李霞

【Abstract】 In daily communication，English learners may have no troubles to compose grammatically correct sentences to express themselves，but sometimes the sentences just seem not pragmatically proper. To analyze and comprehend some Elements in English Pragmatics to avoid the misunderstanding and misusing in the communication is significant for who intends to use English as a communicating medium.

【Key words】 Pragmatics Elements Communication

【中圖分類號】G633.41 【文獻(xiàn)標(biāo)識碼】A 【文章編號】2095-3089（2014）08-0003-01

As early as in 1990 at China，Wang Dexing provided an English capability test to 110 college students who had just finished junior English courses. The comments of this test contain 50 multiple choices what enclose a chief background direction. Its provided only the daily life plot. It would not trouble these students with vocabulary and grammar. The purpose of this investigation is exploring Chinese English learners typical pragmatic misusing in cross-cultural communication. Base on the counting analysis of testing result. Twenty-seven questions were under the difficult index of 0.7 degree what be regarded as the toughest part of these tested students. The test involves appellation，greeting，introduction，chat，farewell，request，inquiry，offering and apology.

2009，Brisard explained the relationship between pragmatics and grammar. Since the nature of grammar is held essentially to resolve into issues of the knowledge of so-called rules of composition （or competence） and，on the other hand，pragmatics is concerned with characterizing the behavior of language users （as performance），one of the main challenges in bringing the two disciplines together will be to investigate the possible links between typically human，rational knowledge and purposeful，for the larger part culturally acquired behavior.... [I]f meaning is what makes people jump （i.e.，makes them pay closer attention in the form of an interpretation and，in certain situations，imitate），then it should come as no surprise that the key to relating grammar and pragmatics lies in discovering the very subtle and abstract meanings behind grammatical structures，which have more often than not been thought to be devoid of any kind of functionality other than formal.

For example，chat always includes greeting，farewell，weather discussing and other free talks. The “greeting” was mentioned before； The “farewell” will be talked in the following part； Now we talk about weather discussing mainly. Chat has its own social function which is to adjust the peoples relationship in the social touching. In many cultures，including the Chinese and the English，its a popular hobby in communication to chat at the first step. On the other hand，people often avoided chatting in the condition that people had met and exchanged information at the same day.

Chat is a high routine language. So listener can regularly extinct the speaker is chatting right now. Take the popular weather discussing for example，here so-called weather discussing refers to a comment or a prediction about the weather condition. For example： Nice day； Quite a storm last might； Going to clear up； Its a fine day，isnt it？ etc. But you can not only say： “its raining today，isnt it？” such a simple and senseless statement. Upon this point，Chinese people and American，even people in every nation，they are pleased to chat it in every formal or informal situation，it also provides us a common character in different cultures.

In daily life，well also find something funny in other free talks. Misunderstanding is not always a mistake. Lets check it out. A foreigner praised a Chinese woman，“youre so beautiful today.” In China，being modest is one of the good virtues the lady used a fair standard Chinese style to respond him “where，where.” Of cause the foreigner was puzzled and explained “all of you”，its a very humor scene people live in different culture enjoy the same interesting misunderstanding.

Here we should pay more attention to the divergence between Chinese and English. In China，people always tell the patient “Drink more hot water”，“Dress more” or something else，to express their consideration and comfort. But in English，people will not say “Drink plenty of water”.

All above，the considerate words about peoples health are defined as a former ending in analysis of conversation. And the last step，people exchange their farewell formula. eg. A： bye. B： bye. Here is the true ending of a talk. A green hand in English learning sometimes ignores that conversation is an interactive process. A successful ending depends on two persons agreement if not it well be very offensive，such as “I have nothing to say. So goodbye.”，this kind of sentence.

Its a very remarkable phenomenon that the westerners do their farewell at first meeting. They will repeat the greeting “Nice to meet you”. The specific part is that they add the name of the person. e.g. “Nice to meet you，Ellen，” then “Bye.”. This way will express a full respect to others，its real a valuable reference.

“Pragmatists focus on what is not explicitly stated and on how we interpret utterances in situational contexts. They are concerned not so much with the sense of what is said as with its force，that is，with what is communicated by the manner and style of an utterance.” （Finch，2000）

Communication is a process of double directions. In order to avoid the barrier in cross-cultural communication，people should have two kinds of ability at least： First，the sensible feeling to the incomplete success at communication progress； Second，the ability of discovering the communication barrier and knowing how to make it up.

Bibliography：

[1]王得杏，《跨文化交際》，北京：外研社 1990

[2]Geoffrey Finch，Linguistic Terms and Concepts. Palgrave Macmillan，2000

[3]Frank Brisard，“Introduction： Meaning and Use in Grammar.” Grammar，Meaning and Pragmatics，ed. by Frank Brisard，Jan-Ola ?stman，and Jef Verschueren. John Benjamins，2009