The Pragmatics in Cross Cultural Communication
Cross cultural communication is an inseparable part of linguistic theory and application. The present paper discusses cross cultural communication from a pragmatics perspective. The first section of this paper is a brief introduction to the study of cross cultural communication. Differences between communicators that come from different cultural background and cultural norms often give rise to misunderstanding. In section two of this paper, I illustrate eight aspects of differences on which cross cultural communication can falter: talk or silence; what to say; pacing and pausing; listenership; intonation; indirectness; cohesion and coherence; and compliment responses in politeness. From these eight aspects, we can have a better understanding of what is meant by what is said and how communicative failure rises. The last section of the paper makes a summary to the issues discussed preceding it. Keywords linguistic, pragmatics, listenership, cohesion and coherence, cultural norms