Sergey Yachin, Alina Turkutyukova : Why Do We Need to Apply Hermeneutics to Intercultural Dialogue?

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Why Do We Need to Apply Hermeneutics to Intercultural Dialogue?

Sergey Yachin* and Alina Turkutyukova**

Abstract: This contribution aims to suggest that the concept of culture is critical for the debate of whether hermeneutical approach to intercultural communication is acceptable. The concept of culture as a meaningful form of human being provides reasonable justification for the application of hermeneutics to intercultural dialogue and emphasizes the fact that intercultural understanding is different only in degree, but not in essence, from the problem of intra-cultural understanding. Keywords: culture, cultural form, understanding, intercultural hermeneutics, intercultural dialogue.

INTRODUCTION

In the forming field of intercultural hermeneutics it is still debatable what the justification is for the application of hermeneutical method to intercultural dialogue. The paper points out that accepting the concept of culture as a meaningful form of human being makes intercultural dialogue the very heart of hermeneutical research.

GENERAL INFORMATION

Present day intercultural hermeneutics has been recently gaining in academic interest and basically tackles two types of issues, those of interreligious dialogue (cf. Wit, 1998; Tate, 2008) (naturally so as hermeneutics came about as a science of the Bible interpretation) and also of intercultural dialogue. If we keep in mind that the theory of cross-cultural communication is mostly concerned with difficulties in understanding that might arise in the course of communication then hermeneutics seems to be really natural to rely on for the answers how to deal with those difficulties. However, if we follow the approach to hermeneutics, which associates understanding with understanding written texts only then it will take some efforts to see the connection between hermeneutics and intercultural dialogue. In his paper Hermeneutics and Intercultural Dialogue: Linking Theory and Practice F. Dallmayr (Dallmayr, 2009) explores the question whether hermeneutical interpretation can be transferred from textual readings to the domain of cross-cultural encounters. As Dallmayr sees cultures as different from written texts he then has to turn to moral practice to show how the application of interpretation is possible for

intercultural relations. His line of argument relies then on Heideggerian transformation of interpretive understanding from a methodology tailored for academic disciplines into a mode of human existence. Thus as understanding is a constitutive feature of every human being, it is legitimate to see people interacting cross-culturally as following hermeneutical procedures. At the same time Dallmayr does not give his full attention to the concept of culture. Stating that his view of what culture is, is generally that of Wittgenstein that is a view of culture as of complex language games plus forms of life comprising written texts, social customs, religious beliefs, rituals and practices Dallmayr then proceeds to discuss the implications of understanding being the part and parcel of our living and being in the world. This contribution aims to suggest that the concept of culture is critical for the debate of whether hermeneutical approach to intercultural communication is acceptable.

RESEARCH DESIGN

Culture is not an easy object of philosophical analysis. Actually, it is not an object at all, and it is this attempt to think of culture as of an object or a collection of objects that leads to the lack of unity in understanding of what it is, our failures to grasp the idea of culture within the framework of natural sciences. When we suggest that culture be conceived as a form we refer to the ancient Greeks’ idea of form as of the way for things to be present in the world among all other things. It is form that enables them to be here and to mean something for other things also present as they have forms, and to be seen as well. So we state that culture is a form, but what kind of form is this?

The answer is that culture is a meaningful form of human being. The notion of form has been just expounded on, but why meaningful? To explain that it might be helpful to consider some of the following. According to Dilthey (Dilthey, W., 1914–2005), human

* Professor, Far Eastern Federal University, Russia E-mail : yachin@land.ru,

** Assistant Lecturer, Far Eastern Federal University, Russia E-mail : sayonarasun@list.ru

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life is characterized by a structural nexus of lived experience (Elebnis), expression (Ausdruck) and understanding (Verstehen). Lived experience designates the subjective, first person perspective in which we experience our life.

As Jos de Mul puts it (De Mul, 2011), the way one has access to one’s own lived experience (Dilthey’s Erlebnis, which is not only a theoretical knowing of the world, but it is also composed of willing and feeling) is introspection, but introspection is inaccessible for other persons.

According to N. Schroeer (Schroeer, 2009), one of basic postulates of hermeneutic theory is the inherent unreachability of others' subjective awareness., but still we try hard to reach it. So the only way we may be in-formed of the Other’s subjective awareness is for him to express it in some form.

Jos de Mul (De Mul, 2011) says that lived experiences get their expression in spoken and written language, in gestures and actions, in human artifacts, buildings and social institutions (we might argue here that social institutions are not direct expressions of lived experience and as such are more than just culture, which is in fact implied by the term ‘social’, but it is not the primary goal of this paper).

The concept of culture as expounded on in Yachin S., 2010 suggests that culture is a form in which humans express lived experiences or made their subjective awareness reachable to others. This form is always materialized in some way, when we speak the material is our voice modulations, with artifacts it can be the whole range of materials available to us as people living in the 21st century.

Thus we label as ‘cultural’ anything empirical, which has come into this world as meaningful, that is specially or intentionally designed, expression of otherwise non-reachable other people’s lived experience. Now we can understand how it is possible for us to see culture in a spoken word, a book, a picture or a wedding rite and also the borderline between natural and cultural forms is also very clearly drawn.

Now it is time for us to consider linguistic forms as cultural forms among other cultural forms. There is a subtle difference in their status which results from the difference in original intentions of a human who sets about producing a linguistic form or any other kind of cultural form. Linguistic forms are produced to get our message across, their only function is to be understood. But when some other kind of a cultural form is about to be created we are focused on what it is for, that is what we can do with it and in what way we can make use of it. J. Searle (Searle, 1995, p. 4) says that we learn to perceive and use cars, bathtubs, houses, money and restaurant so that they seem as natural to us as stones and water and trees. But when we look at a bathtub we do not

see an iron concavity containing water but a bathtub and that means that we see its socially defined functions. So functions seem to be the most important feature of such forms but what escapes us is that to be seen as functional the form has to be first interpreted correctly, i.e. an understanding procedure has to take place just the same as with a linguistic form. Now we see how we can conceive linguistic forms (texts) as cultural forms which are special due to the sole function they have. Then now it is clear that any cultural form is something which is always produced first to be understood and only then to be functionally used. We will not speak to someone unless we expect that this someone is like us, i.e. is a being with the ability to understand our message and the same is true about any cultural form: we can produce it according to our idea of what it should be only if we believe that we live in the world with Others who can and will (make an attempt) to understand the thing we would like to create. Any linguistic – any cultural form – is addressed.

It still remains to be considered what the concept of a cultural form enables us to say about intercultural communication. How much does a dialogue between two people who share a culture differ from that of people who do not?

The difference is not really striking as any two subjects within the same culture have different life histories. Each message bound to the subject's life history and context acquires a meaning unique to that subject's consciousness, and, as А. Schütz (cited as in Schröer, 2009, p.4) believed inter-subjective understanding between two individuals is, in the strictest sense, unattainable no matter what the medium is. However, intercultural understanding can be at least approximately achieved (Schröer, 2009, p. 1). There is no way to deny it because of translations that have been always used to achieve understanding though never full. This is a topic of A. Wierzbicka (Wierzbicka, 1992) who says, ‘It is obviously the common experience of mankind that translation is possible. In particular, the Gospels or parts of the Gospels have been translated into more than one thousand languages, and if they haven't been translated into all the languages of the world it is not because of any inherent linguistic difficulties. On the other hand, it is almost equally a truism to say that a translator is necessarily a betrayer’. It is indeed true, and if translation had not been possible we would not have had the original hermeneutics dealing with interpreting the Gospels in the first place. At the same time, ‘Communication in the same cultural context is not always straightforward’, and ‘ it stands to reason that communication between individuals in different cultures is inherently even more fragile’ (Schröer, 2009). So if we are to get our message across it is done by means of expressing it in some form. This form is the link between

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the communicating agents so that if we remove this link communication stops. But it is an obstacle, a barrier to communication as much as it is a link as the Other’s meaning is only given to us through this form and we communicate to get the meaning but what we actually get is – form, which is to be interpreted yet. When intercultural communication takes place, the basic categories are the same, there are agents intending to communicate and the forms they produce to do so. But in this case to get the meaning it is necessary to cope with two barriers instead of one, the first form and the second – reformed, or translated, one. So indeed using the concept we can reasonably think of intercultural communication as ‘different only in degree, but not in essence, from the problem of intra-cultural understanding’ (Schröer, 2009).

CONCLUSIONS

The concept of culture as of a meaningful form, the form that is the only way for us to express our lived experience as well as to reach that of the Other’s allows us to see the essential analogy between linguistic forms and other cultural forms. Being expressions they are always dialogical and are always addressed to some Other, seeking to reach Other’s understanding. Thus hermeneutics as the study of understanding and its conditions as interpretational procedures is one of the primary thinking instruments to research the field of intercultural communication, where communicants face a specific challenge of a double cultural form standing in the way of understanding.

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