【英语论文】跨文化透视：汉英礼貌用语语用失误.doc

pragmatic failure in politeness language: intercultural communicative perspective跨文化透视：汉英礼貌用语语用失误student: supervisor:(college of foreign languages, ctgu) 学位论文原创性声明 本人郑重声明：所呈交的论文是本人在导师的指导下独立进行研究所取得的研究成果。除了文中特别加以标注引用的内容外，本论文不包含任何其他个人或集体已经发表或撰写的成果作品。本人完全意识到本声明的法律后果由本人承担。作者签名： 年 月 日 学位论文版权使用授权书本学位论文作者完全了解学校有关保障、使用学位论文的规定，同意学校保留并向有关学位论文管理部门或机构送交论文的复印件和电子版，允许论文被查阅和借阅。本人授权省级优秀学士学位论文评选机构将本学位论文的全部或部分内容编入有关数据库进行检索，可以采用影印、缩印或扫描等复制手段保存和汇编本学位论文。本学位论文属于1、保密 ，在_年解密后适用本授权书。2、不保密 。（请在以上相应方框内打“”）作者签名： 年 月 日 导师签名： 年 月 日 contentsabstract（2）摘要（2）key words （2）关键词（2）introduction （2）1 some fundamental knowledge about english euphemism （4）1.1 definition of english euphemism（4）1.2 origin of english euphemism（5）1.3 formation of english euphemism（5）1.3.1 borrowing （6）1.3.2 widening（6）1.3.3 semantic shift（6）1.3.4 metaphor（6）2 three basic principles of using english euphemism （6）2.1 cooperative principle and english euphemism（6）2.1.1 the cooperative principle（6）2.1.2 violating the cooperative principle（7）2.2 politeness principle and english euphemism（8）2.3 face principle and english euphemism （10）3 communicative function of english euphemism（10）3.1 to evade （11）3.1.1 in terms of disease and disabilities （11）3.1.2 in terms of death（11）3.1.3 in terms of sex （11）3.1.4 in terms of body excretion and body elimination process（11）3.2 to upgrade （12）3.2.1 in terms of appearance（12）3.2.2 in terms of unemployment and poverty（12）3.2.3 in terms of occupation （12）3.3 to disguise （12）3.3.1 in terms of commerce （12）3.3.2 in terms of politics （13）4 implications （13）4.1 implication on cross-cultural communication（13）4.2 implication on foreign language teaching (flt) and learning（14）conclusion（15）acknowledgements （15）bibliography （15）abstract: nowadays, with the information and globalization, the earth becomes smaller and smaller. and intercultural communication among countries is more frequent than even. when people from different cultures communicate with each other, they habitually judge the behaviors of their counterparts according to their own social norms and politeness principles. what is polite in one culture may not be polite in another, thus pragmatic failures arise inevitably.on the basis of various theories on politeness advocated by scholars at home and abroad, this paper intends to investigate the issues of pragmatic failure in intercultural communication made by english learners in china, according to the framework of “dichotomy” of pragmatic failure by thomas. the paper also presents some useful suggestions on how to improve english learner pragmatic competence after a contrastive analysis of chinese and english polite expressions.摘要: 如今，随着信息化与全球化， 地球变得越来越小，各国间的跨文化交际也越来越频繁，越来越密切。当来自不同文化的人在进行交流时，人们会习惯地根据自己所遵循的礼貌原则来判断交际者的语言是否礼貌。在一种文化中被认为是礼貌的可能在另一文化中便是不礼貌的，语用失误便由此产生。本文在回顾中外学者所提出的有关礼貌理论的基础上，按照thomas 提出的语用失误“二分法”的框架结构，调查中国英语学习者在跨文化交际中易出现的语用失误问题。本文通过对汉英礼貌用语进行对比分析，进一步提出一些有利于英语学习者提高语用能力的建议。key words: politeness principle; pragmalinguistic failure; sociolinguistic failure; pragmatic transfer关键词: 礼貌原则; 语用语言失误; 社交语用失误; 语用迁移introduction with the development of science and technology, communication among people from different countries and different cultures is more frequent and important. our world is multicultural. when we communicate with people from another culture, we are not only affected by the difference of language, but also disturbed by the difference of culture. to ensure a successful understanding and communication, we should pay attention to politeness, one of the most universal phenomena in intercultural communication. politeness is a very important part of every national culture. when we communicate with others, we should be polite. polite and proper form of language helps to establish and maintain harmonious social relationships. it may lead to pragmatic failure when people from different cultures use polite forms to communicate with each other. english is chinese students foreign language, and we are not very familiar with its language rules. when we make some grammatical errors, its easy to be found. and its also could be forgiven, because we are “foreigners” to english. if we can speak english fluently, but we dont pay attention to the context and speak english improperly, we will be considered to be impolite, and then it will break the atmosphere of the whole communication. therefore, it is necessary and important to study pragmatic failure in politeness language.this paper makes an analysis of the cultural difference of politeness language in intercultural communication according to an investigation of freshmen english majors cross-cultural pragmatic competence in politeness, on the basis of some theories. and it also proposes some suggestions on how to improve students pragmatic competence.1 theoretical background1.1 intercultural pragmatic failure1.1.1 intercultural communicationintercultural communication is “the communication between people whose cultural perceptions and distinct enough to alter the communication event. frequently, the term cross-cultural communication is used when referring to communication between people from different cultures” (samovar, 2000:48).nowadays, cross-cultural communication is more frequent and important in the world. in order to communicate with people from different cultures successfully, we must improve our intercultural communicative competence. generally speaking, intercultural communicative competence is the competence and quality that a successful cross-cultural communication needs (chen junsen, fan weiwei & zhong hua, 2006:13-14).1.1.2 pragmatic failurepragmatics is a new area in linguistics, and intercultural pragmatics is a new-emerged branch of pragmatics. until now, there have been many linguists and scholars both at home and abroad who have studied intercultural pragmatic failure. among them, thomas jenny plays the most important role at abroad while he ziran at home. the term pragmatic failure was first advanced by thomas jenny as “the inability to understand what is meant by what is said” (thomas, from he zhaoxiong, 2003:677). pragmatic failure has occurred on any occasion on which h (hearer) perceives the force of ss (speakers) utterance as other than s (speaker) intended s/he should perceive it (thomas, from he zhaoxiong, 2003:683). in china, he ziran reaches the most outstanding achievements in this regard. he has his own different definition. he defined as “failure to achieve the desired communication effect in communication”. (he ziran, 1988:226). pragmatic failure is different from grammar error. “its legitimate to speak of grammatical error, since pragmmaticality can be judged according to prescriptive rules (prescriptive for language-teaching purposes, at least), whereas pragmatic competence, as candlin has observed, entails probable rather than categorical rules. the nature of pragmatic ambivalence is such that it is not possible to say that the pragmatic force of an utterance is wrong. all we can say is that it failed to achieve the speakers goal” (thomas, from he zhaoxiong, 2003:684).there are two types of pragmatic failure: pragmalinguistic failure and sociopragmatic failure.1.1.2.1 pragmalinguistic failurepragmalinguistic failure occurs when the pragmatic force mapped on to a linguistic token or structure is systematically different from that normally assigned to it by native speakers (thomas, from he zhaoxiong, 2003:696). pragmalinguistic failure may arise out of the following sources: pragmalinguistic transfer, pragmatic ambiguity and teaching-induced errors. the pragmalinguistic failure occurs when the speaker cant correctly interpret the words, phrases or sentence patterns. for example:a (to fellow passenger on a long-distance coach): ask the driver what time we get to birmingham.b (to diver): could you tell me when we get to birmingham, please?c (the driver): dont worry, love, its a big place- i dont think its possible to miss it! (thomas, from he zhaoxiong, 2003:682)in this case, the drive understood that bs utterance as a request for information-“what time will we get to birmingham?”, but misunderstood the intended sense of when. pragmalinguistic failure usually also occurs when chinese people respond to the english tag question in a wrong way. for example, in chinese, shi is an affirmative answer to the whole question no matter this tag question is in a positive or negative form, while in english “yes” is just confirms the basic part of the verb and doesnt include the negative structure.1.1.2.2 sociopragmatic failure sociopragmatic failure occurs when interlocutors dont understand or ignore the social and cultural differences between themselves. as we know, language is a reflection of culture. when people from different cultural backgrounds communicate with each other, there inevitably occur some misunderstandings between them because of their different social systems, habits and customs, beliefs, values and so on. for example: mrs. brown is about fifty years old. one day, she wore a new dress and then a student said, “you look nice and younger wearing this dress.” the student wanted to get the middle-aged teachers favor, but this made mrs. brown unhappy. because this made she feel that she was old in speakers eyes, only the dress made younger. or she thought the speaker flattered her. but in chinese, this topic is absolutely free.when scholars study pragmatic failure, most of them pay more attention to sociopragmatic failure. its the main pragmatic failure. it is usually caused by the inappropriate use of the grade of courtesy and the difference of culture values.1.2 pragmatic transferinterlanguage pragmatics is a young discipline. the study and acquisition of the foreign language is easy to be influenced by mother tongue or native language culture, and then the pragmatic transfer appears. pragmatic transfer is a domain of interlanguage pragmatics.there are two types of pragmatic transfer: pragmalinguistic transfer and sociopragmatic transfer. a pragmalinguistic transfer is “the process whereby the illocutionary force or politeness value assigned to a particular linguistic material in nl, influences learners perception and production of form function mappings in tl”(kasper, cited in liu shaozhong, liao fengrong, 2002:37).the following dialogue between a native english speaker (speaker a) and a chinese speaker of english (speaker b) is a typical case of pragmalingistic transfer.a: would you like to go out and have dinner with me tonight?b: excuse me, but im busy tonight.in this dialogue, speaker a gave an invitation to b, expecting b to go to have dinner with him. b refused a directly, and apologized for it before giving an excuse. but b inappropriately used the expression “excuse me” instead of suitable expressions such as “im sorry”. “excuse me” and “im sorry” have the same chinese meaning “对不起”, but they used in different contexts in english. b failed to use the suitable english expression due to the lack of linguistic means of expression.a sociopragmatic transfer is a process “operative when the social perceptions underlying language users interpretation and performance of linguistic action in tl are influenced by their assessment of subjectively equivalent nl contexts” (kasper, cited in liu shaozhong, liao fengrong, 2002:37).the following dialogue between a native english speaker (speaker a) and a chinese speaker of english (speaker b) is a typical case of pragmalingistic transfer.a: your english is really fluent.b: no, no, my english is still very poor. (he ziran & chen xinren, 2002:172)in this dialogue, a praised bs english. following chinese cultural pattern, b answered modestly. this was absolutely suitable to chinese culture, but not suitable to english culture. it would make a think that his view was denied and he would feel unhappy. in china, when one is praised, he would behave modestly, and often say “哪里，哪里”. but in english culture, when someone praises you, “thank you” is the most proper response. so in the dialogue, b can reply “thank you”. this kind of pragmatic transfer, which is due to the cultural differences between chinese and english cultural paradigms, is what we call “sociopragmatic transfer”.pragmatic transfer can also be divided into positive pragmatic transfer and negative pragmatic transfer according to the effect of transference, which plays an important role in communication. negative transfer of pragmatic is the directly reason which causes pragmatic failure. the rules of language are different in every culture. when we acquire our mother tongue, we acquire the rules of mother tongue unconsciously at the same time. in the intercultural communication, we are often unconsciously to express our own thought according to the language rules of our native culture. because we always ignore the difference of cultural background between each other, and we are lake of the understanding of others culture and dont master the language rules of others culture. so the “interlanguage” has come into being, and it may cause pragmatic failure. this is what we usually said pragmatic failure which is caused by pragmatic negative transfer. we can use the following figure to summarize: pragmatic failure violating the rules of native language violating the norms ofnative culturepragmatic negative transferpragmatic transferthe difference between native language and target language1.3 politeness principlespoliteness is a hot study in pragmatics. it is a universal phenomenon, and it exists in all cultures. in the english-speaking culture and the western world in general, politeness has been closely related to the behaviour typical of a certain social location and a certain social group. to be polite means to live up to a set of conventionalized norms of behaviour (he zhaoxiong, 1995:3).in modern chinese, the equivalent of politeness is limao, which is believed to have evolved in history from the notion of li. li originally refers to the various rules or practices employed in ancient sacrificial rites. the ancient philosopher and thinker confucius advocates restoring li, which refers to the social hierarchy and order of the slave system of the zhou dynasty. it has ever since become an essential feature of the chinese notion of politeness and has remained at the core of politeness in the chinese culture (he zhaoxiong, 1995:3-4).brown & levinsons “face theory” and leechs “politeness principle” trigger the past 20 years extensive research of politeness. lots of literatures about politeness put forward many amendments when they agree the two theories basically. and in china, gu yueguo proposed “politeness principle” according to the characteristics of chinese culture.1.3.1 grices cooperative principlein grices opinion, in all verbal communication, in order to achieve specific aims, there is a tacit understanding between the speaker and hearer, a principle that should be obeyed by speaker and hearer. he called this principle as the cooperative principle of conversion.there are four maxims in cooperative principle(1) the maxim of qualitytry to make your contribution one that is true, especially:a. do not say what you believe to be false;b. do not say that for which you lace adequate evidence;(2) the maxim of quantitya. make your contribution as is required for the current purposes of the exchange;b. do not make your contribution more informative than is required.(3) the maxim of relevancemake your contribution relevant.(4) the maxim of mannerbe perspicuous, and specifically:a. avoid obscurity of expression;b. avoid ambiguity;c. be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity);d. be orderly. (yang xinzhang, 2005:169-170)if everyone obeys the four maxims strictly, the communication would be the most reasonable and efficient. but in real communication, in order to be polite or something else, the participants often flout the cooperative principle and its maxims. however, the cp fails to give a reason why people are frequently indirect in expressing what they mean, so that they use conversional implication.1.3.2 leechs pp and gus ppleech added and enriched grices cooperative principle, proposed politeness principle which makes up for the lack of cooperative principle and increases the expression of politeness.in describing the interpersonal rhetoric, leech has concentrated on the cooperative principle and one maxim of the politeness principle-tact maxim. “apart from tact maxim, there are a number of maxims dealing with polite behavior” “politeness concerns a relation