Pragmatics of intercultural communication

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 138-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominique Bouchet
Keyword(s):  
Intercultural Communication ◽  
Interpersonal Communication ◽  
The Other ◽  
Mutual Understanding ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Cultural Backgrounds ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
The Social ◽  
State Of Mind ◽  
Globalized World

This article explains why intercultural communication always should be studied in context and how even though misunderstanding is normally at stake in intercultural communication, one can argue that the promotion of mutual understanding actually is of mutual interest for all of humanity. Studying in context means paying attention to circumstances around the uses of signs as well as to the roles and moods of the users of signs. Promoting mutual understanding means avoiding a state of mind that implies the depreciation of the other. To be intercultural, a communication must not be infected by prejudices. Any real attempt at intercultural communication is a paradoxical procedure. It supposes that human beings who engage in it at one and the same time recognize the stranger as similar and as different. Also, it can lead to acceptance of the other and a better understanding of what communication is about as well as to rejection and obscurantism. In this paper, I argue that even though people always relate in various ways to common and different cultural backgrounds, they still have to relate to common issues that govern their ways, and that focusing on those common issues and studying the various communicative contexts and contents help promoting mutual understanding, as these activities highlight the implicit role of the value of respect in all interpersonal communication. Human beings cannot avoid evaluating situations, contexts, relations, peoples and cultures. How can we establish that mutual respect and open-mindedness are better than disdain and dogmatism? Well, precisely by affirming that human relations commonly build on the inevitability of communicating and contrasting values and norms. Meaning in interaction permanently transforms cultural elements and patterns into something new. Intercultural communication becomes more respectable when it acknowledges the variety of ways humans interact meaningfully and the plurality of their logic of (inter-)action. It is good and reasonable to value understanding because this variety and this pluralism always have kept the social alive and more than ever in our modern globalized world contribute to the creativity and interactivity of modern life. The interest of pragmatics in user attitudes, its focus on practical rather than on alethic modalities, can contribute to a more nuanced approach to intercultural communication, where the different elements of meaning in interaction can be studied in various bundles rather than in a single strand.

Expanding dialogical analysis across (sub-)cultural backgrounds

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 403-417 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mogens Jensen ◽  
Danilo S Guimarães
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Psychology ◽  
Social Representation ◽  
The Other ◽  
Mutual Understanding ◽  
Cultural Backgrounds ◽  
Psychological Practice ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Communication Processes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Theoretical View

This paper aims to develop a diagram as a tool for analysing empirical data concerning the issue of difference of subcultural backgrounds and worldviews in the dialogue and its implications to the psychological practice in social work. From a theoretical view on dialogical and cultural psychology, we will trace the roots of selected contemporary dialogical and social representation theories and elaborate on it how distinct subcultures of interlocutors can produce misunderstandings when the professional interprets the utterance of the other. Focusing the social pedagogic practice, we will approach dialogues between people that belong to different cultural contexts as instances of the challenges in the communication, i.e. pedagogues and adolescents, doctors and patients, people belonging to different societies, etc. We argue that the theoretical approach presented and discussed here is part of a general understanding of communication processes, showing that despite mutual understanding will never be fully achieved in a dialogical situation, the possibility of sharing meanings and senses depends on the effort to take into consideration the worldview of the other in the background of what is presently uttered.

scholarly journals Talking About Interpretation In n Intercultural Context

2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 109-115
Author(s):  
Xiaochi Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Intercultural Communication ◽  
Cultural Adaptation ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Mutual Understanding ◽  
Important Work ◽  
Cultural Backgrounds ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
Original Speech ◽  
Target Languages

An interpretation is an important work for people to communicate with other people from different cultural background. An interpreter not only translates a sentence or an idiom but also provides the equivalent sentence or an idiom in the target language. Meanwhile, the interpreter should go in the cultural adaptation and gives mutual understanding and comprehension in an intercultural context。 Thus, the author takes a case as an example to show that no one can easily and effectively act as an interpreter. The paper analyzes and discusses the relationships between language and culture, intercultural communication and interpreter. And then the author points out that any successful interpreter must be good at both target languages and cultures, he or she needs to interpret the meaning with acceptable cultural elements of the original speech, and so as to be a qualified interpreter for intercultural communication between different people from different cultural backgrounds.

Cosmopolitical and Biopolitical Aesthetics as Philosophical Approaches to Art Education

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Modesta Di Paola
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Philosophy Of Education ◽  
The Other ◽  
Mutual Understanding ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Philosophical Concept ◽  
Real Condition ◽  
Social Growth ◽  
Critical History ◽  
Common World

Cosmopolitanism is an ancient idea with a wide theoretical and critical history. Scholars across the humanities and social sciences have been examining the meaning and trajectories of this concept, showing how it spotlights ways in which people can move beyond mutual understanding and cooperation. However, cosmopolitanism does not have to refer to a transcendental ideal but rather to the material and real condition of global interdependencies. Cosmopolitanism has been connected to the philosophical concept of “becoming-world,” which develops this idea in the context of plural and ecological societies. Under this approach, cosmopolitanism turns into cosmo-politics, which fuses notions of educational and cultural creativity. From the philosophy of education and artistic education in particular, cosmopolitics seeks to outline the advances of new creative educational theories, which center on globalization, hospitality ethics, politics of inclusion, and the ecological connection between human beings and ecosystems; overall, this concept reveals the possibilities for moral, political, and social growth in the encounter with the other (human and natural). Cosmopolitics is, therefore, associated with the idea of educating with creativity, even proposing the elaboration of new pedagogical methods. Here, cosmopolitics has arisen as a crucial artistic educational orientation toward reimagining, appreciating, and learning from our common world.

scholarly journals Az orvosi antropológia című tantárgy helye és szerepe az orvosképzésben. Az úgynevezett szegedi modell

2019 ◽  
Vol 160 (39) ◽  
pp. 1527-1532
Author(s):  
Bettina Pikó ◽  
Erzsébet Kapocsi ◽  
Gergely Tari ◽  
Hedvig Kiss ◽  
Katalin Barabás
Keyword(s):  
Medical Education ◽  
Medical Students ◽  
Medical Anthropology ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Medical Sciences ◽  
Major Goal ◽  
Cultural Backgrounds ◽  
Biological Reality ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Globalized World

Abstract: It is a necessary part of modern medical education that medical students should learn about the binary nature of human beings – biological and cultural – since both have an impact on our behavior. The subject of medical anthropology helps with understanding the mechanisms and lay concepts behind patients’ decisions which is particularly important in our globalized world. The major goal of this course is to help medical students with acquiring cultural competence through theoretical bases and empirical examples that may help them later in their work when they meet patients with different cultural backgrounds. In the present study, we introduce the course of Medical Anthropology as it happens at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Szeged: the so-called Szeged model – its aims, syllabus, strengths, opportunities and possible difficulties. During the development of the subject, we greatly focused on its links to other subjects of behavioral and medical sciences and on its practice-oriented nature. Thus, the course partly contains of lectures and seminars which display cultural variability in relation to biological reality through practical examples. As a result, the topics of medical anthropology prepare the students to use the knowledge as well as skills and attitudes in clinical practice. Orv Hetil. 2019; 160(39): 1527–1532.

scholarly journals Carbon Valuation: Alternatives, Alternations and Lateral Measures?

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steffen Dalsgaard
Keyword(s):  
Carbon Emissions ◽  
Carbon Offsets ◽  
The Other ◽  
Science Literature ◽  
Carbon Markets ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Science Literature ◽  
The One ◽  
Selection Of

This article refers to carbon valuation as the practice of ascribing value to, and assessing the value of, actions and objects in terms of carbon emissions. Due to the pervasiveness of carbon emissions in the actions and objects of everyday lives of human beings, the making of carbon offsets and credits offers almost unlimited repertoires of alternatives to be included in contemporary carbon valuation schemes. Consequently, the article unpacks how discussions of carbon valuation are interpreted through different registers of alternatives - as the commensuration and substitution of variants on the one hand, and the confrontational comparison of radical difference on the other. Through the reading of a wide selection of the social science literature on carbon markets and trading, the article argues that the value of carbon emissions itself depends on the construction of alternative, hypothetical scenarios, and that emissions have become both a moral and a virtual measure pitting diverse forms of actualised actions or objects against each other or against corresponding nonactions and non-objects as alternatives.

scholarly journals Aesthetics and Creativity. Identity Configurations

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Livia Durac ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
The Other ◽  
Mutual Understanding ◽  
State Of Mind ◽  
Human Attitude ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Nature And Society ◽  
The Way

Reflecting on human attitude towards reality, together with deciphering the emotional code that accompanies it, has configured - in time – the aesthetic universe, open to human reflection, creation, and evaluation. Aesthetics appears through the way in which consciousness reacts and capitalises upon things in nature and society, or which belong to human subjectivity, including on artistic work, which have an effect on sensitiveness due to their harmony, balance and grandeur. As a fundamental attribute of the human being, creativity is the engine of cultural evolution, meaning the degree of novelty that man brings in his ideas, actions, and creations. Aesthetical values, together with the other types of values, contribute to what society represents and to what it can become, hence motivating human action and creation. Their role is to create a state of mind that encourages the cohesion, cooperation, and mutual understanding of the society. Integrating a chronological succession of the evolution of the concepts that objectify its structure, its aesthetics and creativity, this article stresses the synergetic nature of the two dimensions of human personality, paving the way to beauty, as a form of enchantment of the human spirit.

scholarly journals Investigation on the Intercultural Sensitivity of English Teachers in Chinese Elementary Schools

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (12) ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Xinglei Jia
Keyword(s):  
Intercultural Communication ◽  
Intercultural Sensitivity ◽  
English Teachers ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Five Dimensions ◽  
Intercultural Communication Competence ◽  
Efl Teachers ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Globalized World

The development of technology has driven human beings into a globalized world, which requires intercultural communication competence (ICC). As its affective aspect, the subject of intercultural sensitivity (IS) is being heatedly discussed nowadays. This study focuses on the importance of intercultural sensitivity (IS) among Chinese EFL teachers and attempts to explore their current level and the possible reasons for it. For this purpose, questionnaires were distributed to 29 Chinese elementary school English teachers, and the results from the questionnaire showed that the IS level of these teachers is satisfactory, scoring high in five dimensions: interaction engagement, respect for cultural differences, interaction confidence, interaction attentiveness, and interaction enjoyment. The follow-up interview suggested that the high IS level may be a result from intercultural communication training. Moreover, this research found that Chinese teachers were more engaged and enjoyed less in view of scarce opportunities for communication in authentic cross-cultural contexts. Several suggestions and implications for further research have also been included in this article.

scholarly journals THE IMPORTANCE OF INTERCULTURAL PRAGMATICS IN TEACHING A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

2021 ◽  
pp. 166-177
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Intercultural Communication ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
Cultural Backgrounds ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
Intercultural Communication Competence ◽  
Cultural Foundations ◽  
Intercultural Pragmatics ◽  
Methodological Aspects ◽  
Pragmatic Aspects

This article focuses on the role of intercultural pragmatics in modern foreign languages teaching and, on the notion, issues of intercultural pragmatics. It also analyses the importance of intercultural communication in the teaching of foreign languages, pragmatic aspects of intercultural communication, the interdependence of linguistic and cultural phenomena. While pragmatics is a branch of linguistics, intercultural pragmatism is developing as a new supplement to pragmatics. The process of intercultural communication includes linguistic and socio-cultural elements. The importance of intercultural communication in the study of a foreign language is that it eliminates cultural misunderstandings, mistrust and helps to adapt to other civilizational traditions of intercultural communication. Nowadays, according to communicative language teaching the main focus is on the development of communicative competence in foreign languages teaching. Sociolinguistic and pragmatic competencies are the integral aspects of this competence. Cultural and social factors are important in developing intercultural communicative competences in order to avoid difficulties that may arise in understanding interlocutors of different cultural backgrounds. Knowledge of the components of a language and cultural foundations such as phraseological units, words and proverbs help to overcome difficulties in intercultural communication and lead not only to understanding of “foreign” culture through “own” culture, but also the pragmatic factors that arise in this case. Given that English is the lingua franca in the world, there are many problems with intercultural pragmatics in the process of communication in this language. Therefore, it is necessary to pay attention to the development of intercultural communication competence in the process of teaching English. However, there are a number of problems in the process of teaching a foreign language. The problem can be divided into linguistic, lingua-didactic and methodological aspects.

Russia and the Symbolic Landscape of Fascism

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Marlene Laruelle
Keyword(s):  
Social Constructionism ◽  
Dynamic Process ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
The Other ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Power Relationships ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Cultural Backgrounds ◽  
Critical Part ◽  
Strategic Narratives

This chapter presents some historical background of Russia and its use of the term fascism. It outlines the two narratives collided directly in the cited examples: Russia is a fascist country — or that its leaders are fascist — whereas the other defines Russia as a country that defeated fascism. To disentangle that puzzle in which so many actors accuse each other of the same evil, the chapter takes its cue from semiotics, that is, the understanding of words as communicative tools, or signs, that are both embedded in and shape our everyday meaning-making. The chapter presumes that ideas intersect intimately with politics and that the wording of our perceptions constitutes a critical part of the way we situate ourselves. Like any other word, fascism is a communicative tool based on implicit cultural backgrounds that make it possible for the audience to interpret the term. The chapter also draws on social constructionism, which asserts that social reality is created by human beings whose identity is a permanent, ongoing, and dynamic process of interacting with others and reacting to situations. The chapter then argues that fascism has become one of Russia's strategic narratives. Ultimately, the chapter explains why fascism should be studied as a discursive landscape, a mythmaking process that creates order from chaos and justifies power relationships on the international scene.

scholarly journals Forms of Address and their Meaning in Contrast in Polish and Russian Languages

2015 ◽  
pp. 225-235
Author(s):  
Wojciech Sosnowski
Keyword(s):  
Intercultural Communication ◽  
Interpersonal Communication ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Social Behaviour ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
Mutual Understanding ◽  
Parallel Corpora ◽  
Contrastive Study ◽  
Bilingual Dictionaries ◽  
Interesting Area

Forms of Address and their Meaning in Contrast in Polish and Russian LanguagesMany studies in contemporary linguistics focus on investigating politeness and rudeness in language. This paper, however, has not been intended as a contrastive study of the phenomena in question. Language politeness and rudeness are conveyed by means of expressions of politeness and rudeness which are perceived as entrenched and recurring in specific situations. These expressions convey the expected meaning of politeness and rudeness accepted in the model of social behaviour. If one uses the explicative method such expressions could be reduced to the following formula ‘I inform you that I follow a verbal conduct defined as polite’. Owing to the emergence of parallel corpora of particular languages, it is nowadays easier to collect data for research on forms of address as well as on expressions of politeness in the first half of the 21st century. Investigating the meaning of forms of address, which are part of linguistic repertoire used to express politeness and rudeness should be regarded as an interesting area of research. It is the consequence of the increasing importance of intercultural communication, expansion of international cooperation, and formation of new standards of interpersonal communication aimed at achieving mutual understanding without resorting to violence. It is worth mentioning that currently there are no bilingual dictionaries which would include practical rules for using forms of address. Moreover, dictionaries (especially bilingual ones) also do not list classifiers of politeness, which becomes a shortcoming as regards the purposes of translation and teaching foreign languages. The aforementioned problems apply to print as well as computer dictionaries. A reliable list of forms of address and their meaning may become helpful in intercultural communication. It would be also important to create a Contemporary Dictionary of Expressions of Politeness and Rudeness in a paper as well as a computer version.

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