【正文】 s if we want to conquer a foreign language and bee an effective municator. But the fact is that many people didn’t pay much attention to the cultural backgrounds and used words to municate with others in an inappropriate way and inappropriate occasion. In this way, the social pragmatic failures often occur during the crosscultural munication.Because of the fierce conflicts between the popularity of crosscultural munication and the frequently happening munication barriers, the factors affecting munication are drawing much more attention from the researchers. In the past two decades, there has been an increasing interest in the study of pragmatic failures in crosscultural munication. Crosscultural social pragmatic failures have been an important area of pragmatics and crosscultural munication studies. The social pragmatic failures are mainly caused by cultural differences and lack of awareness about this issue. Hence, we have to figure out some solutions to deal with it, such as strengthen cultural awareness, avoid negative stereotype and cultivate crosscultural munication petence. Only in this way can we achieve a satisfied result from the intercultural munication2 Theoretical BackgroundsIn order to have a prehensive understanding of social pragmatic failures during the intercultural munication, we’d better learn some background information about culture. The knowledge about definition of culture, crosscultural munication, and the social pragmatic failures and the relationship between language and culture are ought to be familiar to us.. Definition of CultureThe word “culture” is a large and evasive concept, very plex and difficult to define. There are hundreds of definitions for culture. Here I present only two concepts which I favor most. The one is “A culture is a collection of beliefs, habits, living patterns, and behaviors which are held more or less in mon by people who occupy particular geographic areas.” (, 40) The other is explained in a more detailed way: “culture is man’s medium。 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 languageto make sounds and marks serve as substitutes for things and feelings. In the past, people usually regarded language as simply a neutral medium, which did not influence the way people experienced the world. It was merely a vehicle by which ideas were presented, rather than a shaper of very substance of those ideas. This view had been denied by later linguists. The new point is that language and culture are closely linked with each other. Language is the reflection of culture and culture is a reflection of language.Culture influences language by way of symbols and rules as well as our perceptions of the universe. Each time we select words, form sentences, and send a message, either oral or written, we also make cultural ch