Understanding as Basis of Intercultural Communication: psycholinguistic, ethnosociocultural aspects and educational solutions

The authors of the article analyze cross-cultural communication from the viewpoint of social philosophy defining invariant features of cross-cultural communication based on dialogue (Mikhail Bakhtin) and dialect nature of human communication. Theoretical description of the nature of cross-cultural communication is illustrated by live examples of the cultural conflicts borrowed from the history of the Russian diplomacy. Since the consciousness has the communicative nature, whereas cross-cultural understanding is rooted in neuropsychological aspects of cognition, antinomy of “sign-symbol”, the article depicts the mechanisms of speech production and speech perception divided between the strata of consciousness and cognition.

The paper underlines the hermeneutic essence of the intercultural dialogue, which is born through understanding between communicators on the conceptual and semantic level, although more importantly intercultural and civilization dimension in the context of the multipolar world, taking into account global tendencies in socio-economic, ethnocultural, political worldorder of the different countries around the world. Internalization of education, information and telecommunication technologies catalyze intercultural communication, as a result form knowledge society inhabited by ‘homoloquens’. Intensive intercultural contacts quite often give rise to cultural conflicts. The author categorizes this phenomenon by ranging the mistakes, insufficient understanding, embarrassments and conflicts of intercultural communication, reveals in-depth socio-cultural paradigm, axiological, world outlook and religious aspects that cause negative outcomes of intercultural contacts.

Understanding in intercultural dialogue is composed of ethnosociocultural context and psycholinguistic mechanisms of speech perception and speech production. The operational item of understanding is considered to be a code which has a symbolic nature. The article depicts the interconnection between symbol, code, act of communication, consciousness and national world view.