【正文】 rds pliment response may certainly cause social pragmatic failures or munication barriers. Gratitude Response Case (4) (After a Chinese host acpanied a foreign businessman)Foreign businessman: Thank you for acpanying me.Chinese host: Don’t mention it. It’s my duty to do so.Analyses: Here, what the second speaker says makes the foreigner feel embarrassed, because he misunderstands the meaning of “duty”what one must do either because of one’s job or because one thinks it right. Instead, the Chinese host should say, “It’s a pleasure!” PolitenessBeing polite is one of the main signals of human civilization. Different cultures have different ways of showing politeness to others. In china, people pay much attention to behaviors and tend to express courtesy in an indirect way. But for westerners, they are likely to use language to express their politeness orally in a very direct way. They are often saying “Hello”, “Nice to meet you”, “You are so pretty” or “You are so cute” to strangers even without thinking about it. Chinese people would feel confused about their words and think that they are so flippant. In the contrary, westerners would consider Chinese people as conservative and stubborn. Imagine that, if an American young boy saw a beautiful girl in the street, and he said loudly to the girl, “you are so pretty today!” The girl must be quite unfortable and feel bashful. This is one of the most typical instances about social pragmatic failures. PrivacyCase (5) many foreigners who came to china for the first time often feel unfortable about some questions asked by Chinese people, such as “Where are you going?”, “Are you married?”, “Have you had your dinner?”.Analyses: People must live and interact together to survive. In dong so, they must develop a way of relating that strikes a balance between showing concern for themselves and concern for others. Hofstede has put forth the individualismcollectivism dimension. Unlike those western countries which tend to hold the individual orientation, Chinese people prefer a collectivist orientation. Thus, privacy in china has not been placed in a position as high as in western cultures. Westerners have a much stronger sense of privacy than Chinese people do. That’s why some foreigners feel quite unfortable and embarrassed about those “intruded” questions. Actually, Chinese people who ask those questions didn’t mean to offend them. It’s only a way of showing care and affection to the foreign friends. Therefore, we’d better choose some public topics when we municate and interact with people from different cultures, such as “weather”, “sports”, or “news”. It would certainly do a great help to our success of intercultural munication. TaboosEvery culture has its own taboos。 there is not one aspect of human life that is not touched and altered by culture. This means personality, how people express themselves (including shows of emotion), the way they think, how they move, how problems are solved, how their cities are planned and laid out, how transportation systems function and are organized, as well as how economic and government systems are put together and function.”（Edward T. Hall, 40） Definition of Crosscultural CommunicationAs is known to all, the crosscultural munication has bee increasingly important for humans. The need for crosscultural munication is as old as humankind. We’ve discussed the definition of culture. Now, it is necessary to know something about the concepts of crosscultural munication, which is the fist step to have a deeper understanding of social pragmatic failures. The crosscultural munication (also frequently referred to as intercultural munication, which is also used in a different sense, though) is a field of study that looks at how people from different cultural backgrounds municate, in similar or different ways among themselves, and how they endeavor to municate across cultures. Relationship Between Language and CultureLanguage and culture are closely connected with each other and it is impossible to separate out use of language from our culture. As is known to all, language has been acting as a very important role in the process of human historical development. Just as the American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson’s simple sentence “l(fā)anguage is the archives of history”. His declaration makes us realize that one of the major characteristics identifying us as humans is our ability to use