The Unifying Aspects of Cultures

SECTION:

Transcultural Competency in Environmental and Developing Communication

Chair of the section/Suggestions, Abstracts, Contributions to:
Email: Ernest W.B. Hess-Lüttich (Bern)

> Speakers

ABSTRACT: This section is intended to offer a forum for discussions about newer questions in an actual area that belongs to a still young transdisciplinary research field of cultural semiotics, which investigates the changing language relationships between people and their environment. It thus forms at the same time a conceptual, methodological and disciplinary systematic basis for the observation of intercultural communicative processes in the area of the environment and development (Fill 1993; Nöth 1996; Lang 1998; Trampe 2000).

In a world of internationalized communication with ever closer (technical, economic, cultural) interconnections and at the same time partly dramatic changes of life conditions (with diminishing primary resources, increasing global warming, growing loss of the ozone layer) together at the same time with ever sharper criticism by a still heterogeneous plurality of groups interested in globalization, ecological (crisis) communication is a challenge for all involved groups and disciplines - be they natural scientists, engineers and physicians, who develop technological solutions or Public-Health concepts. Experts of organizations like Greenpeace or Amnesty International, which use the media for their professional information campaigns, be they collaborators on cooperative projects of development, which are intended to help introduce local changes of attitude by means of face-to-face conversations.

When, for example, the concern is the problems arising in the wake of the increasing global shortage of the primary resource water and the accompanying questions of health, technical solutions alone are condemned to failure, if they are not embedded in the reflection of the cultural and communicative dimensions of these problems (different ethnic traditions, moral norms and values, traditional consciousness of resources, magic rituals). Unsuccessful communication with respect to primary resources or environmental changes leads quickly, as the media show us every day, from a local conflict to crisis and catastrophe (Genske & Hess-Lüttich 1999; to the geopolitical and historical implications, among other things, cf. die ZDF-Series "Water," first shown from 16 July to 6 August 1998).

In all these (here selected exemplary) constellations of intercultural communication, the danger of misunderstandings is considerable, since language differences and cultural contrasts, regional differences in the use of language, signs and rituals make understanding difficult. Transcultural competency is required here in a highly specific manner, to which Applied Linguistics can give new impulses in terms of theoretical reflection, empirical observation and fruitful application or mediation.

The plurality of the constellations and thus the complexity of the theme can be reduced, if the perspectives ini the context of the proposed discussion focus on two central aspects: the environmental communication in intercultural-institutional respect (Media) and the developing communication in intercultural-interpersonal respect (Dialogue). The first aspect might possibly raise questions about the codes of transcultural media campaigns of firms and organizations of the so-called First World (high income countries) with the goal of providing information about ecological problems (cf. Anderson 1997; Harré et al. 1999; Rolke et al. 1994); the second aspect is concerned, for example, with the codes of intercultural instruction, with the goal of changing the individual routines of behavior in ecologically critical regions of the so-called Third World (low income countries).

The mediation of specialized technical subject matter or solutions to problems in developing countries (water crises, nutrition, diseases), crisis communication in situations of intercultural conflicts (religious conflicts, lack of resources), media communication about environmental questions (Greenpeace-campaigns, climate controversies, Kyoto-Boycott), health communication in countries of the Third World (AIDS, circumcision of African women) represent under the sign of globalization new tasks and challenges for an Applied Discourse Research, which in a cross section of linguistic, media studies, social-, geo- and environment studies questions, will open transdisciplinary perspectives.

Literature

Anderson, Alison 1997: Media, Culture and the Environment, New Brunswick/NJ: Rutgers University Press; London: UCL Press
Brand, Karl-Werner, Klaus Eder & Angelika Poferl 1997: Ökologische Kommunikation in Deutschland, Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag
Dernbach, Beatrice 1998: Public Relations für Abfall. Ökologie als Thema öffentlicher Kommunikation, Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag
Fill, Alwin 1993: Ökolinguistik. Eine Einführung, Tübingen: Narr
Fill, Alwin 1998: "Ecolinguistics - State of the Art 1998", in: Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 23.1: 3-16
Genske, Dieter D. & Ernest W.B. Hess-Lüttich 1999: "Water Talk. Intercultural development communication", in: Medienwissenschaft Schweiz 2/1999: 59-69
Haarmann, Harald 1997: "Ökolinguistik", in: Hans Goebl, Peter H. Nelde et al. (eds.), Kontaktlinguistik / Contact Linguistics / Linguistique de contact, vol. 1 (= HSK 12.1), Berlin / New York: de Gruyter, 842-852
Harré, Rom, Jens Brockmeier & Peter Mühlhäusler 1999: Greenspeak. A Study of Environmental Discourse, Thousand Oaks / London / New Delhi: Sage
Hauser, Susanne (ed.) 1996: Natur, Umwelt, Zeichen [= Zeitschrift für Semiotik 18.1], Tübingen: Stauffenburg
Hess-Lüttich, Ernest W.B. & Brigitte Schlieben-Lange (eds.) 1998: Signs & Time Zeit & Zeichen, Tübingen: Narr
Hess-Lüttich, Ernest W.B. (ed.) 2001: Medien, Texte und Maschinen. Angewandte Mediensemiotik, Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag
Jazbinsek, Dietmar (ed.) 2000: Gesundheitskommunikation, Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag
Lang, Alfred 1998: "Das Semeion als Baustein und Bindekraft. Zeit aus semiosischen Strukturen und Prozessen", in: Hess-Lüttich & Schlieben-Lange (eds.) 1998: 73-116
Luhmann, Niklas 31990: Ökologische Kommunikation, Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag
Nöth, Winfried 1996: "Ökosemiotik", in: Hauser (ed.) 1996: 7-18
Nöth, Winfried 2001: "Ecosemiotics and the semiotics of nature", in: Sign Systems Studies 29.1: 71-81
Rolke, Lothar, Bernd Rosema & Horst Avenarius (eds.) 1994: Unternehmen in der ökologischen Diskussion. Umweltkommunikation auf dem Prüfstand, Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag
Trampe, Wilhelm 1990: Ökologische Linguistik. Grundlagen einer ökologischen Wissenschafts- und Sprachtheorie, Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag
Trampe, Wilhelm 2000: "Von der Ökologie der Sprache zu einer Ökologie der Zeichen", in: Bernhard Kettemann & Hermine Penz (eds.) 2000: ECOnstructing Language, Nature, and Society, Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 85-104
Zierhofer, Wolfgang 1998: Umweltforschung und Öffentlichkeit. Das Waldsterben und die kommunikativen Leistungen von Wissenschaft und Massenmedien, Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag.

CONTRIBUTIONS FOR SECTIONS

• Ernest W. B. Hess-Lüttich (Bern) & Nina Meister (Zürich): Kommunikation über Nachhaltigkeit. Zur Entwicklung eines Begriffs in der politischen Werbung  [ABSTRACT]
• Asuman Agaçsapan (Anadolu Üniversitesi, Eskigehir, Türkei): Männliche Symbole als kulturelle Zeichen in der türkischen Werbung  [ABSTRACT]
• Thomas Bearth (Universität Zürich): Kommunikative Nachhaltigkeit als Voraussetzung nachhaltiger Entwicklung  [ABSTRACT]
• Andrea Bogner (Bayreuth): In fremder Umwelt: Zur Fremdheit des Fremdsprachensprechers  [ABSTRACT]
• Marie-Luise Braun (Osnabrück): Umweltkommunikation in lokalen Tageszeitungen  [ABSTRACT]
• Susanne Hauser (Berlin): Environmental models - Landscape Design and the Description of Nature  [ABSTRACT]
• On-Kwok Lai / Yunn-Ya Chen (Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan): (De-)Differentiating Cyber-Rainbow Communicative Actions for a Sustainable World? Making Sense of Transcultural Eco-Communicative Actions in East Asia  [ABSTRACT]
• Richard J. Alexander (Wien): Environmental Issues, Third World Agriculture and Multinationals: Who Pays the Price?  [ABSTRACT]
• Gesine L. Schiewer (Bern): Perspektiven einer psychologischen Ökologie in der interkulturellen Kommunikation  [ABSTRACT]
• Daniel Rellstab (Bloomington/IN & Bern): Postcolonial Studies - neue Zugänge zum Problem der interkulturellen Verständigung?  [ABSTRACT]
• Paulo Astor Soethe (Curitiba, Brasilien): Im Territorium des Anderen  [ABSTRACT]
• Wilhelm Trampe (Institut für Informations- und Kommunikationsökologie, Diepenau, Deutschland): Sprachliche und ökologische Kompetenzen  [ABSTRACT]

THE UNIFYING ASPECTS OF CULTURES

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