internationalization level, public signs in Chinese and English can be used universally. But in such cross-cultural communication, cultural differences in different countries inevitably lead to misunderstanding and even cultural conflict. Pragmatic failure is a common problem in cross cultural communication of public signs, because different languages carry different pragmatic rules and pragmatic constraints. This paper, under the framework of pragmatics, uses pragmatic failure theory to analyze pragmatic failure in the translation of public signs and put forward corresponding translation strategies in order to promote the harmony of the expression of mother tongue and target language in intercultural communication, to avoid communication conflicts and to improve the comfort of the language environment of public signs.

THE IMPLEMENTATION OF S.U.R.E. APPROACH AS A MEANS OF ENHANCING STUDENT PRAGMATIC COMPETENCE

Due to the deficient pragmatic competence, pragmatic failures or even miscommunication will be produced in actual communication. Regarding those problems, S.U.R.E approach is offered to overcome in promoting learners’ pragmatic competence. This study aimed to investigate the impact of implementing S.U.R.E approach in improving students’ pragmatic competence. This study is a quantitative research embracing one group pretest-posttest design. One class participated and 33 students were taken as the sample of the study using random sampling technique. Three English native speakers evaluated the test takers’ pragmatic competence. They were called on to read the speech acts, along with the transcripts, and to indicate the rating based on the rating descriptions provided. The mean score among the three raters was assigned as the closing score. To collect the data, the students were given a pretest and a posttest. The data were then analyzed employing paired sample t-test through SPSS V.24. The result of the study showed that significance value was 0.00 of which it is lower than level of significance 0.05. Hence, the null hypothesis is rejected. This implies that the use of S.U.R.E approach has a significant effect on improving students’ pragmatic competence.

A Study on Korean Native Speakers’ Acceptability to Pragmatic Failure of American Korean Learners’ Non-verbal Behaviors

A Study on Korean Native Speakers’ Acceptability to Pragmatic Failure of American Korean Learners’ Non-verbal Behaviors

Cross-Cultural Pragmatic Failure in Jordanian Media Discourse

Cultural differences are brought to attention basically in cross-cultural communication where members of each culture start to compare and contrast their culture to the cultures of their addressees. While some cultures like Arabic can be described as high context cultures for basically depending on non-verbal communication, other cultures might be low context cultures for relying basically on words. In cross-cultural communication, i.e. communication between speakers from different cultural backgrounds, speakers are not expected to find it difficult to understand their addressees as long as they have the required semantic and pragmatic competence. The present study examines the occurrence of cross-cultural pragmatic failure in a Jordanian social drama focusing on how pragmatic failure might contribute to communication breakdown. It is an attempt to identify aspects and sources of pragmatic failure in both Arabic and English, and to investigate how cultural factors might influence language use of native and non-native speakers. Keywords: Pragmatic failure; cross-cultural communication; politeness; sociolinguistics.

Learning through WhatsApp: students’ beliefs, L2 pragmatic development and interpersonal relationships

By using small focus group discussions, the present study aims to gain insight into students’ perceptions about the impact of WhatsApp use in their learning process. More specifically, this study presents a cross-cultural analysis of British and Spanish university students’ personal beliefs about the effectiveness of using WhatsApp to complete group tasks outside the classroom. In so doing, this research represents a step forward in technology-enhanced instruction insofar as it not only incorporates the voices of learners themselves, but also contrasts students’ beliefs with their group interactions on WhatsApp. The exploration of these WhatsApp interactions makes it possible to argue that the use of WhatsApp does not seem to create a natural context for non-native language users to produce contextualise relevant utterances while interacting with native English speakers. Furthermore, the results show that the lack of pragmatic competence on the part of the participants prevents them from communicating effectively. These pragmatic failures, in turn, have a negative impact on their interpersonal relationships and make them develop negative opinions towards the use of WhatsApp as a learning tool.

Research in the pragmatic failure in the refusal acts by the Chinese learners of Korean language

Research in the pragmatic failure in the refusal acts by the Chinese learners of Korean language

LANGUAGES AND CULTURES IN INTERACTION: COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWN AND PRAGMATIC FAILURE

In this article, research approaches (contrastive or cross-cultural, interactive or intercultural, and interlanguage) to communication between interactants with different cultural backgrounds are presented. Hypothesis of ‘why miscommunication and communication breakdown?’ is given. Pragmatic failure with mismatch and asymmetry is categorised, grouped and analysed.

PRAGMATICS IN EFL CLASSROOM: AVOIDING PRAGMATIC FAILURE IN CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION

In teaching language along with its culture, teacher should take pragmatic aspects into consideration, since understanding pragmatics will help foreign language learners to avoid false interpretation which will cause misunderstanding in communication between speakers with different culture and social backgrounds. It is called as pragmatic failure which usually takes place in cross-cultural communication. Since pragmatics plays quite important role in communication, it is important for foreign language learners to have sensitivity of cross cultural pragmatics, which is commonly known as cross cultural or intercultural pragmatic awareness. However, teaching language along with culture seems to be problematic, since it is relatively difficult to choose which aspect(s) of culture to teach, what content to include, and to represent cultures implicitly under study which presents differences from the norm of students’ local culture. Therefore, this paper tries to explore the essential issues of spoken discourse, pragmatics, cross cultural pragmatics, pragmatic failure, pragmatic awareness, and its implication to pedagogy.

Pragmatic Failure in Cross-cultural Communication of Chinese Students: An Investigation in a Guangxi Normal University

Pragmatic Failure in Cross-cultural Communication of Chinese Students: An Investigation in a Guangxi Normal University

Research on Request Speech Acts in Business English E-mail Textbooks

The purpose of this study is to reveal the status of politeness features used in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) textbooks. The researchers examined 56 business e-mail requests in seven textbooks focusing on the level of directness, internal modifications, external modifications, and request perspectives. The findings of this study are as below: (1) Three textbooks showed extremely high level of directness. (2) In all textbooks, the requests were insufficiently modified with lexical/phrasal downgraders. Moreover, three textbooks showed relatively high percentages of upgraders. (3) Two supportive moves preferred by Americans were not found, whereas two textbooks showed relatively high percentages of aggravating moves. (4) The Impersonal perspective, the most polite perspective, was shown least frequently. (5) One textbook, written by an author who had not experienced studying abroad, showed significant shortcomings in all four politeness features. In conclusion, this suggests that when textbooks are developed including those elements for their requests, it might be necessary that explanation for negative effects of them should be included to prevent their learners from any pragmatic failures.