【正文】 oices. If we select language without being aware of the cultural implications, we may be at best not municate well and at worst send the wrong message. At the same time, language is the most symbolic reflection of culture. Members of the culture have created the language to carry out all their cultural practices, to identify and organize all their cultural products, and to name the underlying cultural perspectives in all the various munities that prise their culture. The words of language, its expressions, structures, sounds and scripts reflect the culture, just as the cultural products and practices reflect the language. Language, therefore, is perceived as window to the culture. In a word, it is impossible to separate language and culture apart.Hence, in our process of intercultural munication not only the linguistic usage of certain language should be emphasized but also how to use the language in the right time as well as the right occasion. If we failed to do this, munication barriers must occur, and social pragmatic failures are the most typical ones among those munication barriers. Crosscultural Social Pragmatic FailuresThe term “pragmatic failure” was first used by British linguist Jenny Thomas in her paper “crosscultural pragmatic failure” (1983), published in applied linguistics. It is to define the inability to understand what is meant by what said. Thomas divided pragmatic failure into two types, pragmaticlinguistic failure and socialpragmatic failure. Pragmaticlinguistic failure refers to the inability in interpreting the linguistic meaning by mistaken beliefs about pragmatic force of utterance. And social pragmatic failure refers to the expressive inappropriateness resulted from the misunderstanding or the ignorance of social or cultural differences. It falls into two main aspects: failure in culture and failure in social norms.Pragmaticlinguistic failure can be regarded as the part of the grammar and easy to overe. Social pragmatic failure, however, involves the speakers’ knowledge of the language and system of belief which makes it more difficult to deal with. Pragmatic linguistic failures may only make others think that you are “speaking badly”, but social pragmatic failure may probably leave others the impression of “behaving badly” and cause great embarrassment and misunderstandings during intercultural munication. Therefore, we’d better try our best to avoid the social pragmatic failures and interact with people from different cultures as actively as possible. Only in this way can we achieve an effective munication result.3 Typical AnalysesBecause of the negative transfer of native culture to target culture, social pragmatic failures have bee one of main factors lead to the munication barriers. Here I list six aspects of reflecting social pragmatic failures and the pares are presented between china and western countries. Form of AddressEvery country has its own way to address people. In the process of crosscultural munication, we have to be cautious enough to choose the right form of address according to other people’s culture. Case (1) (A Chinese student greets his foreign teacher)Student: “Hello, Teacher Hedges.”Analyses: In china, it’s quite natural for students to call their teachers by bing the title of the profession and the first name. But in western countries, especially in American, “teacher” is just a profession but not a form of address. The right way to greet teachers is to add Mr/Mrs/Miss in front of one’s family name, or call their name straightforwardly.Case (2) (A child in china met an American in a park and tried to speak to him courteously)A: Uncle, how do you do?B: Please call me John。 different cultures have totally different taboos.Case (6), A Chinese student Xiaozhang saw an old American lady carry a large bag, and said to her, “Can I help you, old lady?” Then the old lady looked at him angrily, said nothing and went away.Analyses: In Chinese traditional culture, old people had been given great respect by younger generations. Because we maintain that old people usually have a rich experience and can always give us many constructive suggests when we want to achieve some progress. Hence, we are apt to call people “Laozhang”, “Laoshifu”, and “Dajie” to show our respect to those people. The word “old” was greatly appreciated and widely accepted in china. But in western countries, the word “old” is a taboo for th