Destroying Walls: A Strategy to Stimulate Intercultural Conversation between East and West

Abstract

Problems of intercultural communication are an everyday occurrence in the increasingly globalizing world. Many people in Asia report a difficulty in chatting with westerners, despite having a good knowledge of grammar and a broad vocabulary. A strategy is proposed to make intercultural communicative acts less strained by: recognition of how deep the cultural divide is; assumptions from the philosophy of language; and a methodology from semiotics and cultural studies. The hermeneutical approach focuses on the work into illocutionary acts of J.L. Austin (1975), and speech acts by J. Searle (1969). Their analysis of communicative acts shows how shared conventions between the protagonists are essential for successful conversation. These shared conventions correlate with modern definitions of culture. By understanding Searle's shared conventions as overlapping cultural identity and values a vehicle for overcoming the problem of cross-cultural conversation is identified. Once the problem and the solution are determined the analytical codes of semiotics and cultural studies are used to highlight and propose specific topics for successful conversation between east and west.