In the course “Understanding Russians: Contexts of Intercultural Communications": we will: 1) Build skills in the analysis of the intercultural communication process using Russian-Western communication as an example. 2) Apply the knowledge of interrelations between different contexts of communication (cultural, institutional, professional, social, interpersonal, etc.) to the cultural history and national psychology of Russians. The purpose of the course is to provide the students with a broad overview of the basic principles governing the past, the present and the future interactions between Russia and the West, with a focus on the culture and national psychology of Russians and Western Europeans. For example, we will look at the cases when basic cultural values of Russians show up through the linguistic choices shaping language production which is consequently misattributed by Western partners. No matter what the language of intercultural communication is – Russian, or English – the meaning of many linguistic expressions may be reconstructed wrongly by the representatives of another culture. Some of the basic questions we will tackle are: • What are the concepts of culture that have the strongest influence on communication? • What are Russian basic cultural values and how they shape modern Russian consciousness? • What are the specific communication patterns of modern Russians, including those of public and electronic discourse? • What is important to know about communication with Russians in organizational contexts? Importantly, this course is NOT just a list of practical instructions of dos and don’ts of dealing with Russians. The course contains a substantial academic component introducing the key notions and concepts of the Theory of Communication, which will be extensively introduced throughout the first few modules of the course. These theoretical grounds will be further on used as a tool for analyzing the intercultural communications with Russians.
1.5 Different Approaches to Intercultural Communications. Relations Between Culture and Language.
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En provenance du cours de National Research University Higher School of Economics
Understanding Russians: Contexts of Intercultural Communication
47 notes
National Research University Higher School of Economics
47 notes
À partir de la leçon
Intercultural Communication as an Academic Discipline
We want this course to be not only a learning experience, but a cultural journey full of discoveries and fun. We will begin by introducing the notion of Intercultural Communication. We will look at ICC as an academic field: have a glimpse of its history, look at its place among other disciplines, discover possible approaches to it, and see why it is important to study the context of cultural events and phenomena.
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Mira BergelsonProfessor
Philological Faculty
[MUSIC]
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 theory so to say.
And as means of this practical theory I suggest that we look at the the so called
functional anthropocentric perspective of intercultural communication.
What does these words mean, I will try to Visualize and
show 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 elements of it, and anthropocentric means 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.
Universal features and cultural peculiarities.
So we'll look at the intercultural communication from the point of this
person, not from the point of two political systems or
two national cultures that interact with each other,
not from the point of view of national mindset, a national character, but
from this micro point of a individual.
Partly, I believe in this because this is the prototypical
situation of the communication.
The 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 community.
Probably they are even more important for
inter cultural activities but this one is in the center.
And this person interacts with others guided By these
both universal features and peculiarities.
We will study instances of intercultural communication.
Cases, by looking at goals and
linguistic functions that are used in these 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 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 Between people in the form
of symbolic exchange using language, using linguistic expressions.
Understanding the word functional, I would like to say that we
start with trying to understand function, the meaning reconstructed.
Or to put in other words, being given a form we reconstruct the meaning?
So if we start from the idea that language is in the heart of
intercultural communications, then we should look at linguistics 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 questions that arise there are as follows.
Learning to speak a foreign language, and all of us in this or
that, to this or that degree participated at
some point in our lives in this activity trying to learn a foreign language.
But when you learn it, it's like 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
as if they have not exactly to solve, but they have two personalities.
And I personally heard from some people who are Saying that when I speak English
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, it creates, in part, your personality.
But still the question's to be answered more thoroughly,
not just in terms of anecdotal evidence are as follows.
And they are part of the Programs that many specialists use and
the issues that I'll now list.
Actually our part of our research agenda psychologist
who studies cross cultural issues in communication.
And these 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 yes, but what about the way you think,
the way you conceptualize the world, the way you see it.
And do polyglots think differently when speaking different languages?
So all these questions relate to one and
the same research agenda, how to acquire a new language,
new ways of expressing, new ways of communicating changes you culturally.
How? Another culture.
Does it creep inside 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 and gender.
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 utterance, it's not enough to just understand its meaning as it's put
in the dictionary, we need to understand the whole cultural concept." Central for
the United States culture.
The concept that is behind this word privacy.
The same the meaning of the Russian word Toska is not easily translated.
Write it into english, I can give you a number of translations.
Beat sorrow, beat sadness, beat unhappiness.
But just the translations will not render the whole concept.
Which involves just more than this word that involves certain cultural scenarios,
and contacts of cultural interactions that are behind this world.
So this is how we can see that culture manifests itself in language.
In the simplest Formed just in the words as I get through the example,
but we can create more, and we will be talking about discourses as a whole,
utterances that create discourses where
you cannot understand the real meaning of the message without knowing the culture.
At the same time,
language as an instrument of culture This is way that culture manifests itself.
Not just in buildings, clothes, types of food, but mainly through interaction.
I talk about it all the time this week.
But behind the relations of language and
culture, behind how language can be
an instrument of culture immediately emerges another issue, another question.
And this is relations between languages and thought.
Because, we don't speak just with words.
We speak with ideas.
We express ideas.
So in a way, this relation can be captured, As I see it,
but through the modern version of the linguistic relativity hypothesis.
It actually says that the structure of the language
imposes certain centralization's on the speakers of this language.
The structure of the language Influences or
imposes on how we conceptualize about things.
How we see the world.
It has so called strong version and weak version.
Strong version was the way how it's been formulated
by certain scholars and not exactly by those.
Colors who it is described to,
it's sometimes called Sapir and Whorf hypothesis.
But actually neither Sapir nor
Whorf really proclaimed it as a theory, but it is just described to them.
So the strong version 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 an expression.
What is meant by that?
It actually means that if your language Doesn't have say future tense,
it means that you cannot actually grasp the ideal future.
Or if your language doesn't have words for snow it means that you're 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 status and to status 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 works by Dan Sloban.
Yeah, but they don't relate, they don't demonstrate it
Always when just sitting and watching videos.
But when they prepare to speak or when they interpret linguistic
expressions then this difference may create difference and
speakers of one languages will be more Are more prone, more acutely taking
the aspects of various, of the [INAUDIBLE] of women's and speakers of languages,
where they don't have such a variety of verbs, expressing manner In that moment,
they will be paying less attention to it, and that was proved experimentally by.
So that's what I call certain kinds of behavior associated with communication.
As 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.
[SOUND]
[MUSIC]
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