摘 要

现如今，网络在人们的生活中扮演着越来越重要的角色，而网络交流也占据了人们日常生活中大部分的时间。人们如今不是陷在自己周围的小圈子里， 而是生活在网络编织的大网上。通过网络，人们可以和世界各地的人接触，跨文化网络交流正在变得越来越普遍。然而交流有时候会产生障碍，导致语用失误， 一个重要的原因就是文化的差异。本文将以网络流行语为素材，探讨由于社会环境、审美情趣和语言文字本身等文化因素所导致的语用失误并提供规避策略。

关键词：语用失误；网络流行语；文化差异

Contents

1. Introduction 1
2. Demonstration 3
   1. Causes of pragmatic failures 3
      1. The irrelevance of utterance 3
      2. The use of euphemism 4
      3. The difference of culture 6
   2. Pragmatic failures caused by culture difference in network catchwords. 7
      1. Difference in aesthetic taste 7
      2. Difference in social environment 9
      3. Difference in language and character 11
   3. Strategies to avoid pragmatic failures caused by culture differences. 12
      1. Comply with the Cooperative Principle 13
      2. Cultivate culture difference awareness. 13
      3. Respect culture difference and enhance foreign culture knowledge reserve 14
3. Conclusion 15

Works Cited. 17

Bibliography 18

On Pragmatic Failures in Cross-cultural Network Catchwords

Introduction

With the globalization of world economy, cross-cultural communication is becoming more and more popular. However, due to some factors such as the violation of Cooperative Principle(CP), negative transfer and cultural differences, cross-cultural communication is not always successful and pragmatic failures can be made easily. The problem of pragmatic failures has become an important issue in the cross-cultural communication.

In 1983, British linguist Thomas Jefferson put forward the concept of pragmatic failure. According to Thomas(93), pragmatic failures are not simply the grammatical mistakes occurring in common usage but they refer to inappropriate speaking, improper manner of speaking and expressions not conforming to the custom, which results in the failure to achieve the expected effect. This is a profound analysis of the essence of pragmatic failure. Pragmatics is assumed to have two dimensions: pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics. Pragmalinguistics is applied to the more linguistic end of pragmatics, i.e. how the linguistic forms of a language are used to serve specific pragmatic purposes. Sociopragmatics is the sociological interface of pragmatics. It is concerned with the customary ways in which people of a particular culture behave to achieve a particular purpose(戴amp;何

90）. Correspondingly, there are two kinds of pragmatic failure: pragmalinguistic failure and sociopragmatic failure.

Nowadays, many researchers have been exploring the pragmatic failure in order to help to achieve a more successful intercultural communication. Most foreign researchers adopt some theories or principles to explain the pragmatic failure, such as the Adaption Theory, the Relevance Theory and the Politeness Principle. However, after studying CNKI I find out that studies about the pragmatic failures in some particular environments such as the business, advertising or public signs are relatively rare.

Chinese researches on pragmatic failures,which I find, are more than those in foreign studies. Besides, Chinese researchers not only study the pragmatic failures with some theories and principles but also from more specific perspectives such as the sense of time, the effect of humor. However, the study of pragmatic failures in network catchwords is rare. With the fast development of Internet, network communication is becoming more and more popular. People from different countries have more accesses to communicate with each other. Influenced by the Internet, people may easily use network catchwords to communicate with others. Network catchwords often contain some deep cultural meanings instead of just the surface meaning. However, it’s difficult for a foreigner to comprehend the cultural meaning due to culture differences.Therefore, the study of pragmatic failures in