Sociopragmatic failure revisited: the case of intercultural communication between Brazilians and Americans

Abstract

This article aims to discuss the concept of sociopragmatic failure (THOMAS, 1983) by focusing on American interviewees’ perceptions of the phenomenon as arising from utterances spoken by Brazilian learners of English. To achieve this aim, interviews were conducted with three American teachers working in Brazil. After watching video excerpts from previously recorded English classes, interviewees pointed out which utterances sounded inappropriate to them and commented on their perceptions of learners featured in the video, as well as on their experiences with Brazilian learners in general. Their responses were used as evidence for the hypothesis that different types of linguistic asymmetry - namely, structural, pragmatic, sociolinguistic, and discourse-related - can lead to sociopragmatic failure.

Exploring The Socio Pragmatic Appropriacy Of Speech Act Realization Among EFL Students : A Case Study

“…A confluence of at least a dozen of models, tests and working techniques has been therefore launched in the very recent years for the betterment of the overall training in L2 pragmatic (Martínez-Flor, Usó Juan, & Guerra, 2003;Taguchi, 2009;Rose & Kasper, 2001;Yoshimi & Wang, 2007). However, still pragmatic failure in L2 learners' cross-cultural communication is the subject contemporary research addresses in order to depict a clearer image of the phenomenon (Oliveira, 2017).…”