Научная статья на тему 'The role of hermeneutic method in cross-cultural communication'

The role of hermeneutic method in cross-cultural communication Текст научной статьи по специальности «Языкознание и литературоведение»

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Ключевые слова
ГЕРМЕНЕВТИКА / ГЕРМЕНЕВТИЧЕСКИЙ МЕТОД / МЕЖКУЛЬТУРНАЯ КОММУНИКАЦИЯ / ЯЗЫК / ПЕРЕВОД / ИНТЕРПРЕТАЦИЯ / ТЕКСТ / HERMENEUTIC / HERMENEUTIC METHOD / CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION / LANGUAGE / TRANSLATION / INTERPRETATION / TEXT

Аннотация научной статьи по языкознанию и литературоведению, автор научной работы — Rtischeva Oksana Vladimirovna

Hermeneutics as a general science of interpretation can be traced back to more domain-specific applications in the ancient Greeks’ study of literature and ancient Biblical exegesis. Regarding texts as organic or coherent wholes, rather than collections of disjointed parts, the text is expected to be consistent in grammar, style and ideas. The outlook and values of people varied over different historical periods and cultures. The text and actions are as much products of their time as expressions of individuals, and their meanings were consequently constrained by both an orientation to values of their period and place. Hermeneutics emerged as a science of understanding, and it contributed to the development of specific strategies and methods of research the problems of understanding cross-cultural communication. In this study, we are interested in the problem of achieving cross-cultural communication through the interpretation of foreign text. Translation and interpretation are essential means of achieving understanding of cross-cultural communication. The goal of the research is defining the role of hermeneutical method in the process of cross-cultural communication; the object of the study is a foreign text. The text is propounded by the hermeneutical method in the first place. But it is necessary to make adjustments in the meaning of the text. Some representatives of hermeneutics tend to understand a text as only written facts of natural language. The meaning of the text is hidden from the subject of cognition, so it must be decrypted, understand, realize, and interpret. All these concepts can be synthesized in a general methodological category of “understanding”. In this study, the author suggests to consider the basic types (groups) of hermeneutic interpretation included into the translation process. These are language (grammatical) interpretation, stylistic interpretation, cultural and historical interpretation. Language (grammatical) interpretation, based on the study of a particular language, includes an analysis of words (vocabulary analysis, the meaning of words, their etymology, and metaphor consideration) and the analysis of phrases, grammatical forms. The importance of adequate perception of social and linguistic meaning of the words appears in translation. Stylistic interpretation reveals how the work (text) achieves its goal. These objectives can be stated in the preface, introduction and headings. In addition, the goal may lie outside the work, and in itself. An important component of stylistic interpretation is individual artistic style, it combines all the works of one author, and it is his individual creative method. Cultural and historical interpretation involves specific circumstances of creating the work (text). The scope of cultural and historical interpretation is infinite, the better and more detailed the era, and the culture is known, the better the work the element of the culture is understood.

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Текст научной работы на тему «The role of hermeneutic method in cross-cultural communication»

ФИЛОСОФИЯ

PHILOSOPHY

УДК 101.8

РОЛЬ ГЕРМЕНЕВТИЧЕСКОГО МЕТОДА В МЕЖКУЛЬТУРНОЙ КОММУНИКАЦИИ

Ртищева Оксана Владимировна, кандидат философских наук, доцент, директор социально-гуманитарного института, Кемеровский государственный университет культуры и искусств (г. Кемерово, РФ). E-mail: ortishheva@mail.ru

На отдельных этапах своего развития герменевтика понималась как метод исторической интерпретации, искусство перевода исторических текстов. Но герменевтический метод не ограничивается только принципом историчности. Безусловно, принцип историчности занимает в герменевтике не последнее место, и о нем правомерно говорить с точки зрения обусловленности любого истолкования конкретной исторической и социокультурной ситуации независимо от реальной дистанции, отделяющей объект интерпретации от интерпретатора. Однако нельзя забывать, что герменевтика возникла как наука о понимании, а это способствовало выработке определённой стратегии и методов исследования проблем понимания межкультурной коммуникации. Данное исследование посвящено проблеме достижения межкультурной коммуникации через интерпретацию иноязычного текста. Перевод и интерпретация являются важнейшими средствами достижения понимания в межкультурной коммуникации. Проблема интерпретации не исчерпывается уяснением герменевтического смысла и вообще истолкования. Практика интерпретации опирается на социальную обусловленность референции. Отношение интерпретации представляет собой основу, или вид контекстуальности и даже интерконтекстуальности. Это значит, что мир дан или, точнее, задан всегда в определенном контексте, в ситуации, во времени. Любая истолковывающая интерпретация отталкивается от общего понимания мира. В случае конфликта интерпретаций меняется не мировоззрение, а интерпретация.

Так как цель исследования - определить роль герменевтического метода в процессе межкультурной коммуникации, то объектом исследования является иноязычный текст. Герменевтический метод на первый план выдвигает текст. В данной статье автор предлагает рассмотреть и проанализировать основные виды-группы герменевтической интерпретации, включаемые в процесс перевода: языковая (грамматическая) интерпретация, стилистическая интерпретация, культурно-историческая интерпретация. Языковая (грамматическая) интерпретация не обращает внимания на художественные цели автора, на исторические обстоятельства функционирования сознания, она ориентирована на слова и их связи, точнее, на мысли и чувства, в них выраженные. Языковая интерпретация, основанная на изучении конкретного языка, включает в себя анализ слов (анализ лексикона, значений слов, их этимологии, рассмотрение метафор) и анализ словосочетаний, грамматических форм. Стилистическая интерпретация выявляет как данное произведение (текст) достигает своей цели. Эти цели могут быть указаны в предисловиях, введениях, заголовках. Причем цель может лежать и вне произведения, и в нем самом. Культурно-историческая интерпретация связана с выявлением конкретных обстоятельств создания текста (произведения). Мало знать автора, его язык и стиль. Всякий автор - сын своей эпохи. Сфера культурно-исторической интерпретации бесконечна, и чем лучше и детальней мы познаем эпоху и ее культуру, тем лучше мы поймем произведение - элемент данной культуры.

Ключевые слова: герменевтика, герменевтический метод, межкультурная коммуникация, язык, перевод, интерпретация, текст.

THE ROLE OF HERMENEUTIC METHOD IN CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION

Rtischeva Oksana Vladimirovna, Candidate of Philosophic Sciences, Docent, Director of Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities, Kemerovo State University of Culture and Arts (Kemerovo, Russian Federation). E-mail: ortishheva@mail.ru

Hermeneutics as a general science of interpretation can be traced back to more domain-specific applications in the ancient Greeks' study of literature and ancient Biblical exegesis. Regarding texts as organic or coherent wholes, rather than collections of disjointed parts, the text is expected to be consistent in grammar, style and ideas. The outlook and values of people varied over different historical periods and cultures. The text and actions are as much products of their time as expressions of individuals, and their meanings were consequently constrained by both an orientation to values of their period and place. Hermeneutics emerged as a science of understanding, and it contributed to the development of specific strategies and methods of research the problems of understanding cross-cultural communication. In this study, we are interested in the problem of achieving cross-cultural communication through the interpretation of foreign text. Translation and interpretation are essential means of achieving understanding of cross-cultural communication. The goal of the research is defining the role of hermeneutical method in the process of cross-cultural communication; the object of the study is a foreign text. The text is propounded by the hermeneutical method in the first place. But it is necessary to make adjustments in the meaning of the text. Some representatives of hermeneutics tend to understand a text as only written facts of natural language. The meaning of the text is hidden from the subject of cognition, so it must be decrypted, understand, realize, and interpret. All these concepts can be synthesized in a general methodological category of "understanding". In this study, the author suggests to consider the basic types (groups) of hermeneutic interpretation included into the translation process. These are language (grammatical) interpretation, stylistic interpretation, cultural and historical interpretation. Language (grammatical) interpretation, based on the study of a particular language, includes an analysis of words (vocabulary analysis, the meaning of words, their etymology, and metaphor consideration) and the analysis of phrases, grammatical forms. The importance of adequate perception of social and linguistic meaning of the words appears in translation. Stylistic interpretation reveals how the work (text) achieves its goal. These objectives can be stated in the preface, introduction and headings. In addition, the goal may lie outside the work, and in itself. An important component of stylistic interpretation is individual artistic style, it combines all the works of one author, and it is his individual creative method. Cultural and historical interpretation involves specific circumstances of creating the work (text). The scope of cultural and historical interpretation is infinite, the better and more detailed the era, and the culture is known, the better the work - the element of the culture is understood.

Keywords: hermeneutic, hermeneutic method, cross-cultural communication, language, translation, interpretation, text.

At different stages of its development herme-neutics was understood as a method of historical interpretation, the art of translating historical texts. But hermeneutical method is not limited only to the principle of historicity. Of course, the principle of historicity in hermeneutics takes not the last place, and it is correct to speak in terms of the conditionality of any particular interpretation of the historical and

social and cultural situation regardless of the actual distance separating the object of interpretation from the interpreter. But we must not forget that hermeneutics emerged as a science of understanding, and it contributed to the development of specific strategies and methods of research the problems of understanding cross-cultural communication. In this study, we are interested in the problem of

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achieving cross-cultural communication through the interpretation of foreign text. Translation and interpretation are essential means of achieving understanding of cross-cultural communication. The problem is not confined to clarify the meaning and general hermeneutical interpretation. The practice is based on the interpretation of social conditioning for reference. The attitude is the basis for interpretation, or the kind of contextual and even inter-contextual. This means that the world is given, or, more precisely, always set in a particular context, in a situation, in time. Any interpretation construed repelled from the common understanding of the world. In case of conflict between the interpretations, the outlook is changed but not interpretation.

Since the goal of our research is defining the role of hermeneutical method in the process of cross-cultural communication, the object of the study is a foreign text. The text is propounded by the hermeneutical method in the first place. But it is necessary to make adjustments in the meaning of the text. Some representatives of hermeneutics tend to understand a text as only written facts of natural language. For V. Dilthey's hermeneutics, the text was the art of understanding written facts. In other cases, the concept of text is expanded; the text is interpreted as a semiotic, sign system. From the sign nature of the text, it should be noted that the text is a carrier of information. Unit of information in the text is a simple sentence. Different logical connections of information units combine the meaning of simple sentences. The logic of these relationships (the logic of the text) defines the resulted sense as a whole. And if syntactic structures are considered explicitly by the researcher, the meaning of the text refers to a conceptual level of linguistic structures (sign systems) and, therefore, its assimilation methods should be fundamentally different than the research methods of syntactic structures [3, p. 65].

The meaning of the text is hidden from the subject of cognition, so it must be decrypted, understand, realize, and interpret. All these concepts can be synthesized in a general methodological category of "understanding" which has particular methodological sound in the humanities: interpretive methods of getting knowledge are nominated in the first place in these sciences.

At the turn of the XIX-XX centuries, the diversity of procedures has been reduced to traditional hermeneutics, for the four main types (groups) of interpretation: grammar (language), stylistic, cultural and historical and psychological (personality). E. Batty gives a similar distinction between types of interpretation as a method of hermeneutics, defining them as moments of hermeneutic understanding. E. Betty combines grammar (philological), style (technical and morphological) and the historic "moments" by the meaning of "recognition" interpretation, highlighting the psychological interpretation as "reproductive" interpretation, reproducing individual personal meaning. While E. Batty adds specific hermeneutical procedure -normative application (normative interpretation), which is associated with the implementation of interpretation regarding to a particular semantic form: theological, legal and scientific [5, p. 39].

Further, the basic types (groups) of hermeneutic interpretation included into the translation process are proposed to consider. Translation is a tool of cross-cultural communication in which a comparison of not only two languages is important but also two cultural communities, with their worldview, social and behavioral characteristics. M. Heidegger paid attention of translators to the fact that the interpretation of the words are given in the dictionary, and to challenge them is meaningless. It is important to understand what was thought at this translation [6].

Language (grammatical) interpretation ignores the artistic goals of the author and historical circumstances of consciousness functioning, it focuses on the words and their relationships, more precisely, to the thoughts and feelings expressed in them. Language (grammatical) interpretation, based on the study of a particular language, includes an analysis of words (vocabulary analysis, the meaning of words, their etymology, and metaphor consideration) and the analysis of phrases, grammatical forms. Language interpretation in the spirit of the author is identifying logical accents, accents, which can be detected, for example, from the word order. Confirmation of the fact that the greatest philosophical possibilities has the lexical system can be found in the L. Vaysgerber's concept of language picture of the world, which has a centrically word orientation. The category of

verbalization or filling the world with words is taken a central place in it [2]. Famous experts on Russian language picture of the world such as T. Bulygina and A. D. Shmelev noted: "We know that a clear reflection of the people's character and outlook is their language and, in particular, lexical composition. Analysis of Russian vocabulary suggests the peculiarities of Russian vision of the world and provides the arguments on the "Russian mentality" objective basis. " [1, p. 481]. The importance of adequate perception of social and linguistic meaning of the words appears in translation. Social and linguistic vocabulary associated with the national specific character of people using this language. Such vocabulary includes the words for everyday objects, ethnic dishes, customs, rituals, and objects unique to certain conditions. In the national context, it is perceived automatically; having full inherent semantic characteristics reflecting familiar objects sent extralinguistic reality. For the full perception of their foreign-language recipient an explanatory comment is needed, otherwise lacuna is formed -total or partial loss of word information transfer.

Stylistic interpretation reveals how the work (text) achieves its goal. These objectives can be stated in the preface, introduction and headings. Moreover, the goal may lie outside the work, and in itself. Firstly, stylistic interpretation has to do with the means of expression of the main idea of the work: metaphors, hyperbole and other tropes, allegories, alliteration, rhyme, meter, period. Secondly, qualitative specificity means of expression associated with a certain style -specific, national and individual are revealed. Thirdly, the author's stylistic dependence from precursors and contemporaries is appeared. The solution of the above mentioned three problems allows developing an idea of the work as an organic semantic whole. This is due to the integrity of the idea embodied in the work. The situation of cross-cultural communication applied in the text is the basis for using certain language means, which in turn determines its communicative stylistic character. Every word in the text has a certain stylistic function depending on the context, author's style, the nature of the entire message. In the translation, exactly the inherent specificity of words combination in a given language is revealed. In this situation, the context plays a vital role. The

immediate environment of any linguistic unit is always responsible for implementing its meaning. If the word is used in the occasional art context acquires additional meaning, then the repetition of the word in different contexts can be expected a certain accumulation of contextual increments that is a special development, relevant for this text semantic structure of the repeated word, which unlike verbal given is individual, not reproducible in other texts. An important component of stylistic interpretation is individual artistic style, it combines all the works of one author, and it is his individual creative method. In other words, the recipient finds the peculiarities of the work which have repetitive character. These facts are repeated and they have particular significance to the author's disclosure attitude, from the approach to the phenomena of reality and ending to linguistic means of their implementation.

Cultural and historical interpretation involves specific circumstances of creating the work (text). It is not enough to know the author, his language and style. Every author is the son of his era. The scope of cultural and historical interpretation is infinite and the better and more detailed we know the era and the culture, the better we understand the work - the element of the culture. These may be the historical facts and circumstances - perceived, and not perceived by the author. Therefore, cultural and historical interpretation can be carried out with the "subjective position" (the author's position), and with "objective" position (based on such facts concerning the circumstances of creating the work, which are taken from other sources). The national specificities include traditions and customs; consumer culture, closely associated with traditions; everyday behavior (habits of some representatives of the culture, norms of communication, national picture of the world, reflecting the specific perception of the world, national peculiarities of thinking, art culture, reflecting the cultural traditions of a particular ethnic group can be the components of the culture. But even being within their culture, but eventually separated from the reality described, the recipient may not understand the context of a particular historical period. And these gaps are not cross-cultural but internal. Huge number of such examples can be found in the novel "Eugenyi Onegin" by A. Pushkin. For example, "cab-

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stand" is parking for cabbies, and "ohtenka" is thrush, because Finns lived in Ohta on the outskirts of St. Petersburg and supplied the inhabitants of the capital with dairy products. Thus, a true understanding of the information is possible if the recipient has the similar knowledge as the sender has. If knowledge is different the gap is formed in the process of communication, and it is understood as the absence of something. Thereafter the perception of the translation is broken. This occurs when there is no special meaning in one language, which exists in the other. For example, the Russian words such as sovest, soul, Otchizna, Motherland, or Russian characters, the words which are typical for Russian folk tales such as a hut on chicken legs, Firebird, Bag of Bones, Vasilisa the Wise, can be translated into another language using functional replacements, but such a transfer does not disclose the cultural background specific to Russian. To know the meaning of words and grammar rules is not enough to interpret a particular text. You must know the era of creation: traditions, consumer culture, everyday behavior, artistic culture. In other words, in

addition to the meanings of words and grammar rules you need to know when to say / write, how, to whom, with whom, where; how the object of thought lives in the real language.

Creative author's individuality is inseparable from social, historical and cultural conditions, and his creative efforts, his work the author created under the influence of a complex unity of subjective and objective factors. Any work is created to communicate ideas, thoughts and experiences of the author, i. e. communicatively always directed. Therefore, it should be based on the whole text to obtain reliable data in the hermeneutical interpretation of foreign language text. It is important to take into account the principle of "hermeneutic circle", i. e. the unity of the whole is clarified by understanding the individual parts, and the meaning of each part is conceived through the whole context. Thus, the hermeneutic interpretation in the process of cross-cultural communication enriches own world of the recipient by comprehension of another reality, and this is constant renewal of ideas, thoughts and experiences of people.

Литература

1. Булыгина Т. В. Языковая концептуализация мира (на примере русской грамматики). - М.: Яз. рус. культуры, 1997. - 574 с.

2. Вайсгербер Й. Л. Родной язык и формирование духа / пер. с нем., вступ. ст. и коммент. О. А. Радченко. -М.: МГУ, 1993. - 223 с.

3. Залевская А. А. Некоторые проблемы теории понимания текста // Вопр. языкознания. - 2002. - № 3. -С. 62-74.

4. Михайлов А. А. Современная философская герменевтика: критический анализ. - Минск: Университет, 1984. - 191 с.

5. Тульчинский Г. Л. Интерпретация как историко-научная и методологическая проблема. - Новосибирск: Наука, 1986. - 208 с.

6. Хайдеггер М. Разговор на проселочной дороге. - М.: Высш. шк., 1991. - 192 с.

References

1. Bulygina T.V. Yazykovaya kontseptualizatsiya mira (na primere russkoy grammatiki) [Language conceptualization of the world (for example, Russian grammar)]. Moscow, Yazyki russkoy kul'tury Publ., 1997. 574 p. (In Russ.).

2. Vaisgerber Ja.L. Rodnoy yazyk i formirovanie dukha. Per. s nem., vstup. st. i. comment. O.A. Radchenko [Native language and the formation of the spirit; lane. with it., joined. art. and comments. O.A. Radchenko]. Moscow, MGU Publ., 1993. 223 p. (In Russ.).

3. Zalevskaya A.A. Nekotorye problemy teorii ponimaniya teksta [Some problems of the theory of text comprehension]. Voprosyyazykoznaniya [Questions of Linguistics], 2002, no 3, pp. 62-74 (In Russ.).

4. Mikhailov A.A. Sovremennaya filosofskaya germenevtika: kriticheskiy analiz [Modern philosophical hermeneutics: a critical analysis]. Minsk, Universitetskoe Publ., 1984, 191 p. (In Russ.).

5. Tul'chinskiy G.L. Interpretatsiya kak istoriko-nauchnaya i metodologicheskaya problema [Interpretation as a historical and scientific and methodological problems]. Novosibirsk, Nauka Publ., 1986. 208 p. (In Russ.).

6. Khaidegger M. Razgovor na proselochnoy doroge [Conversation on a country road]. Мoscow, Vysshaya shkola Publ., 1991. 192 p. (In Russ.).

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