A Cognitive Study on Politeness Intention Processing and Its Association with Pragmatic Failure in Cross-Cultural Communication

Although a large number of studies have focused on various aspects of politeness,very little is known about how politeness intention is activated cognitively during verbal communication.The present study aims to explore the cognitive mechanism of politeness intention processing,and how it is related to pragmatic failure during cross-cultural communication.Using 30 Chinese EFL university students who were instructed to finish a probe word judgment task with 96 virtual scenarios,the results indicate that within both mono-and cross-cultural contexts,the response time in the experimental scenarios was significantly slower than that of the filler scenarios.This suggests that politeness intention was activated while understanding the surface meaning of the conversation;however,the EFL learners could not completely avoid the negative transfer of their native politeness conventions when they were comprehending the conversational intention of the target language.Furthermore,no significant differences in response time were found between the groups with high and low English pragmatic competence,illustrating that transferring the pragmatic rules and principles into cross-cultural communication skills was more cognitively demanding.Overall,this study adds to the literature on politeness research and provides some implications for foreign language pragmatic instructions.

A Comparative Study of the L2 Pragmatic Competence of University Students in Hong Kong and the Chinese Mainland:The Contributions of Sociocultural Context and Linguistic Proficiency

This study investigates the differences in pragmatic competence between Hong Kong and Chinese mainland university students.Participants included 19 native speakers of English,115 Chinese mainland students,divided into those who had spent time abroad in an English-speaking country(CM A)and those who had not(CM NA),and 97 Hong Kong students,divided into those from an English-medium secondary school(Hong Kong EMI)and those from a Chinese-medium school(Hong Kong CMI).Linguistic proficiency was measured by a C-test,and pragmatic competence by a Metapragmatic Knowledge Test,an Irony Test and a Monologic Role Play.Group scores were compared using ANCOVAs to control for differences in proficiency.The results point to a continuum of pragmatic competence—EMI>CMI>CM A>CM NA—reflecting the groups’access to English in real-life contexts.The differences between the Hong Kong groups and the Chinese mainland groups were clearest in those tests measuring processing capacity(i.e.,Irony Response Time and the Monologic Role Play).CM A,but not CM NA,performed as well as the Hong Kong groups on measures of metapragmatic awareness.The results are discussed in terms of Bialystok’s(1993)distinction between analyzed representation and control of processing.

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The Pragmatic Analysis of English Euphemism

In daily communication, English euphemism is both a common linguistic and cultural phenomenon. In general, those disgusting, terrifying and unpleasant facts can be covered and those defacing, embarrassing things can be hidden by the use of euphemism. The originality of this paper lies in the study of English euphemism from the perspective of pragmatics. It discusses some fundamental knowledge and the pragmatic functions of English euphemism.

Taking Stock of Grammar-Translation Teaching Method in Developing Intercultural Pragmatic Competence

Grammar-translation teaching method(GTTM as a shorthand below) has long been a buzzword when it is adopted in the class of English as a foreign language.It has been universally acknowledged that such teaching method contradicts the development of communicative language competence advocated in recent decades.However,I positively argue that GTTM in English class,as a comparative and intercultural model,should be given a due reconsideration to improve L2 learners' pragmatic competence.

Reconsideration on the role of pragmatic transfer

This paper reconsiders the role of L 1 pragmatic transfer on English learning after a brief historical review of the pragmatic transfer research. As pragmatic transfer is a communicative strategy which the language learners tend to use to deal with the immediate problems and difficulties in communication and to develop their pragmatic competence of the target language, the paper comes to the conclusion that foreign language teachers should consciously introduce the pragmatic transfer as a communicative strategy into the classroom teaching, and try to find effective means to cultivate their students＇ abilities of pragmatic transfer in order to develop pragmatic competence.

Application of cross-cultural cognitive pragmatic analysis to translation education

Translation is cross-cultural activity existing between two different language signs. In the process of translating, translators can not get out of the influence of cultural elements. From the angle of cross-cultural pragmatic contrasting, the author makes analysis of the problems of difference existing between the volume of information borne or transmitted between two different language signs in the process of translating under the influence of cultural elements, and points out that to study these problems, translators must consider a series of problems about cross-cultural cognitive context. This article also makes cross-cultural pragmatic contrastive analysis in world view difference, register difference, imaginative difference and metaphor difference. The author introduces the method of cross-cultural pragmatic contrastive analysis and suggests taking a series of measures to improve translation education.

The Study for the Causes of Pragmatic Failure

This paper,based on the questionnaire,deduces the causes of pragmatic failure which are summarized into four:The different value orientation between the two cultures,consisting individualism versus collectivism,power distance,connotation versus denotation,and orientation towards time,negative transfer of equivalent structures and behaviors,insufficient or improper teaching and the scarcity of universal knowledge for communication.

On the pragmatic functions of non-restrictive relational clauses in English news report discourse

Traditional syntactic or semantic theories failed to provide a satistactory explanation for the unique features of non-restrictive relational clauses in people＇s daily use of English language. This paper would adopt the theoretical framework of pragmatics and use relevance theory as well as face theory to discuss the unique pragmatic functions of non-restrictive relational clauses in English news report discourse. The three major pragmatic functions are： （1） optimizing the relevance of information; （2） seeking for the consistence with readers; and （3） avoiding imposing the author＇s opinion on readers.

The Vagueness in Business English Interpretation and its Pragmatic Functions

In BE interpretation process, interpreters will inevitably encounter the fuzzy phenomenon when inputting and outputting the message and they will adopt some vague language to fulfill the communication task. The proper analysis of pragmatic function of vagueness in BE interpretation will contribute to the realization of business communication.

Investigating L2 Request Strategies: A Case Study of Chinese English teachers' L2 Pragmatic Competence

Empirical descriptions of how the teacher performs requests in English can make them realize the importance of improving pragmatic competence, so that they could help students develop more native-like pragmatic behaviors and enhance cultural competence. This case study is to explore the pragmatic competence of a Chinese EFL teacher by investigating the patterns of realization strategies and the ways of reacting to the different social and contextual variables in her requests. It was found out that the teacher investigated in the study had good pragmatic awareness and pragmatic competence to produce the speech act of requests and develop students' pragmatic competence, but more explicit instructions should be provided to help students develop more native-like speech acts by providing more explicit instructions.

Using Pragmatic in Translation

Translating process is coordination of the source language and target language.As the source language and translation language readers are in different cultural background,so their understanding of the environment is different.When the translator express their understanding in the receptor language,he must figure out the best relevance between source language and target language,which can achieve pragmatic equivalence.

A Research on the Improvement of Pragmatic Competence in College English Teaching

A core issue in foreign language teaching is to foster actual competence of language learners to practically utilize language, which is called pragmatic competence. But compared with traditional linguistic competence, the levels of their pragmatic competence need to be further understood. Thus it is essential to make an investigation into this. From the investigation results it is expected to reveal from which aspects teachers and students should carry on in order to improve pragmatic competence and meet foreign language learning need in new age.

Pragmatic Failure In Intercultural Communication Based on Negative Transfer

In recent years, with the fast development of economy, international trade makes the communication constantly hap pen between people who come from different cultural backgrounds. Generally, the cultural difference may interrupt the commu nication and cause the failure of communication. A communicator, who is affected by his native culture, sometimes cannot under stand the foreigners' intention or express himself exactly in foreign language. Then, it is pragmatic failure. The thesis is to search the ways to solve the problem by analyzing the pragmatic failure.

Implications of Memetics on Foreign Language Pragmatic Instruction

The main purpose of foreign language teaching(FLT) is not only to transmit knowledge of FL,but also to cultivate the pragmatic ability of learners on the base of practical communicative background.However,in what way that pragmatic instruction can be carried out effectively and reasonably remains a problem in FLT.Memetics as a kind of new theory which explains cultural evolution tends to place some implications on FL pragmatic instruction.This article focuses on the creative approaches of pragmatic instruction with the combination to the transmittable features of meme-copying-fidelity,fecundity and longevity.

A Pragmatic Approach to Idiom Translation from a Cultural Perspective

Idioms are gems of a language which have been refined through ages of use. Idioms are thus always rich in cultural connotation and national flavor. Lots of cultural information is embedded in idioms. Language is a part of culture. Language is the important carrier of culture. Language and culture have close relationship with each other. The study of the relationship between language and culture has been considered a subject of great value. Owing to this, translation theorists and translators have put more attention to the cultural barriers that exist in translation. Therefore, translators have to better understand the relationship between language and culture and the relationship between culture and translation so as to render idioms from the SL into the TL faithfully and effectively.

Pragmatic-oriented Approach to Teaching

Actions are performed via utterance, and speech acts apply to speakers’ communicative intention to produce an utterance. The simplest purpose of language learning is to communicate with others. Second language learners can have high-level of general language proficiency, when it comes to communicate they might encounter kinds of problems. This paper will discuss a point that it’s whether or not for language learners to speak fluently and sensitively a pragmatic-oriented approach more effective than traditional method. Pragmatic use of language is definitely different from syntactic use of language. Pragmatic training is that essential in teaching environment, for it’s absolute not just to tell learners how to design an idea and organize a sentence, but to instruct learners to say which utterance being proper and appropriate for a certain condition.

The Pragmatic World Under the Iceberg in Hills Like White Elephants

The short story Hills Like White Elephants by Hemingway is created and characterized by the conversation between the man and the woman, which can be approached by the cooperative principle from the pragmatic perspective to investigate how the man and woman accomplish the pragmatic acts and how the author and the reader collaborate to produce the intended perlocutionary effects.

The Compatibility of Pragmatic Twist and Rhetoric

It is universally believed that Rhetoric is an expressive way of language, while pragmatic twist(Deliberate misinterpretation) isthe understanding phenomenon, which is not a rhetorical device but a cognitive activity in nature. The two can't be placed on a par witheach other. However, we find that the two aren't incompatible at all. The second speaker(S2) captures the rhetorical device in the firstspeaker(S1)'s utterance, and distorts the original meaning to achieve S2's communicative goal.

A Review of Research on Development of Interlanguage Pragmatic Competence from a Cognitive Perspective

English language learners' pragmatic competence is related to their success incross-cultural communication. Cognitive approaches, mainly the Noticing Hypothesis and Analysis/Control Model, have provided some insights into the question of how to effectively develop second language(L2) learners' pragmatic competence. Empirical studies based on cognitive theoretical constructs suggest that pragmatic activitiesthat draw learners' attention and help them control attention to relevant and appropriate information and integrate those forms in real time of communication contribute to the development of interlanguage pragmatic competence.