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Well, intercultural discipline is really broad.
And we need some strategic approach to how to
deal with it, exactly because it is so broad.
We need some practical theories so to say.
And as means of this practical theory, I suggest that we look at the so called
functional and anthropocentric perspective in the intercultural communication.
What does these words mean?
I will try to mm, detailize and show what I
mean by, what I understand by the words functional and anthropocentric.
Functional means that we are interested in the meanings and the functions of what
we use in intercultural communication as, as, units of, as elements of it.
And then anthropocentric probably it means that there is in the center
of any communicative event, of any intercultural encounter, we have a person.
This person is a carrier of all-human, universal features
and cultural peculiarities both universal features and cultural particularities.
So, we'll look at the intercultural communication from
the point of this person, not from the
point of two culture, two political system, or
two national cultures that interact with each other.
Not from the point of view of, you know, national mindset
or national character, but from this micro, micro point of, an individual.
Partly, I believe in this because this is, a typical, situation of the communication.
Prototypical communication happens here and now between two people who
are face to face, to each other, and they start communication
because they want to achieve something through this, to understand
something to get something, to explain something, to inform, to share.
All this basic, motives and goals of, communication between two people.
There are many other instances of communication.
Probably they're even more important for intercultural,
activities, but this one is in the center.
And this first interacts with others, guided
by this both universal features and picularities.
We will study
instances of intercultural communication cases, by looking at goals
and linguistic functions that are used in, in this communicative encounters.
And when I say linguistic function, it's not
just because I'm a linguist by education, but because
linguistic approach, linguistic methods, and actually linguistic agenda,
and the language are in the heart of communication.
There are sociological, there are psychological, there are philosophical and
political aspects to intercultural communication,
but in any communication, in the
heart of it, is an event that happens between people in
the form of a symbolic exchange using language, using linguistic expressions.
understanding, the word functional, I would like to say
that we, we start with trying to understand function, the
meaning, to reconstruct it or to put it in
other words being given a form we reconstruct the meaning.
So if we start from the idea that language isn't the
heart of intercultural communications, then
we should look at linguistic expressions,
which are given to us as elements that make utterances and
sentences, and that brings us to some aspects of linguistic analysis.
Also an issue that emerges immediately, and we try to understand
the the, the, the questions that the rise there is as follows: learning to speak a
foreign language and all of us in this or that, to this or
that degree participated and at some point in our lives in this activity, trying to
learn a foreign language.
But when you learn it, it's like a, opening
a door to a new world, to a new culture.
They say that people who speak another language really become partly different.
Who speak it really well, who understand the culture, who live in this language,
they, as if they have not exactly to serve, but they have two personalities.
And I personally heard from some people who are, mm, saying me that, when I speak
English I, my body language is different from
the body language I use when I speak Russian.
It's part of us, language is part of us and it creates partly a new personality.
But still the questions, to be answered more fairly and
not just in terms of anecdotal evidence are as follows.
And they are part of the programs that many, hm,
specialists use and the issues that I will now list.
Actually a part of the research agenda proclaimed by Laura Borodinsky, a neuro,
a cognitive psychologist who studies cross cultural issues in communication.
And this questions sound like that.
Do people who speak different languages think differently about the world?
Yes or no?
Does learning new languages change the way you think?
Well, body language here, but what about the way you think,
the way you conceptualize the world, the, the way you see it.
And do polyglots think differently when speaking different languages?
So, all those questions relate to one and the same research agenda.
How acquiring a new language, new ways of expressing, new ways of
communicating, changes you culturally, how another
culture does it creep inside of you?
Does it become part of you or not?
And of course this brings us to the probably most pivotal
issue of cross-cultural communication research agenda
for what people would think when they hear these terms, language and culture.
What are the relations between culture and language?
One way to put it is that culture manifests itself in language.
It does.
When we hear the word privacy not, just as a word in the dictionary, but in
some, some utterance, it's not enough to just
understand it's meaning as it's put in the dictionary.
We need to understand the whole cultural concept.
Center for the United States culture.
The, the cause of that is behind this work privacy.
The same, the meaning of the Russian
word 'toska' is not easily translated into English.
I can give you a number of translations, be it sorrow, be it
sadness, be it unhappiness, but all, just the, just the translations will not render
the whole concept, which involves just more, more than this word, that it
involves certain cultural scenarios and context of
cultural interactions that are behind this word.
So, this is how we can see that culture manifest itself in language.
In the, in the, the most, in the simplest form
just in the words as I give to the, the example.
But we can create more, and we will
be talking about, discourses as whole, utterances that
create discourses where you cannot understand the real
meaning of the message without knowing the culture.
At the same time, language is an in, is an instrument of culture.
This is the way that culture manifests
itself, not just in buildings, clothes, types of
foods, but mainly through interaction I talked about it all the time in this week.
But behind that relations, behind the relations
of language and culture, behind the how language can
be an instrument of culture immediately emerges another issue, another question.
And this is relations between language and thought,
because we don't speak with just with words.
We speak with ideas.
We express ideas.
So in a way, hm, this relation can be captured, as
I see it, through the modern version of the linguistic relativity hypothesis.
It actually says that the structure of a language
imposes certain conceptualizations on the speakers of this language.
The structure of the language, influences or imposes
itself on, on how we conceptualize about things.
How we see the world.
It, it has so called strong version and weak version.
Strong version was the, the way how it been,it's been formulated by a
certain scholars, and not exactly by those scholars who, who it is ascribed to
it's sometimes called Sapia and Wolfe hypothesis, but actually neither, neither
Sapia nor Wolfe really proclaimed it as a theory but it is just ascribed to them.
So, the strong version of their, of this theory which was
proclaimed at the beginning, and never was proved experimentally, sounds like that.
Language determines thought, and linguistic
categories limit and determine cognitive categories.
Experiments that followed showed that it's probably too strong in expression.
What is meant by that?
It's actually means that if your language doesn't have, say, future tense,
it means that you cannot actually grasp the idea of future, or
if your language doesn't have words for snow, it means you probably
even don't understand and won't be able to understand what snow is.
Of course it sounds rather funny, and we know it's not the truth.
But the weak version of this hypothesis is much more applicable to
cultural studies and to studies of relations between thought and language.
The weak version says that linguistic categories, and usage,
influence thought, and certain kinds of behavior associated with communication.
What does it mean, certain kinds of behavior associated with communication?
Again, if we take this idea of what words are present in the
language and what are not, we can say for instance that, if this language
has many, many words for expressing
motion, movements, then the speakers of this
language will probably pay more attention to
various forms in which movement takes place.
Whether it's crawling, whether it's flying, whether it's with twisting,
or not twisting, in a slow manner or in fast manner.
I relate here to the, were, to the works by Dan Slobin.
Yeah but, they don't relate it, they don't
demonstrate it always when just sitting and watching videos.
But when they prepare to speak or when they, they or
when they interpret linguistic expressions,
then this difference may create difference.
And speakers of one languages will be more,
more prone, more acutely taking the aspects of various,
of the variety of woman's and speakers of languages
where they don't have such a variety of verbs.
Expressing men or woman, they will be paying less attention
to it, and then that was proved experimentally by Dan Sloven.
So that's what they call certain kinds of behaviors
associated with communication as Dan Sloven put it, thinking for
speaking, that's what we understand by the connection between thought
and language in the weak version of relativity hypothesis.
And this is really an instrument that
can help us in studying intercultural communication encounters.
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