Pragmatic Failure in Intercultural Communication of Chinese Speakers Who Have Thai as a Foreign Language

Abstract

The research aimed to study the pragmatic errors in the intercultural communication
of Chinese speaking Thai as a foreign language. The research findings were as follows. The
pragmatic errors were found in a total of 65 situations. The most commonly found was the
error in using a wrong word, followed by the inversion of a word order, an incorrect pronunciation of an initial consonant, ungrammaticality of a sentence, errors in using vowels,
errors in wrongly pronouncing the tone.
Last in equal proportion were the errors in using the words with the same meaning,
errors in using inappropriate pronouns, and errors in using the pronoun classifiers. The errors
on the communicative intentions were found in 12 situations. Intentions were wrongly
communicated accounting for 58.34%. and intentions were wrongly communicated but
achieved the goal of a verbal goal accounting for 41.67%. The errors in interpreting the
intentions were found in seven situations.