Pragmatic dimension of cross-cultural semiosis - Статья

Ivan Franko Lviv National University PRAGMATIC DIMENSION OF CROSS-CULTURAL SEMIOSIS Andreichuk N.I., Doctor of Philology, Professor Thefate of the earth depends on cross-cultural communication (Deborah Tannen) The concept of culture text is the core of the semiotic studies on culture. But even more important is the cultural mechanism of transforming information into text: sense generation process. Any generation of sense is the activity of culture in its most general definition. This article aims at offering a new insight into the notion of semiosis as the communication-oriented process of generating culture texts and providing new approaches to the research of pragmatic dimension of cross-cultural communication. Yuriy Lotman views communication as the circulation of texts in culture and relations between the text and the reader, a typology of different, although complementary processes: 1) communication of the addresser and the addressee, 2) communication between the audience and cultural tradition, 3) communication of the reader with him/herself, 4) communication of the reader with the text, 5) communication between the text and cultural tradition [1, p. 276-277]. In his article «On the semio- sphere» the first edition of which was published in Russian in 1984 in «Trudy po Znakovym Sistemam» [2] Yuriy Lotman coined the term semiosphere and claims that outside of it semiosis itself cannot exist [3, p. 208]. Edna Andrews agrees that the concept of semiosphere is helpful in better understanding of semiosis, which is «a system-level phenomenon engaging multiple sign complexes that are given simultaneously across spatio-temporal boundaries» [4, p. xx], Yuriy Lotman’s ideas concerning semiosphere were published in English in the book entitled «Universe of the Mind» [1] and it is not only the title of the work but the metaphor of the semiosis itself. Culture is presented as a thinking mechanism that transforms information into text and a space of mind for the production of semiosis. Thus there are two different processes in the constitution of the semiosphere: the processing of information and the emergence of semiosis. These two processes not only articulate information and culture but also show how the universe of the mind functions to produce significant complex systems, i.e. codes and languages [5, p. 89]. If we accept that semiotic space emerges inside the experience of transforming information into sign systems, then information processes are the core of the semiotics of culture and the cultural mechanism of transforming information into text is but another definition of semiosis. Before trying to apply this understanding of cultural semiosis to researching cross-cultural communication it should be mentioned that according to Peirce semiosis starts from a given outer sign. The question of who produced it in the first place, and why, falls outside the scope of his concept of semiosis. This bias is confirmed by his choice of terminology, i.e., especially of interpretant, that is the inner sign as an explanation, as a translation, of the outer sign. From the wider perspective of communication, or sign exchange, an outer sign can only be considered given to a particular sign observer after it has been produced by a particular sign engineer. Valentin Voloshinov can be seen to apply this communication perspective right from the start ofhis theoretical development. This scholar emphasizes the representational nature of signs. He states that a sign does not simply exist as a part of a reality - it reflects and refracts another reality [7, p. 10] and he also expresses the communication perspective of sign: Signs can arise only on interindividual territory. Ten years later Pierce’s pupil Charles Morris introduces the interpreter as the component of semiosis and argues that the latter includes: 1) the sign vehicle (i.e. the object or event which functions as a sign), 2) the designatum (i.e. the kind of object or class of objects which the sign designates), 3) the interpretant (i.e. the disposition of an interpreter to initiate a response-sequence as a result of perceiving the sign), and 4) the interpreter (i.e. the person for whom the sign-vehicle functions as a sign) [8].