MINIMIZING L2 LEARNERS PRAGMATICS FAILURE

THROUGH CROSS-CULTURAL PRAGMATICS

AWARENESS

Zaitun (ithoen_hatim@yahoo.com)
and
Iswan (guavaones_Isw@yahoo.co.id)

Faculty of Educational Sciences

Muhammadiyah University of Jakarta

ABSTRACT: Language used by people becomes the main focus of pragmatics.

Pragmatics shows how using a language is not solely mean applying the system of that
language. Pragmatics claims that people should deliver the language appropriately based
on the context so that the intended meaning will be correctly conveyed. Pragmatic
competence is aimed to achieve successful interactions between non-native speakers
(NNs) and native speakers (NS) of a particular target language. The learners who are
incompetent in pragmatics will suffer pragmatic failure. Pragmatic failure occurs as the
consequence of different rules and norms of different cultures of the languages. This
paper descriptively describes how teaching supposed to contribute in the settings of
cross-cultural pragmatics instruction in order to lead the learners to avoid mistakes in
understanding pragmatics concepts. This is a literature study in which the writers used
various printed sources as their major data including the research results of previous
studies. There are several suggestions proposed by the scholars in order to minimize the
L2 learners pragmatic failure, i.e. providing clear instruction related to cross-cultural
differences, increasing learners target cultural knowledge, and increasing
communicative strategies used by the students. Besides, in order to raise learners
pragmatic awareness, the instruction of the teachers can be done by designing language
course aimed to let the learners achieve communicative competence, planning course
materials related to pragmatics, and choosing activities that useful for pragmatic
development and rasing the leaners pragmatic awareness.

Keywords: contrastive pragmatics, pragmatics, pragmatic failure

Introduction

Language is central in mainstream pragmatics (Perkins, 2007). Language used

by people becomes the main focus of pragmatics. Pragmatics shows how using a

language is not solely mean applying the system of that language. Pragmatics claims that

people should deliver the language appropriately based on the context so that the

intended meaning will be correctly conveyed. All languages have their pragmatics

conventions set about the use of those languages. These conventions comprise both

social and cultural aspects which are different from language to language, country to

country, and culture to culture. Thus, in the context of second language (L2) learning,

the study of English conventions is important for the learners in order to let them use the

language appropriately and avoid the mistakes in the social life. The knowledge that

influences and constraints speakers choices regarding use of language in socially

appropriate ways is called pragmatic competence (Lo Castro, 2012).

Pragmatic competence is aimed to achieve successful interactions between non-

native speakers (NNs) and native speakers (NS) of a particular target language. The

development of pragmatic competence covers experience, world knowledge, certain

personality traits, and general language awareness, hence, it is a complex task (see Lo

Castro, 2012). The learners of L2 even need more efforts to reach their pragmatic

competence in which they need to deal with the transfer of their L1s concepts and

sociocultural backgroumds. The issues of how and when to learn using pragmatically

appropriate speech becomes another burden for these L2 learners. The learners who are

incompetent in pragmatics will suffer pragmatic failure. As He (1988) said that

pragmatic failure is committed when the speaker uses grammatically correct sentences,

but unconsciously violates the interpersonal relationship rules, socia; conventions, or

takes little notice of time, space and addressee. In short, Thomas (1988) defined

pragmatic failure as the inability to understand what is meant by what is said.

The following examples show how pragmatic failure occurs between the
interlocutors: A Chinese student(A) meets his friend who is an American (B) in the
campus and they have a talk.
A: You look pale. Whats the matter?
B: I am feeling sick. A cold maybe.

 A: Go and see the doctor. Drink more water. Did you take any pills? Chinese
medicine works wonderful. Would you like to try? Put on more clothes. Have a
good rest.
B: Youre not my mother, arent you?

In Chinese culture, people tend to show their attention to others by asking others

conditions and followed by suggestions. That is the way how they represent their

friendliness. On the other hand, American people highly hold privacy. They focus on

privacy and do not accept any care or concerns too much. Thus, in the above

conversation, As concern was taken differently by B. Failure to notice the cultural

difference and make necessary adaptation to the different social norms might cause

pragmatic failure (Tang, 2013).

Languages are different in terms of constraints and one of them is different in

cultures. Pragmatic failure occurs as the consequence of these differences. Different rules

and norms of different cultures usually make the learners get confronted with

interactions in the target culture, thus they fail to communicate their intentions

appropriately. Therefore, Putz and Aertselaer (2008) further suggested that pragmatic

issues such as speech acts roles, conversational implicatures, facework and identity,

discourse strategies in speaking and writing as well as politeness phenomena should be

explored from a cross-cultural perspective focussing on contrastive patterns of pragmatic

concepts and features.

There are many studies done by scholars on how different languages and cultures

play major roles in observing how culture-specific pragmatic failures may occur. At this

stage, the investigation on how pragmatic principles people abide by in a particular

language or by language community in contrast to how these principles may govern

linguistic interaction in another language discussed under Contrastive Pragmatics. Ellis

(1983:38) defined Contrastive Pragmatics as the study of comparison of the

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communicative functions of different languages and how different languages express the

same communicative functions.

For second language learners, in order to raise their awareness in terms of this

cross-cultural pragmatics, the most obvious place is in classrooms or other instructional

environments. This paper descriptively describes how teaching supposed to contribute in

the settings of cross-cultural pragmatics instruction in order to lead the learners to avoid

mistakes in understanding pragmatics concepts. Based on the background above, the title

of this paper is: Minimizing L2 Learners Pragmatics Failure through Cross-cultural

Pragmatics Awareness.

Having the ideas that each language has its own culture, the L2 learners need to

understand how to use the target language correctly and appropriately. This means that

the language used should not only correct in terms of grammar or language system but

also in terms of social use (pragmatically). Lack of pragmatic competence will cause

pragmatic failure. Thus, in order to minize L2 learners pragmatics failure, their

awareness of cross-cultural pragmatics should be raised. The objective of this study is to

descriptively present how to minimize L2 learners pragmatics failure through cross-

cultural pragmatics awareness. It is agreed that in different societies and different

communities, people speak differently. In relation to this, many scholars have done many

studies under the heading of Cross-cultural pragmatics.

Nishimura, Nevgi & Tella (2003) compared communication style and some

cultural features in Finland, Japan and India. They applied an exploratory approach

based on prior research findings. They argued that Japan and Finland belong to high

context cultures, while India is closer to a low context culture with certain high context

cultural features. They also contend that Finnish communication culture is changing

towards a lower context culture. Their study revealed that Finland and Japan share some

features of introversion, while India is clearly more extrovert. Finland and Japan also

share the virtue of modesty, while Indians tend to be more assertive. India is livelier than

Finland or Japan in communication style. Finns and Japanese, not liking to be interrupted

too often, prefer to think in silence; more talkative Indians think aloud and easilty

tolerate interruptions. All these three countries know how to use silence effectively.

Indians use a lot of body language, while Finns and Japanese people are more non-

committal.

Another study was also conducted by Peng & Zhao (2014) who investigated the

use of compliments from a cross-cultural point of view and compared the different

speech act awareness of three subject groups: Chinese native speakers, English native

speakers and Chinese interlanguage speakers (they are all English post-graduates). The

study found that: firstly, the three groups have different awareness of compliments.

Secondly, power and social distance play different roles in the three groups

communication. Thirdly, gender is also an important variable in offering compliment.

Besides, the study also revealed that all those groups have reached a comparatively high

level in English learning. However, they are still inclined to think i Chinese way, which

means their pragmatic and sociolinguistic competence is not enough. As a result,

sometimes they cannot choose the right strategy in communication.

Method of the Study

This is a literature study in which the writer used various printed sources as her

major data including the research results of previous studies. The review of those

previous studies results were being supported by theories to be put in the findings and

discussion parts.

Findings and Discussions

Learning a second language means dealing with socio-cultural communication

since words in the language used should be related to the socio-cultural of the target

language. Therefore, teaching pragmatics is important to let the learners get the

opportunity to learn and discover how native spekers of the target langauge behave and

act in different situations. Pragmatics will enable the learners to understand others

culture and behaviours and avoid cross-cultural breakdowns in the communication.

Raising the learners awareness of cross-cultural pragmatics will help them successful to

communicate in cross-cultural settings.

Pragmatic awareness requires pragmatic competence. Inabilities of the learners to

produce and understand appropriate language to the situations they communicate will be

considered impolite or even rude by native speakers of the target language. Thomas

(1983) suggested that teachers should develop students metapragmatic ability, i.e. the

ability to study and discuss language use in a conscious manner, to avoid cross-cultural

failure. For example, the teacher uses videos, tape-recordings, and any other sources that

can be used to provide the learners with authentic example of the discussion. Besides,

discussing drama or acting out role-play can become another options to raise learners

pragmatic knowledge.

Explaining pragmatic in the target language only is not enough, teacher shoud

contrast pragmatic differences between the learners first and second language.

Nouchi (2015) proposed the following advises to increase the learners

communicative competence and avoid pragmatic failure:

1. Teachers should pay their students attention to evade confusions caused by

cultural differences in their process of learning. This means that cultural

differences may mislead the learners because they will affect their way of

thinking.
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 2. Teachers should explain language barrier in communication caused by different

social systems and cultural background. In this case, teachers should increase

students target cultural knowledge to avoid misunderstandings in

communication.

3. Teachers should increase the studens use of communicative strategies and direct

them to understand the meaning according to the context in which it occurs.

Further suggestions also proposed by Erton (1997) in teaching and building a good

pragmatic competence of second language learners as follows:

1. Language course design should consider the language learners to be better in

communicative competencce. For example by including linguistic and

sociolinguistic knowledge and the ability or skill to use this knowledge for

communicative purposes.

2. Planning course material which engages the learners in the pragmatic, coherent

and functional uses of language for communicative purposes.

3. Choosing activities that useful for pragmatic development and raising students

pragmatic awareness.

According to Nouchi (2015), second language learners should be taught

everything about the target language culture, etiquette and traditions. Thus, some

modules in the process of teaching pragmatics should be provided such as oral

expression (through watching films and analyzing how speech acts are performed in

natural situations with a comparison to the first language), literature (through analyzing

poems, metaphors, idioms, expressions, etc.) to show cross-cultural differences between

first and second language), civilization (through describing the target etiquettes,

traditions, behaviours, principles, attitudes, etc.), and translation (through explaining the

cultural differences between the first and the target language). Further, she added that
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students pragmatic knowledge should be evaluated to measure their ability to

communicate in the target language. Analyzing the sources of the pragmatic failure can

become another option to make the students aware of the cross-cultural pragmatic

differences.

Conclusions

Learning a second language means learning the culture of that language. The

inability of the L2 learners in pragmatic competence will create pragmatic failure.

Pragmatic failure occurs when the speaker of a particular target language fails to commit

socio cultural context of that language. Thus, in order to minimize the pragmatic failure,

L2 learners pragmatic awareness should be raised through explicit teaching.

There are several suggestions proposed by the scholars in order to minimize the

L2 learners pragmatic failure, i.e. providing clear instruction related to cross-cultural

differences, increaasing learners target cultural knowledge, and increasing

communicative strategies used by the students.

Besides, in order to raise learners pragmatic awareness, the instruction of the

teachers can be done by designing language course aimed to let the learners achieve

communicative competence, planning course materials related to pragmatics, and

choosing activities that useful for pragmatic development and rasing the leaners

pragmatic awareness.

References

Erton, I. (2007). Applied pragmatics and competence relations in language learning and
teaching. Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies, 3(1), 59-71.
Ellis, R. (1985). Understanding second language acquisition pp.38-39. Oxford
University Press.
He, Ziran (1988). A Survey of Pragmatics. Changsha: Hunan Education Press.
Lo Castro, V. (2012). Pragmatics for language educators: a sociolinguistic perspective.
NY: Taylor & Francis
Nishimura, S, Nevgi, S & Tella, S.(2003). Communication style and cultural features in
high/low context communication cultures: a case study of Finland, Japan and
India., accessed on: http://www.helsinki.fi/~tella/nishimuranevgitella299.pdf
Nouichi, F. (2015). Cross-cultural pragmatic failure. Expressions (1), pp. 95-101.
Peng, Xiamei & Zhao, Yushan. (2014). Compliment: a cross-cultural study of speech act
awareness: a pilot project report. CS Canada (10), 5, pp. 93-98, doi: 10.3968/4745.
Perkins, M. (2007). Pragmatics Impairment. NY: Cambridge University Press.
Tang, Jingwei. (2013). Analysis of pragmatic failure from the perspective of adaptation.
Cross-Cultural Communication, Vol. 9 (3), pp. 75-79.
Thomas, J. (1983). Cross-cultural pragmatic failure.Applied Linguistics, 4(20), 91112.
Puts, M & van Aertselaer. Developing constrative pragmatics. (2016) NY: Mouton de
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