Computer Misuse Act

Pragmatic Failure Pragmatic failure is the inability to understand what is meant by what is said. It refers to the errors in our speech communication because of failing to accomplish a perfect communicative effect. In 1983, a British linguist Thomas came up with the pragmatic failure. In his opinion, pragmatic failure is not simply the wrong use of language, namely, grammatical mistakes, occurred in common usage, using words or making sentences but it refers to inappropriate speaking, improper manner of speaking and expressions not conforming to the custom, which results in not being able to achieve the expected effect. This is a profound analysis of the essence of pragmatic failure. Although the speaker uses sentences which are grammatically correct, the unconsciously violate the norms of interpersonal relationships and social norms in speech, or take no notice of time, hearer and context. Pragmatic competence (the ability to use language effectively in order to achieve a specific purpose and to understand language in context) can be divided into two parts---pragma-linguistic competence and sociopragmatic competence. When talking about pragma-linguistic competence, it not only includes the competence of using grammar rules to make sentences correctly, but also the competence of using the language to communicate successfully in a certain situation, while sociopragmatic competence means to communicate properly according to the social rules of a language. Poor pragmatic competence will cause pragmatic failure. After Thomas, other scholars also made research into pragmatic failure. Some principles and theories they have formed, such as speech act theory, the theory of conversational implicature, relevance theory, the politeness principle, the cooperative principle etc, which provided a basis for our study on the pragmatic failure. Generally speaking, According to British linguist Thomas’s opinion, English pragmatic failure can be divided into two