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Ⅰ. Introduction
This paper discusses the nature,emergence and use of intercultures and their relation to encyclopaedic knowledge and cultural models in the framework of a sociocognitive approach to communication and pragmatics (Kecskes 2008;Kecskes & Zhang 2009;Kecskes 2010b)［13］.Intercultures as defined by (Kecskes 2011)［4］ are situationally emergent and coconstructed phenomena that rely both on relatively definable cultural models and norms as well as situationally evolving features.According to this definition interculturality has both relatively normative and emergent components.This approach somewhat differs from what other researchers views (e.g.Nishizaka 1995;BlumKulka et al.2008)［56］ in which it was pointed out (cf.Nishizaka 1995)［5］ pointed out that interculturality is a situationally emergent rather than a normatively fixed phenomenon.However,the sociocognitive approach (Kecskes 2008;Kecskes & Zhang 2009;Kecskes 2010b)［13］ to be explained later goes one step forward and defines interculturality as a phenomenon that is not only interactionally and socially constructed in the course of communication but also relies on relatively definable cultural models and norms that represent the speech communities to which the interlocutors belong.
Intercultures are usually ad hoc creations.They are generated in a communicative process in which cultural norms and models brought into the interaction from prior experience of interlocutors blend with features created ad hoc in the interaction in a synergetic way.The result is intercultural discourse in which there is mutual transformation of knowledge and communicative behavior rather than transmission.
Encyclopaedic knowledge refers to the knowledge of the world as distinguished from knowledge of the language system.The encyclopaedic view represents a model of the system of conceptual knowledge that underlies linguistic meaning.This system plays a profound role in how human beings make sense in communication.Traditionally the division between the ontology and the lexicon illustrates the distinction between encyclopedic and dictionary knowledge.Dictionary knowledge is supposed to cover the idiosyncracies of particular words,whereas encyclopedic knowledge covers everything regarding the underlying concepts. In cognitive linguistics,however,meaning,emerging from language use,is a function of the activation of conceptual knowledge structures as guided by context.Consequently,there is no principled distinction between semantics and pragmatics (e.g.Evans 2006;Fauconnier 1997)［78］. In cognitive approaches practically no sentence encodes a complete thought.Certain processes of contextual fillingin are required before anything of a propositional nature emerges at all (Carston,1998)［9］. Encyclopaedic knowledge is mostly represented in cultural models that provide scenarios or action plans for individuals of how to interpret and behave in a particular situation or how to interpret the behavior of others in one or another situation.In the sociocognitive paradigm (to be introduced below) culture is seen as a socially constituted set of various kinds of knowledge structures that individuals turn to as relevant situations permit,enable,and usually encourage.
In emerging intercultures encyclopaedic knowledge represents the relatively definable cultural models and norms that the interlocutors bring into the communicative situation based on their prior experience.This individual prior knowledge blends with the knowledge and information emerging from the actual situational context,and this blend creates a third space that we call intercultures.
Ⅱ. The Sociocognitive Approach (SCA)
The sociocognitive approach unites the societal and individual features of interaction and considers communication a dynamic process in which individuals are not only constrained by societal conditions but they also shape them at the same time.Speaker and hearer are equal participants of the communicative process.They both produce and comprehend speech relying on their most accessible and salient knowledge expressed in their private contexts in production and comprehension.Consequently,only a holistic interpretation of utterances from both the perspective of the speaker and the perspective of the hearer can give us an adequate account of language communication.
The sociocognitive approach to communication and knowledge transfer (Kecskes 2008;Kecskes and Zhang 2009;Kecskes 2010b)［13］ emphasizes the complex role of cultural and private mental models,and how these are applied categorically and/or reflectively by individuals in response to sociocultural environmental feedback mechanisms,and how this leads to and explains different meaning outcomes and knowledge transfer. In meaning construction and comprehension individuals rely both on preexisting encyclopaedic knowledge and knowledge created in the process of interaction.
1. A Synthesis of Positivist and Social Constructivist Perspectives
The sociocognitive approach tries to make a dialectical synthesis of positivism and social constructivism. According to the positivist epistemology knowledge consists of objective facts that can be measured independently of the inquiring,interpreting,and creative mind.Bernstein (1983)［10］8 argued that ″there is some permanent,ahistorical matrix or framework to which we can ultimately appeal in determining the nature of rationality,knowledge,truth,reality,goodness,or rightness″. In this paradigm research focuses on procedural measures rather than interpretive perspectives.It is usually assumed that stored knowledge provides templates for thinking as well as acting (e.g.Alvesson and Krreman 2001)［11］.Meaning is embedded in words and symbols rather than in the mind that perceives them. In contrast to the positivist approach the social constructivist perspective holds that knowledge and meaning are socially constructed.They are constituted and transferred through practices and activities (e.g.Wittgenstein 1953;Gherardi 2000,2001;Brown and Duguid 2001)［1215］. According to Vygotsky (1978) social reality and meaning only exist as we create them［16］.Social constructivists see language use as sociocultural construction.They put an emphasis on usage,and value the ways people currently use the language.Instead of looking for one selfprofessed authority to pronounce correct usage,constructivists would take a consensus of expert users.In sum,positivists consider words and texts as carriers of objectified meaning while for social constructivists practice (action,doing) plays that role. The sociocognitive approach argues that to equate practice with knowledge is to ignore the huge amount of preexisting knowledge that both speakers and hearers must have in common for the hearer to infer and categorize the intended meaning of a practice.Practice can hardly work without the presence of relevant cultural mental models with which people process the observed practice,or which they use to actually create practice.Even when we pass along simple routines by sharing them in practice (e.g.how to make a dish) we rely on the presence of a large amount of preexisting knowledge.Besides,practice does not provide semantic codes for its own decoding (i.e.sense making).Those codes must already exist in the mind of the interpreter (Ringberg and Reihlen 2008)［17］.However,they are dynamic rather than static constructs that can flexibly tailored as actual situational context requires.Without taking into account that meaning is mediated by peoples mental predisposed sociocultural models,practicebased research is unable to explain creativity,innovation,and the transfer of meaning among interlocutors.The social character of communication and knowledge transfer should not put communityofpractice theory at odds with individualistic approaches to knowledge.After all,social practices pass ′through the heads of people,and it is such heads that do the feeling,perceiving,thinking,and the like′ (Bunge,1996)［18］303.While communities of practice exist,members of those communities may still interpret shared practices differently.Collective cultural models are distributed to individuals in a privatized way.In order for members to share the meaning of a particular practice a huge amount of shared knowledge must already be present to assure common ground.Levinthal and Rerup (2006) argued that practice is similar to sentences in a text.Its grammar or structure is not meaningful apart from the meaning that is assigned by the receiver［19］.
The synthesis of the positivist and social constructivist views is a sociocognitive approach that acknowledges the importance of both societal and individual factors in meaning creation and comprehension as well as knowledge transfer.Shared cultural models privatized through individuals private experience and prior knowledge interact with the actual situational context in social interaction and practices (Kecskes 2008)［1］.
2. Communication in the Sociocognitive Paradigm
In the sociocognitive paradigm communication is driven by the interplay of cooperation required by societal conditions and egocentrism rooted in prior experience of the individual.Consequently,egocentrism and cooperation are not mutually exclusive phenomena.They are both present in all stages of communication to a different extent because they represent the individual and societal traits of the dynamic process of communication (Kecskes and Zhang 2009)［2］.On the one hand speakers and hearers are constrained by societal conditions but as individuals they all have their own goals,intention,desire,etc.that are freely expressed,and recognized in the flow of interaction. In the sociocognitive approach framed by the dynamic model of meaning (Kecskes 2008;Kecskes and Zhang 2009)［12］ communication is characterized by the interplay of two traits that are inseparable,mutually supportive and interactive:
Individual trait: Social trait:
attention intention
prior experience actual situational experience
egocentrism cooperation
salience relevance
Communication is the result of the interplay of intention and attention motivated by sociocultural background that is privatized individually by interlocutors.The sociocultural background is composed of encyclopaedic knowledge of interlocutors deriving from their prior experience tied to the linguistic expressions they use and current experience in which those expressions create and convey meaning.The process of privatalization through which the individual blends his prior experience with the actual situational (current) experience results in a dynamic process of meaning construction in which nothing is static.The two sides (prior and current) constantly change and affect each other.The definition of intercultures above emphasized that meaning construction relies both on relatively definable cultural models and norms as well as situationally evolving features.Prior experience is represented in relatively definable cultural models and norms that are related and/or blended with actual situational experience.
The sociocognitive approach integrates the pragmatic view of cooperation and the cognitive view of egocentrism,and emphasizes that both cooperation and egocentrism are manifested in all phases of communication to a varying extent.While cooperation is an intentiondirected practice and governed by relevance,egocentrism is an attentionoriented trait and governed by salience.Consequently,in communication we show our two sides.We cooperate by generating and formulating intention that is relevant to the given actual situational context.At the same time our egocentrism means that we activate the most salient information to our attention in the construction (speaker) and comprehension (hearer) of utterances.Language processing is anchored in the assumption that what is salient or accessible to oneself will also be accessible to ones interlocutors (Giora 2003;Barr & Keysar 2004;Colston 2004;Kecskes 2007)［2023］. Ⅲ. Encyclopaedic knowledge
Cognitive semanticists usually reject the idea that there is a distinction between ′core′ (dictionary) meaning on the one hand,and pragmatic,social or cultural meaning on the other.According to this approach there is no autonomous mental lexicon which contains semantic knowledge separately from other kinds of (linguistic or nonlinguistic) knowledge.Consequently,opposed to the traditional view,in the cognitive paradigm there is no distinction between dictionary knowledge and encyclopaedic knowledge.There is only encyclopaedic knowledge,which incorporates both linguistic and extralinguistic knowledge.
In cognitive linguistics encyclopaedic knowledge is viewed as a structured system of knowledge,organized as a network.Moreover,not all aspects of the knowledge that is,in principle,accessible by a single word has equal standing (e.g.Evans 2002). Several terms have been used to denote the structured system of knowledge.These terms only slightly differ from each other. Frames are preconceived understandings of a new situation (e.g.we have a faculty meeting).Scripts are sequences of activities that we associate with a particular situation (we have procedures to follow when having a faculty meeting).Scenarios are sets of organized units in cognitive processes.They are components we anticipate for any new situation that has been given a label that we understand (we have an understanding of who and what should be present during faculty meeting).Schemata are higher level knowledge that helps us understand a situation (our knowledge of practice in a faculty meeting).Mental or cultural models are logical sequences of thought that explain a situation,and give sense to a situation.There is some overlap between these terms but they give us some perspective from which to analyze our data.
Encyclopaedic meaning arises in context(s) of use.The ′selection′ of actual situational meaning is informed/determined by contextual factors.In the dictionary view of meaning,there is a separation of core meaning (semantics) from noncore actual meaning (pragmatics). The encyclopaedic view,however,claims that encyclopaedic knowledge is included in semantics,and meaning is determined by context.According to this approach there is no definable,preexisting word meaning because the meaning of a word in context is selected and shaped by encyclopaedic knowledge.
There are several theories in cognitive linguistics which adopt the encyclopaedic view such as Frame Semantics (Fillmore 1982;Fillmore and Atkins 1992)［24CD*2〗25］,the approach to domains in Cognitive Grammar (Langacker 1987)［26］,the approach to Dynamic Construal (Croft and Cruse 2004)［27］,and the Theory of Lexical Concepts and Cognitive ModelsLCCM Theory (Evans 2006)［7］. The core assumptions of cognitive linguistics about encyclopaedic knowledge are not always maintainable in the sociocognitive approach as we will see in the following sections. Ⅳ. Cultural Models and the Intersection of the Sociocultural and Individual
1. The Nature of Cultural Models
Cultural models are cognitive frames or templates of assumed or implicit knowledge that assist individuals in interpreting and understanding information and events.Encyclopaedic knowledge includes cultural models that are usually defined as ″a cognitive schema that is intersubjectively shared by a social group″ (DAndrade 1992)［28］99. There exist certain mental schemas which are activated when an individual experiences similar new situations or linguistic tasks.The notion of schema was first introduced by Immanuel Kant to account for the mediation between logical concepts and sensory information,which gives significance to our mental representations.Research exploring the intersection of culture and the individual claims that cognition consists of subsets of shared cultural models that organize much of how people make sense of the world (e.g.DAndrade 1992;DiMaggio 1997;Shore 1996)［2830］. DAndrade (1992) argued that a cultural model can be understood as ″an interpretation which is frequent,well organized,memorable,which can be made from minimal cues,contains one or more prototypic instantiations,and is resistant to change″［28］29. In cognitive linguistics the cultural models underlying reasoning and argumentation are considered to some extent idealized entities (see,for instance,the notion of Idealized Cognitive Models as introduced in Lakoff 1987)［31］.Geeraerts argued that actually occurring phenomena and actual situations usually differ to a smaller or greater extent from the models that act as cognitive reference points.The models themselves,appear to be somewhat abstract,general,or even simplistic,because we use them to make sense of phenomena that are oftentimes more complicated (Geeraerts 2006)［32］274.In the sociocognitive approach cultural models are core abstractions based on prior experience.They are ″privatized″ by the individual according to the actual situation context as we will see later.
Cultural models become internalized by individuals through everyday shared experiential processes (e.g.DiMaggio 1997)［29］. These experiential processes are cognitive patterns that develop from different types of inputs,such as instruction,activities,communication,observation,practices,etc.Each human being is exposed to various aspects of the sociocultural life,which leads to membership of a subset of sociocultural speech communities (Shore 1996)［30］.Each speech community is identified by a variety of dominant cultural models that provide certain assumptions and a certain outlook on the world.Because cultural models are a part of a persons cognitive resources,they influence his/her world view and behavior,as well as how s/he interprets and reacts to other peoples behavior,information,and situations. But we must be careful because although cultural models usually create a harmonizing effect,people are not cognitive clones of culture.Collective cultural models are internalized and privatized by individuals through their own experience and developed into private mental models. However,any sharp distinction between private and collective cultural models is purely analytical.In real life,such distinction is gradual and depends as much on an individuals cognitive dispositions as it does on life experience.Consider the following example:
(1) Car rental
Clerk: What can I do for you,sir?
Customer: I have a reservation.
Clerk: May I see your drivers license?
Customer: Sure.Here you are.
Most people are familiar with the cultural frame of renting a car.Certain situationbound utterances (see Kecskes 2000;2002;2010)［3335］ such as ″what can I do for you?″,″I have a reservation″,″May I see your drivers license?″ and the like are expected to be used in this frame.However,how exactly this frame is played off depends on the prior experience of the individuals who participate in its activation.
When language is used,its unique property is activated in two ways. When people speak or write,they craft what they need to express to fit the situation or context in which they are communicating. But,at the same time,the way people speak or write the words,expressions and utterances they use create that very situation,context and sociocultural frame in which the given communication occurs. Consequently,two things seem to happen simultaneously: people attempt to fit their language to a situation or context that their language,in turn,helped to create in the first place (Gee 1999)［36］. This dynamic behavior of human speech and reciprocal process between language and context basically eliminates the need to ask the everreturning question: Which comes first? The situation the speakers are in (e.g.faculty meeting,car renting,dinner ordering,etc.),or the particular language that is used in the given situation (expressions and utterances representing ways of talking and interacting)? Is this a ″car rental″ because participants are acting and speaking that way,or are they acting and speaking that way because this is a ″car rental″? Acting and speaking in a particular way constitutes social situations,sociocultural frames,and these frames require the use of a particular language. ″Which comes first″ does not seem to be a relevant question synchronically. Social and cultural routines result in recurring activities and institutions.However,these institutions and routinized activities have to be rebuilt continuously in the here and now. The question is whether these cultural models,institutions and frames exist outside language or not.The social constructivists insist that models and frames have to be rebuilt again and again so it is just our impression that they exist outside language.However,the sociocognitive approach argues that these cultural mental models have psychological reality in the individual mind,and when a concrete situation occurs the appropriate model is recalled,which supports the appropriate verbalization of triggered thoughts and activities.Of course,building and rebuilding our world occurs not merely through language but through the interaction of language with other reallife phenomena such as nonlinguistic symbol systems,objects,tools,technologies,etc. The individual is not only constrained to some extent by collective cultural models but also participates in creating them.Private models may originate from a persons creative (and even unintended) combination of existing cultural models as well as unique cognitive dispositions (self reflection,critical thinking,etc.).Some private models always remain idiosyncratic (i.e.private),while others may enter into the sociocultural framework and establish new cultural trends (cf.,e.g.,Berger and Luckmann 1967)［37］.Both private and cultural models help people organize events,make actions easier,and,as such,free up cognitive resources that can be applied to less familiar issues and experiences.
2. The ″Reality″ of Cultural Models
Language and culture are usually considered ″collective representations″,i.e.,socially constituted systems (e.g.Saussure 2002;Durkheim 1947;Kronenfeld 2008)［3840］.There are two main approaches to the debate about the actual existence of these systems.According to one of them these systems have been considered to be merely epiphenomenal,which means that they have no actual direct existence (cf.Kronenfeld 2008)［40］.However,they have the appearance of direct existence insofar as they are the byproducts of a group of individuals with similar minds confronting similar situations in similar contexts. The problem with this approach is that human beings usually talk about and rely upon language and culture as if they actually exist,as if they exist externally to them as individuals. Our individual understandings of language and culture are quite consistent across individuals.Generally it is more so than our sense of our own individual patterns. We have highly shared senses of the collective patterns,and each of us is capable of describing where we ourselves deviate,or are somewhat idiosyncratic.
The opposed view to nonexistence has been that these systems have some sort of objective existence outside the individual (e.g.Simmel 1972;Triandis 2002;Kecskes 2010b)［1，4142］. Culture is ″real″,and deals with the problem of the relationship between the individual and the given community.This approach sees a childs socialization or enculturation as a process by which basic cultural structures and schemata are ″internalized″ deeply into the individual psyche. However,these cultural models and schemata keep changing both diachronically and synchronically.Definitely there is a great difference of cultural models that existed a hundred years ago and the ones that we have in our time.Besides,the internalization process is not mechanical,i.e.,enculturation occurs as a bidirectional interaction between the individual and the social environment. When we talk about culture we usually mean ″subjective culture″ (cf.Triandis 2002)［42］,which is a communitys characteristic way of perceiving its social environment. However,there are generally two basic aspects of culture distinguished.When this distinction is not clarified confusion may occur about whether culture exists ″out there″ or not. One aspect of culture is subjective culture — the psychological feature of culture including assumptions,values,beliefs and patterns of thinking.The other is objective culture which includes the institutions and artifacts of culture,such as its economic system,social customs,political structures and processes,arts,crafts and literature.Objective culture can be treated as an externalization of subjective culture which usually becomes reified.This means that those institutions which are properly seen as extension of human activity attain an independent status as external entities.They seem to exist ″out there″,and their ongoing human origins are usually forgotten.The study of objective culture is well established because institutions and external artifacts of behavior are more accessible to observation and examination.Subjective culture is usually treated as an unconscious process influencing perception,thinking and memory,or as personal knowledge which is inaccessible to trainers or educators.
Simmel (1972) also makes a difference between subjective culture and objective culture with the later referring to the cultural level of social reality［41］.In his view,people produce culture,but because of their ability to reify social reality,the cultural world and the social world come to have lives of their own and increasingly dominate the actors who created them.We may also think about language like this.It has been created and is being created by people but appears to have a life of its own as an institution ″out there″. Simmel identified a number of components of objective culture,including tools,transportation,technology,the arts,language,the intellectual sphere,conventional wisdom,religious dogma,philosophical systems,legal systems,moral codes,and ideals.The size of objective culture increases with modernization.The number of different components of the cultural realm also grows.
Simmel was concerned about the effect of objective culture on the individuals subjective existence. Postmodernists have taken that concern to another level. In the past,most of the culture was produced by people situated in real social groups that interacted over real issues. This grounded culture created real meanings and morally infused norms,values,and beliefs. In the postmodern era,much of the culture is produced or colonized by business using advertising and mass media. This important historic shift implies that culture has changed from a representation of social reality to representations of commodified images.In our time culture is produced rather than created,and people have changed from culture creators to culture consumers. Ⅴ. Cultural Models at Work
1. Development of Cultural Models
Each of us has rich individual experiences,and the cognitive structuring that pertains to them may differ,whether coded linguistically or not. When we communicate with other people through language or otherwise,we need to interrelate our separate experience and cognitive structures.When we routinely,repeatedly do things with other people we usually develop some standardized way of doing.These shared action plans may emerge as cultural models.Kronenfeld (2008) argued that language gets involved when we need to verbally communicate,and then only with regard to those aspects of the action plan that need to be discussed and talked about or coded in memory. He emphasized that language is a socially constructed tool that can be exceedingly helpful to thought,but in no sense does it form the basis for individual thought,and it need not provide the basis for (much of) the shared or coordinated thought that makes up culture［40］.I think language plays a more important role than the one Kronenfeld assigns to it in culture.In fact,language supports both the development and reinforcement of cultural models,mainly through formulaic language which is the heart and soul of nativelike language use.Formulaic language generally serves as a core for language use in a speech community because prefabricated linguistic expressions usually mean the same for each member of the community. Languages and their speakers have preferred ways of saying things (cf.Wray 2002;Kecskes 2007)［23，43］.English native speakers shoot a film,dust the furniture,make love or ask you to help yourself at the table.The use of these expressions creates scenarios and gives a certain kind of idiomaticity to language use.For instance［23］:
(2)Jim: Let me tell you something.
Bob: Is something wrong?
The expression let me tell you something usually has negative connotation,it creates a scenario that anticipates trouble.
Our everyday communication is full of prefabricated expressions and utterances because we like to stick to preferred ways of saying things.Why is this so? Kecskes (2007) argued that there are three important reasons:
— Formulas decrease the processing load
There is psycholinguistic evidence that fixed expressions and formulas have an important economizing role in speech production (cf.Miller and Weinert 1998;Wray 2002)［4344］.Sinclairs idiom principle says that the use of prefabricated chunks ″...may...illustrate a natural tendency to economy of effort″ (Sinclair 1991)［45］110.This means that in communication we want to achieve more cognitive effects with less processing effort.Formulaic expressions ease the processing overload not only because they are ′readymade′ and do not require any ′putting together′ from the speaker/hearer,but also because their salient meanings are easily accessible in online production and processing. — Phrasal utterances have a strong framing power
Frames,cultural models are basic cognitive structures which guide the perception and representation of reality (Goffman 1974)［46］.Frames help determine which parts of reality become noticed.They are not consciously manufactured but are unconsciously adopted in the course of communicative processes.Formulaic expressions usually come with framing.Most fixed expressions are defined relative to a conceptual framework.If a policeman stops my car and says Step out of the car,please,this expression will create a particular frame in which the roles and expressions to be used are quite predictable.
— Formulaic units create shared bases for common ground in coordinating joint communicative actions.
The use of formulaic language requires shared experience and conceptual fluency.Tannen and ztek (1981) argued that ″cultures that have set formulas afford their members the tranquility of knowing that what they say will be interpreted by the addressee in the same way that it is intended,and that,after all,is the ultimate purpose of communication″［47］54.
Cultural models provide a kind of reference library for possible plans of action for oneself or possible interpretation of actions of others. These models are not learned directly as models,but are inferred anew by each of us from what we see and experience with those other people around us. But what we see and experience are never the models themselves.What we infer from experience is pieces of information,images,features that keep a scenario together.What we infer depends directly on what parts of the given scenario are saliently and repetitively present in the messages we experience for us to pull out the regularities on which we will base our construction of the scenario behind them.Thus systematic and repeated changes in speech or cultural behavior in one generation will be learned by the next generation as part of the givens of language or culture.
The cultural models that we actually experience (that is,cultural models,in the form in which we actually experience them) acquire specificity through the process of their instantiation in the concrete situations in which the models were realized. Much of our application of cultural models (instantiation and then realization) is in situations that represent some kind of extension from the prototypical,unmarked default situation. The core of cultural models shared by people in the same speech community changes diachronically through systematic and repeated shifts that can come from sociopolitical changes,technological changes,environmental changes and the like.The application of the core,however changes synchronically.No situation occurs exactly the same way as we have experienced it in any previous time. In the sociocognitive paradigm action is always by individuals,and individuals are always adapting cultural forms to fit their needs.People use cultural models as devices to facilitate effective interaction with others in the various communities to which they belong.
In this way individuals not only shape cultural models but also are constrained by them.Most of these cultural models come from peoples past experience,but they are constantly recreated in use. This is how the societal and individual intertwine.It is important to note that people are not required to follow cultural conventions (whether in the use of cultural models or in other ways).In any given time they can ignore or modify cultural models that kick in their mind when they get into a typical situation.Given cultural models can (and often do) show slight variations across groups to which we all belong — groups that can be formal or informal,longlived or evanescent,imposed or voluntary,and so forth.
2. Instantiating Cultural Models
Cultural models are abstract plans at varying degrees of specificity.They relate knowledge,goals,values,perceptions,emotional states,etc.to actions in different contexts.Kronenfeld (2008) argued that these conceptual models do not directly or automatically apply to any specific situation［40］. First they have to be ″instantiated″ by having their general generic details replaced with the specific details of the situation at issue. The instantiated cultural model is still only a conceptual structure,and several different (even,mutually contradictory) ones may be taken into consideration for any given situation. Finally one particular instantiated model is ″realized″ in the actual concrete situation.This can be an action plan for ones own behavior,or a device for interpreting the behavior of some other people.It is important to note that at any given moment only one instantiated model can be realized.But we can quickly jump back and forth between different realizations.
The relationship between the abstract collective cultural model and the private realization of the model by interlocutors in a concrete situation is the same as in linguistics between ′phonemes′ and ′phones′ or between ′morphemes′ and ′morphs′. We consider ′phones′ as the actual phonetic realization of ′phonemes′,and morphs as the actual forms used to realize ′morphemes. In his pragmatic acts theory,Mey (2001) also spoke about ″pragmemes″ that are instantiated in pragmatic acts in speech situations［48］.A particular pragmeme can be substantiated and realized through individual pragmatic acts.In other words,a pragmatic act is an instance of adapting oneself to a context,as well as adapting the context to oneself.Consider for instance: (3) She is after my money.
Like I care.
″Like I care″ is a pragmatic act that expresses the pragmeme ″I do not care″,which can be also substantiated by several other concrete pragmatic acts such as ″I do not care″,″I do not mind″,″its none of my business″,etc.According to Mey,pragmatic acts are situationderived and situationconstrained. There is no onetoone relationship between speech acts and pragmatic acts because the latter does not necessarily include specific acts of speech.Consider for instance:
(4)Mother: Joshua,what are you doing?
Joshua: Nothing.
Mother: Will you stop it immediately. (Mey 2001)［48］216
The pragmeme represented by the pragmatic act ″Nothing″ can be described as ″trying to get out (opt out) of a conversation″ that may lead too far.
But pragmemes in the sense as Mey uses the term are not cultural models.They are more like scenarios within cultural models.However,the process of instantiation happens similarly both in the case of pragmemes and cultural models.
3. Practices
Culture includes many practices or routines.Feldman and Pentland (2003) argued that routines (i.e.practices) consist of two elements: the ostensive and the performative［49］.The ostensive element comprises individuals cognitive understanding of the processes,while the performative element consists of actual behavior in the actual situational context.From a sociocognitive perspective both of these processes should be of interest for us.Cognitive understanding relies both on cultural and private models,and on how these models are applied by cognitive processing,spanning from excessive automatic (as in categorical) thinking to selfreflective (as in reflective) thinking (see Ringberg and Reihlen 2008)［17］.When categorical thinking is applied,people establish meaning by automatically integrating incoming stimuli based on existing cultural and private models. Kecskes (2008) argued that in the process of communication speakers private context generated by intention gets encoded in lexical units and formulated in an utterance (actual linguistic context) that is uttered (or written) ″out there″ in the world by a speaker in a situation (actual situational context),and is matched (″internalized″) to the private cognitive contexts ″inside″ the head of the hearer (prior knowledge)［1］.Meaning is the result of interplay between the speakers private context and the hearers private context in the actual situational context as understood by the interlocutors. Research in social cognition indicates that several epistemic factors can affect the applicability of categorical thinking (Ringberg and Reihlen 2008)［17］.For instance,people usually apply categorical thinking in everyday routines,when they have high cognitive load,are under pressure to make quick decisions,have limited cognitive capacity,and/or are distracted.Categorical thinking generally leads to efficient processing of regular sociocultural interactions and stimuli.As a consequence of relying on categorical thinking,environmental stimuli are ′pushed′ into existing mental models.This may prevent the person from adjusting to divergent inputs and unusual circumstances.In communication this phenomenon is observable in the use of prefabricated linguistic units and situationbound utterances.Consider for instance:
(5)Assistant: Can I help you,Madame?
Customer: Thank you. Im just looking.
In this conversation ″Can I help you?″ and ″Im just looking″ function as plain situationbound utterances (Kecskes 2000;2002)［3334］. The customer is distracted because she is busy looking at clothes and wants to get rid of the assistant.
Reflective processing works in a different way. It requires the ability of people to sustain a high level of cognitive responsiveness and combine,or broaden internalized cultural and private models in thoughtful and creative ways to improve their sense making.The degree of application of categorical versus reflective thinking varies across situational contexts,and life experience and general acumen are also important variables.In reflective thinking,cultural and private models are applied in nonautomatic fashions.Ringberg and Reihlen (2008)［17］923 argued that reflective thinking is a proactive process that occurs when a person has the cognitive capacity and need for deliberate cognition to engage with stimuli that are not easily or usefully made sense of by a categorical application of private and/or cultural models.Categoryinconsistent information may activate reflective thought processes among some people through which they recombine cultural and private models in deliberate ways to improve the relevance of their sensemaking of a particular situation (e.g.Bodenhausen,Macrae and Garst 1998;Wilson and Sperber 2004)［5051］.This can be demonstrated in the following conversation:
(6)Jill: I met someone today.
Jane: Good for you.
Jill: He is a police officer.
Jane: Are you in trouble? Jill: Oh,no,I liked the man.We met in a cafe.He was nice and polite.
Jane: Not all of them are...
In this conversation there is a clear difference between the two womens private context tied to the word ″police officer″.The collective cultural model attached to ″police officer″ has been changed in Jills privatized model as a result of the positive experience while this is not the case with Jane.She appears to have a private model that is close to the collective cultural model.
The sociocognitive approach incorporates cultural and private models into categorical and reflective processing.This means that most of the time a cognitive system is neither fully closed nor fully open,it is neither fully determined nor independent of external sensory inputs,and people are neither autonomous processors nor cultural dopes.Consequently,meaning creation and knowledge transfer are located somewhere on a continuum between fully automatic and fully idiosyncratic.This depends on several variables that include the nature of peoples private and cultural models,level of categorical and reflective thinking,and environmental feedback mechanisms.The sociocognitive approach broadens traditional positivist and socialconstructionist positions by situating sensemaking within the mind (and body) that may be influenced but rarely determined by environmental feedback mechanisms (Bandura 1986;Bunge 1996)［18,52］.The sociocognitive model provides a more comprehensive and systemic understanding of the roles of cognitive factors and environmental feedback mechanisms.
Ⅵ. Role of Enyclopaedic Knowledge in Creating Intercultures
Interculturality has both an a priori side and an emergent side that occur and act simultaneously in the communicative process.Consequently,intercultures are not fixed phenomena but they are created in the course of communication in which participants belong to different L1 speech communities,speak a common language and represent different cultural norms and models that are defined by their respective L1 speech community.The following conversation (source Albany English Lingua Franca Dataset collected by PhD students) between a Brazilian girl and a Polish woman illustrates this point well.
(7) Brazilian: And what do you do?
Pole: I work at the university as a cleaner.
B: As a janitor?
P: No,not yet.Janitor is after the cleaner.
B: You want to be a janitor?
P: Of course. In this conversation interlocutors represent two different languages and cultures (Brazilian and Polish),and use English as a lingua franca.This is the prior knowledge that participants bring to the interaction.They create an interculture,which belongs to none of them but emerges in the course of conversation.Within this interculture the two speakers have a smooth conversation about the job of the Polish woman.Neither of them is sure what the right term is for the job the Polish woman has.There are no misunderstandings in the interaction because each participant is careful to use semantically transparent language in order to be as clear as possible.The Polish woman sets up a ″hierarchy″ that is nonexisting in the target language culture (″cleaner → janitor″).However,this is an emergent element of the interculture the speakers have been constructing.This is where the L1based encyclopaedic knowledge of the speakers becomes very important.Speakers propose certain ways to create common ground.These particular ways rely on their prior experience governed by their first language culture.
Intercultures come and go,so they are neither stable nor permanent.They just occur.They are both synergetic and blended.Interculturality is constituted on the spot by interlocutors who participate in the conversation.But isnt this a phenomenon that also occurs in intracultural communication? Why and how should we distinguish intercultural communication from intracultural communication? Basically the currently dominant approach to this issue is that there is no principled difference between intracultural and intercultural communication (e.g.Winch 1997;Wittgenstein 2001)［5354］.This is true as far as the mechanism of the communicative process is concerned.However,there is a qualitative difference in the nature and content of an intracultural interaction and an intercultural interaction.Speakers in intracultural communication rely on prior knowledge and culture of a relatively definable speech community,which is privatized by individuals belonging to that speech community.No language boundaries are crossed,however subcultures are relied upon and representations are individualized.What is created on the spot enriches the given culture,contributes to it and remains within the fuzzy but still recognizable confines of that language and culture.In the case of intercultural communication,however,prior knowledge that is brought into and privatized in the communicative process belongs to different cultures and languages,and what participants create on the spot will disappear and not become an enrichment and/or addition to any particular culture or language.Intercultures are ad hoc creations that may enhance the individual and the globalization process but can hardly be said to contribute to any particular culture.This is exactly what we see in example (7) above.Speakers created a hierarchy between ″cleaner″ and ″janitor″ just to create common ground and assure their own mutual private understanding of a given situation.This interculture disappears when they stop talking.However,this is not always the case.Intercultures can also be reoccurring for a while in certain cases such as international negotiating teams,international classroom,international tourist groups,etc.Kasper and BlumKulka,(1993) talked about ″intercultural style″ which means that speakers fully competent in two languages may create an intercultural style of speaking that is both related to and distinct from the styles prevalent in the two substrata,a style on which they rely regardless of the language being used［55］. Kasper and BlumKulka (1993) claimed that the hypothesis is supported by many studies of crosscultural communication,especially those focusing on interactional sociolinguistics (e.g.Gumperz,1982;Tannen,1985)［5657］ and research into the pragmatic behavior of immigrant populations across generations (e.g.Clyne,Ball,and Neil,1991)［58］. Ⅶ. Conclusion
In this chapter the focus has been on the nature and role of encyclopaedic knowledge in relation to intercultures.A sociocognitive approach was used to interpret and discuss the issues raised in connection with the subject matter.This theory helps us understand how encyclopaedic knowledge through its cultural models can function both as a repository of knowledge that changes diachronically and as synchronically changing emergent knowledge created in the process of communication.A significant part of encyclopaedic knowledge is instantiated in cultural models that provide scenarios,scripts or action plans for individuals to interpret and behave in a particular situation,or process and interpret the behavior of others in various life situations.
The sociocognitive approach (Kecskes 2008;Kecskes 2010b;Kecskes 2011)［1,34］ defines interculturality as a phenomenon that is not only interactionally and socially constructed in the course of communication but also relies on relatively definable cultural models and norms that represent the speech communities to which the interlocutors belong. Consequently,interculturality has both relatively normative and emergent components.In order for us to understand the dynamism and everchanging nature of intercultural encounters we need to approach interculturality dialectically.Cultural constructs and models change diachronically while cultural representation and speech production by individuals changes synchronically.Intercultures are ad hoc creations.They are created in a communicative process in which cultural norms and models as representatives of encyclopaedic knowledge are brought into the interaction from prior experience of interlocutors and blend with features created ad hoc in the interaction in a synergetic way.The result is intercultural discourse in which there is mutual transformation of knowledge and communicative behavior rather than transmission.The emphasis is on transformation rather than on transmission.
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Received date: 20120621
Website: http://www.journals.zju.edu.cn/soc
Online first date: 20120703
Authou profile: Istvan Kecskes is Professor of Linguistics and Communication at the State University of New York,Albany. His research focuses on pragmatics,second language acquisition and bilingualism. In his latest publications he has been writing on a sociocognitive approach to pragmatics that attempts to synthesize the ″socioculturalinteractional″ and ″cognitivephilosophical″ perspectives.
This paper discusses the nature,emergence and use of intercultures and their relation to encyclopaedic knowledge and cultural models in the framework of a sociocognitive approach to communication and pragmatics (Kecskes 2008;Kecskes & Zhang 2009;Kecskes 2010b)［13］.Intercultures as defined by (Kecskes 2011)［4］ are situationally emergent and coconstructed phenomena that rely both on relatively definable cultural models and norms as well as situationally evolving features.According to this definition interculturality has both relatively normative and emergent components.This approach somewhat differs from what other researchers views (e.g.Nishizaka 1995;BlumKulka et al.2008)［56］ in which it was pointed out (cf.Nishizaka 1995)［5］ pointed out that interculturality is a situationally emergent rather than a normatively fixed phenomenon.However,the sociocognitive approach (Kecskes 2008;Kecskes & Zhang 2009;Kecskes 2010b)［13］ to be explained later goes one step forward and defines interculturality as a phenomenon that is not only interactionally and socially constructed in the course of communication but also relies on relatively definable cultural models and norms that represent the speech communities to which the interlocutors belong.
Intercultures are usually ad hoc creations.They are generated in a communicative process in which cultural norms and models brought into the interaction from prior experience of interlocutors blend with features created ad hoc in the interaction in a synergetic way.The result is intercultural discourse in which there is mutual transformation of knowledge and communicative behavior rather than transmission.
Encyclopaedic knowledge refers to the knowledge of the world as distinguished from knowledge of the language system.The encyclopaedic view represents a model of the system of conceptual knowledge that underlies linguistic meaning.This system plays a profound role in how human beings make sense in communication.Traditionally the division between the ontology and the lexicon illustrates the distinction between encyclopedic and dictionary knowledge.Dictionary knowledge is supposed to cover the idiosyncracies of particular words,whereas encyclopedic knowledge covers everything regarding the underlying concepts. In cognitive linguistics,however,meaning,emerging from language use,is a function of the activation of conceptual knowledge structures as guided by context.Consequently,there is no principled distinction between semantics and pragmatics (e.g.Evans 2006;Fauconnier 1997)［78］. In cognitive approaches practically no sentence encodes a complete thought.Certain processes of contextual fillingin are required before anything of a propositional nature emerges at all (Carston,1998)［9］. Encyclopaedic knowledge is mostly represented in cultural models that provide scenarios or action plans for individuals of how to interpret and behave in a particular situation or how to interpret the behavior of others in one or another situation.In the sociocognitive paradigm (to be introduced below) culture is seen as a socially constituted set of various kinds of knowledge structures that individuals turn to as relevant situations permit,enable,and usually encourage.
In emerging intercultures encyclopaedic knowledge represents the relatively definable cultural models and norms that the interlocutors bring into the communicative situation based on their prior experience.This individual prior knowledge blends with the knowledge and information emerging from the actual situational context,and this blend creates a third space that we call intercultures.
Ⅱ. The Sociocognitive Approach (SCA)
The sociocognitive approach unites the societal and individual features of interaction and considers communication a dynamic process in which individuals are not only constrained by societal conditions but they also shape them at the same time.Speaker and hearer are equal participants of the communicative process.They both produce and comprehend speech relying on their most accessible and salient knowledge expressed in their private contexts in production and comprehension.Consequently,only a holistic interpretation of utterances from both the perspective of the speaker and the perspective of the hearer can give us an adequate account of language communication.
The sociocognitive approach to communication and knowledge transfer (Kecskes 2008;Kecskes and Zhang 2009;Kecskes 2010b)［13］ emphasizes the complex role of cultural and private mental models,and how these are applied categorically and/or reflectively by individuals in response to sociocultural environmental feedback mechanisms,and how this leads to and explains different meaning outcomes and knowledge transfer. In meaning construction and comprehension individuals rely both on preexisting encyclopaedic knowledge and knowledge created in the process of interaction.
1. A Synthesis of Positivist and Social Constructivist Perspectives
The sociocognitive approach tries to make a dialectical synthesis of positivism and social constructivism. According to the positivist epistemology knowledge consists of objective facts that can be measured independently of the inquiring,interpreting,and creative mind.Bernstein (1983)［10］8 argued that ″there is some permanent,ahistorical matrix or framework to which we can ultimately appeal in determining the nature of rationality,knowledge,truth,reality,goodness,or rightness″. In this paradigm research focuses on procedural measures rather than interpretive perspectives.It is usually assumed that stored knowledge provides templates for thinking as well as acting (e.g.Alvesson and Krreman 2001)［11］.Meaning is embedded in words and symbols rather than in the mind that perceives them. In contrast to the positivist approach the social constructivist perspective holds that knowledge and meaning are socially constructed.They are constituted and transferred through practices and activities (e.g.Wittgenstein 1953;Gherardi 2000,2001;Brown and Duguid 2001)［1215］. According to Vygotsky (1978) social reality and meaning only exist as we create them［16］.Social constructivists see language use as sociocultural construction.They put an emphasis on usage,and value the ways people currently use the language.Instead of looking for one selfprofessed authority to pronounce correct usage,constructivists would take a consensus of expert users.In sum,positivists consider words and texts as carriers of objectified meaning while for social constructivists practice (action,doing) plays that role. The sociocognitive approach argues that to equate practice with knowledge is to ignore the huge amount of preexisting knowledge that both speakers and hearers must have in common for the hearer to infer and categorize the intended meaning of a practice.Practice can hardly work without the presence of relevant cultural mental models with which people process the observed practice,or which they use to actually create practice.Even when we pass along simple routines by sharing them in practice (e.g.how to make a dish) we rely on the presence of a large amount of preexisting knowledge.Besides,practice does not provide semantic codes for its own decoding (i.e.sense making).Those codes must already exist in the mind of the interpreter (Ringberg and Reihlen 2008)［17］.However,they are dynamic rather than static constructs that can flexibly tailored as actual situational context requires.Without taking into account that meaning is mediated by peoples mental predisposed sociocultural models,practicebased research is unable to explain creativity,innovation,and the transfer of meaning among interlocutors.The social character of communication and knowledge transfer should not put communityofpractice theory at odds with individualistic approaches to knowledge.After all,social practices pass ′through the heads of people,and it is such heads that do the feeling,perceiving,thinking,and the like′ (Bunge,1996)［18］303.While communities of practice exist,members of those communities may still interpret shared practices differently.Collective cultural models are distributed to individuals in a privatized way.In order for members to share the meaning of a particular practice a huge amount of shared knowledge must already be present to assure common ground.Levinthal and Rerup (2006) argued that practice is similar to sentences in a text.Its grammar or structure is not meaningful apart from the meaning that is assigned by the receiver［19］.
The synthesis of the positivist and social constructivist views is a sociocognitive approach that acknowledges the importance of both societal and individual factors in meaning creation and comprehension as well as knowledge transfer.Shared cultural models privatized through individuals private experience and prior knowledge interact with the actual situational context in social interaction and practices (Kecskes 2008)［1］.
2. Communication in the Sociocognitive Paradigm
In the sociocognitive paradigm communication is driven by the interplay of cooperation required by societal conditions and egocentrism rooted in prior experience of the individual.Consequently,egocentrism and cooperation are not mutually exclusive phenomena.They are both present in all stages of communication to a different extent because they represent the individual and societal traits of the dynamic process of communication (Kecskes and Zhang 2009)［2］.On the one hand speakers and hearers are constrained by societal conditions but as individuals they all have their own goals,intention,desire,etc.that are freely expressed,and recognized in the flow of interaction. In the sociocognitive approach framed by the dynamic model of meaning (Kecskes 2008;Kecskes and Zhang 2009)［12］ communication is characterized by the interplay of two traits that are inseparable,mutually supportive and interactive:
Individual trait: Social trait:
attention intention
prior experience actual situational experience
egocentrism cooperation
salience relevance
Communication is the result of the interplay of intention and attention motivated by sociocultural background that is privatized individually by interlocutors.The sociocultural background is composed of encyclopaedic knowledge of interlocutors deriving from their prior experience tied to the linguistic expressions they use and current experience in which those expressions create and convey meaning.The process of privatalization through which the individual blends his prior experience with the actual situational (current) experience results in a dynamic process of meaning construction in which nothing is static.The two sides (prior and current) constantly change and affect each other.The definition of intercultures above emphasized that meaning construction relies both on relatively definable cultural models and norms as well as situationally evolving features.Prior experience is represented in relatively definable cultural models and norms that are related and/or blended with actual situational experience.
The sociocognitive approach integrates the pragmatic view of cooperation and the cognitive view of egocentrism,and emphasizes that both cooperation and egocentrism are manifested in all phases of communication to a varying extent.While cooperation is an intentiondirected practice and governed by relevance,egocentrism is an attentionoriented trait and governed by salience.Consequently,in communication we show our two sides.We cooperate by generating and formulating intention that is relevant to the given actual situational context.At the same time our egocentrism means that we activate the most salient information to our attention in the construction (speaker) and comprehension (hearer) of utterances.Language processing is anchored in the assumption that what is salient or accessible to oneself will also be accessible to ones interlocutors (Giora 2003;Barr & Keysar 2004;Colston 2004;Kecskes 2007)［2023］. Ⅲ. Encyclopaedic knowledge
Cognitive semanticists usually reject the idea that there is a distinction between ′core′ (dictionary) meaning on the one hand,and pragmatic,social or cultural meaning on the other.According to this approach there is no autonomous mental lexicon which contains semantic knowledge separately from other kinds of (linguistic or nonlinguistic) knowledge.Consequently,opposed to the traditional view,in the cognitive paradigm there is no distinction between dictionary knowledge and encyclopaedic knowledge.There is only encyclopaedic knowledge,which incorporates both linguistic and extralinguistic knowledge.
In cognitive linguistics encyclopaedic knowledge is viewed as a structured system of knowledge,organized as a network.Moreover,not all aspects of the knowledge that is,in principle,accessible by a single word has equal standing (e.g.Evans 2002). Several terms have been used to denote the structured system of knowledge.These terms only slightly differ from each other. Frames are preconceived understandings of a new situation (e.g.we have a faculty meeting).Scripts are sequences of activities that we associate with a particular situation (we have procedures to follow when having a faculty meeting).Scenarios are sets of organized units in cognitive processes.They are components we anticipate for any new situation that has been given a label that we understand (we have an understanding of who and what should be present during faculty meeting).Schemata are higher level knowledge that helps us understand a situation (our knowledge of practice in a faculty meeting).Mental or cultural models are logical sequences of thought that explain a situation,and give sense to a situation.There is some overlap between these terms but they give us some perspective from which to analyze our data.
Encyclopaedic meaning arises in context(s) of use.The ′selection′ of actual situational meaning is informed/determined by contextual factors.In the dictionary view of meaning,there is a separation of core meaning (semantics) from noncore actual meaning (pragmatics). The encyclopaedic view,however,claims that encyclopaedic knowledge is included in semantics,and meaning is determined by context.According to this approach there is no definable,preexisting word meaning because the meaning of a word in context is selected and shaped by encyclopaedic knowledge.
There are several theories in cognitive linguistics which adopt the encyclopaedic view such as Frame Semantics (Fillmore 1982;Fillmore and Atkins 1992)［24CD*2〗25］,the approach to domains in Cognitive Grammar (Langacker 1987)［26］,the approach to Dynamic Construal (Croft and Cruse 2004)［27］,and the Theory of Lexical Concepts and Cognitive ModelsLCCM Theory (Evans 2006)［7］. The core assumptions of cognitive linguistics about encyclopaedic knowledge are not always maintainable in the sociocognitive approach as we will see in the following sections. Ⅳ. Cultural Models and the Intersection of the Sociocultural and Individual
1. The Nature of Cultural Models
Cultural models are cognitive frames or templates of assumed or implicit knowledge that assist individuals in interpreting and understanding information and events.Encyclopaedic knowledge includes cultural models that are usually defined as ″a cognitive schema that is intersubjectively shared by a social group″ (DAndrade 1992)［28］99. There exist certain mental schemas which are activated when an individual experiences similar new situations or linguistic tasks.The notion of schema was first introduced by Immanuel Kant to account for the mediation between logical concepts and sensory information,which gives significance to our mental representations.Research exploring the intersection of culture and the individual claims that cognition consists of subsets of shared cultural models that organize much of how people make sense of the world (e.g.DAndrade 1992;DiMaggio 1997;Shore 1996)［2830］. DAndrade (1992) argued that a cultural model can be understood as ″an interpretation which is frequent,well organized,memorable,which can be made from minimal cues,contains one or more prototypic instantiations,and is resistant to change″［28］29. In cognitive linguistics the cultural models underlying reasoning and argumentation are considered to some extent idealized entities (see,for instance,the notion of Idealized Cognitive Models as introduced in Lakoff 1987)［31］.Geeraerts argued that actually occurring phenomena and actual situations usually differ to a smaller or greater extent from the models that act as cognitive reference points.The models themselves,appear to be somewhat abstract,general,or even simplistic,because we use them to make sense of phenomena that are oftentimes more complicated (Geeraerts 2006)［32］274.In the sociocognitive approach cultural models are core abstractions based on prior experience.They are ″privatized″ by the individual according to the actual situation context as we will see later.
Cultural models become internalized by individuals through everyday shared experiential processes (e.g.DiMaggio 1997)［29］. These experiential processes are cognitive patterns that develop from different types of inputs,such as instruction,activities,communication,observation,practices,etc.Each human being is exposed to various aspects of the sociocultural life,which leads to membership of a subset of sociocultural speech communities (Shore 1996)［30］.Each speech community is identified by a variety of dominant cultural models that provide certain assumptions and a certain outlook on the world.Because cultural models are a part of a persons cognitive resources,they influence his/her world view and behavior,as well as how s/he interprets and reacts to other peoples behavior,information,and situations. But we must be careful because although cultural models usually create a harmonizing effect,people are not cognitive clones of culture.Collective cultural models are internalized and privatized by individuals through their own experience and developed into private mental models. However,any sharp distinction between private and collective cultural models is purely analytical.In real life,such distinction is gradual and depends as much on an individuals cognitive dispositions as it does on life experience.Consider the following example:
(1) Car rental
Clerk: What can I do for you,sir?
Customer: I have a reservation.
Clerk: May I see your drivers license?
Customer: Sure.Here you are.
Most people are familiar with the cultural frame of renting a car.Certain situationbound utterances (see Kecskes 2000;2002;2010)［3335］ such as ″what can I do for you?″,″I have a reservation″,″May I see your drivers license?″ and the like are expected to be used in this frame.However,how exactly this frame is played off depends on the prior experience of the individuals who participate in its activation.
When language is used,its unique property is activated in two ways. When people speak or write,they craft what they need to express to fit the situation or context in which they are communicating. But,at the same time,the way people speak or write the words,expressions and utterances they use create that very situation,context and sociocultural frame in which the given communication occurs. Consequently,two things seem to happen simultaneously: people attempt to fit their language to a situation or context that their language,in turn,helped to create in the first place (Gee 1999)［36］. This dynamic behavior of human speech and reciprocal process between language and context basically eliminates the need to ask the everreturning question: Which comes first? The situation the speakers are in (e.g.faculty meeting,car renting,dinner ordering,etc.),or the particular language that is used in the given situation (expressions and utterances representing ways of talking and interacting)? Is this a ″car rental″ because participants are acting and speaking that way,or are they acting and speaking that way because this is a ″car rental″? Acting and speaking in a particular way constitutes social situations,sociocultural frames,and these frames require the use of a particular language. ″Which comes first″ does not seem to be a relevant question synchronically. Social and cultural routines result in recurring activities and institutions.However,these institutions and routinized activities have to be rebuilt continuously in the here and now. The question is whether these cultural models,institutions and frames exist outside language or not.The social constructivists insist that models and frames have to be rebuilt again and again so it is just our impression that they exist outside language.However,the sociocognitive approach argues that these cultural mental models have psychological reality in the individual mind,and when a concrete situation occurs the appropriate model is recalled,which supports the appropriate verbalization of triggered thoughts and activities.Of course,building and rebuilding our world occurs not merely through language but through the interaction of language with other reallife phenomena such as nonlinguistic symbol systems,objects,tools,technologies,etc. The individual is not only constrained to some extent by collective cultural models but also participates in creating them.Private models may originate from a persons creative (and even unintended) combination of existing cultural models as well as unique cognitive dispositions (self reflection,critical thinking,etc.).Some private models always remain idiosyncratic (i.e.private),while others may enter into the sociocultural framework and establish new cultural trends (cf.,e.g.,Berger and Luckmann 1967)［37］.Both private and cultural models help people organize events,make actions easier,and,as such,free up cognitive resources that can be applied to less familiar issues and experiences.
2. The ″Reality″ of Cultural Models
Language and culture are usually considered ″collective representations″,i.e.,socially constituted systems (e.g.Saussure 2002;Durkheim 1947;Kronenfeld 2008)［3840］.There are two main approaches to the debate about the actual existence of these systems.According to one of them these systems have been considered to be merely epiphenomenal,which means that they have no actual direct existence (cf.Kronenfeld 2008)［40］.However,they have the appearance of direct existence insofar as they are the byproducts of a group of individuals with similar minds confronting similar situations in similar contexts. The problem with this approach is that human beings usually talk about and rely upon language and culture as if they actually exist,as if they exist externally to them as individuals. Our individual understandings of language and culture are quite consistent across individuals.Generally it is more so than our sense of our own individual patterns. We have highly shared senses of the collective patterns,and each of us is capable of describing where we ourselves deviate,or are somewhat idiosyncratic.
The opposed view to nonexistence has been that these systems have some sort of objective existence outside the individual (e.g.Simmel 1972;Triandis 2002;Kecskes 2010b)［1，4142］. Culture is ″real″,and deals with the problem of the relationship between the individual and the given community.This approach sees a childs socialization or enculturation as a process by which basic cultural structures and schemata are ″internalized″ deeply into the individual psyche. However,these cultural models and schemata keep changing both diachronically and synchronically.Definitely there is a great difference of cultural models that existed a hundred years ago and the ones that we have in our time.Besides,the internalization process is not mechanical,i.e.,enculturation occurs as a bidirectional interaction between the individual and the social environment. When we talk about culture we usually mean ″subjective culture″ (cf.Triandis 2002)［42］,which is a communitys characteristic way of perceiving its social environment. However,there are generally two basic aspects of culture distinguished.When this distinction is not clarified confusion may occur about whether culture exists ″out there″ or not. One aspect of culture is subjective culture — the psychological feature of culture including assumptions,values,beliefs and patterns of thinking.The other is objective culture which includes the institutions and artifacts of culture,such as its economic system,social customs,political structures and processes,arts,crafts and literature.Objective culture can be treated as an externalization of subjective culture which usually becomes reified.This means that those institutions which are properly seen as extension of human activity attain an independent status as external entities.They seem to exist ″out there″,and their ongoing human origins are usually forgotten.The study of objective culture is well established because institutions and external artifacts of behavior are more accessible to observation and examination.Subjective culture is usually treated as an unconscious process influencing perception,thinking and memory,or as personal knowledge which is inaccessible to trainers or educators.
Simmel (1972) also makes a difference between subjective culture and objective culture with the later referring to the cultural level of social reality［41］.In his view,people produce culture,but because of their ability to reify social reality,the cultural world and the social world come to have lives of their own and increasingly dominate the actors who created them.We may also think about language like this.It has been created and is being created by people but appears to have a life of its own as an institution ″out there″. Simmel identified a number of components of objective culture,including tools,transportation,technology,the arts,language,the intellectual sphere,conventional wisdom,religious dogma,philosophical systems,legal systems,moral codes,and ideals.The size of objective culture increases with modernization.The number of different components of the cultural realm also grows.
Simmel was concerned about the effect of objective culture on the individuals subjective existence. Postmodernists have taken that concern to another level. In the past,most of the culture was produced by people situated in real social groups that interacted over real issues. This grounded culture created real meanings and morally infused norms,values,and beliefs. In the postmodern era,much of the culture is produced or colonized by business using advertising and mass media. This important historic shift implies that culture has changed from a representation of social reality to representations of commodified images.In our time culture is produced rather than created,and people have changed from culture creators to culture consumers. Ⅴ. Cultural Models at Work
1. Development of Cultural Models
Each of us has rich individual experiences,and the cognitive structuring that pertains to them may differ,whether coded linguistically or not. When we communicate with other people through language or otherwise,we need to interrelate our separate experience and cognitive structures.When we routinely,repeatedly do things with other people we usually develop some standardized way of doing.These shared action plans may emerge as cultural models.Kronenfeld (2008) argued that language gets involved when we need to verbally communicate,and then only with regard to those aspects of the action plan that need to be discussed and talked about or coded in memory. He emphasized that language is a socially constructed tool that can be exceedingly helpful to thought,but in no sense does it form the basis for individual thought,and it need not provide the basis for (much of) the shared or coordinated thought that makes up culture［40］.I think language plays a more important role than the one Kronenfeld assigns to it in culture.In fact,language supports both the development and reinforcement of cultural models,mainly through formulaic language which is the heart and soul of nativelike language use.Formulaic language generally serves as a core for language use in a speech community because prefabricated linguistic expressions usually mean the same for each member of the community. Languages and their speakers have preferred ways of saying things (cf.Wray 2002;Kecskes 2007)［23，43］.English native speakers shoot a film,dust the furniture,make love or ask you to help yourself at the table.The use of these expressions creates scenarios and gives a certain kind of idiomaticity to language use.For instance［23］:
(2)Jim: Let me tell you something.
Bob: Is something wrong?
The expression let me tell you something usually has negative connotation,it creates a scenario that anticipates trouble.
Our everyday communication is full of prefabricated expressions and utterances because we like to stick to preferred ways of saying things.Why is this so? Kecskes (2007) argued that there are three important reasons:
— Formulas decrease the processing load
There is psycholinguistic evidence that fixed expressions and formulas have an important economizing role in speech production (cf.Miller and Weinert 1998;Wray 2002)［4344］.Sinclairs idiom principle says that the use of prefabricated chunks ″...may...illustrate a natural tendency to economy of effort″ (Sinclair 1991)［45］110.This means that in communication we want to achieve more cognitive effects with less processing effort.Formulaic expressions ease the processing overload not only because they are ′readymade′ and do not require any ′putting together′ from the speaker/hearer,but also because their salient meanings are easily accessible in online production and processing. — Phrasal utterances have a strong framing power
Frames,cultural models are basic cognitive structures which guide the perception and representation of reality (Goffman 1974)［46］.Frames help determine which parts of reality become noticed.They are not consciously manufactured but are unconsciously adopted in the course of communicative processes.Formulaic expressions usually come with framing.Most fixed expressions are defined relative to a conceptual framework.If a policeman stops my car and says Step out of the car,please,this expression will create a particular frame in which the roles and expressions to be used are quite predictable.
— Formulaic units create shared bases for common ground in coordinating joint communicative actions.
The use of formulaic language requires shared experience and conceptual fluency.Tannen and ztek (1981) argued that ″cultures that have set formulas afford their members the tranquility of knowing that what they say will be interpreted by the addressee in the same way that it is intended,and that,after all,is the ultimate purpose of communication″［47］54.
Cultural models provide a kind of reference library for possible plans of action for oneself or possible interpretation of actions of others. These models are not learned directly as models,but are inferred anew by each of us from what we see and experience with those other people around us. But what we see and experience are never the models themselves.What we infer from experience is pieces of information,images,features that keep a scenario together.What we infer depends directly on what parts of the given scenario are saliently and repetitively present in the messages we experience for us to pull out the regularities on which we will base our construction of the scenario behind them.Thus systematic and repeated changes in speech or cultural behavior in one generation will be learned by the next generation as part of the givens of language or culture.
The cultural models that we actually experience (that is,cultural models,in the form in which we actually experience them) acquire specificity through the process of their instantiation in the concrete situations in which the models were realized. Much of our application of cultural models (instantiation and then realization) is in situations that represent some kind of extension from the prototypical,unmarked default situation. The core of cultural models shared by people in the same speech community changes diachronically through systematic and repeated shifts that can come from sociopolitical changes,technological changes,environmental changes and the like.The application of the core,however changes synchronically.No situation occurs exactly the same way as we have experienced it in any previous time. In the sociocognitive paradigm action is always by individuals,and individuals are always adapting cultural forms to fit their needs.People use cultural models as devices to facilitate effective interaction with others in the various communities to which they belong.
In this way individuals not only shape cultural models but also are constrained by them.Most of these cultural models come from peoples past experience,but they are constantly recreated in use. This is how the societal and individual intertwine.It is important to note that people are not required to follow cultural conventions (whether in the use of cultural models or in other ways).In any given time they can ignore or modify cultural models that kick in their mind when they get into a typical situation.Given cultural models can (and often do) show slight variations across groups to which we all belong — groups that can be formal or informal,longlived or evanescent,imposed or voluntary,and so forth.
2. Instantiating Cultural Models
Cultural models are abstract plans at varying degrees of specificity.They relate knowledge,goals,values,perceptions,emotional states,etc.to actions in different contexts.Kronenfeld (2008) argued that these conceptual models do not directly or automatically apply to any specific situation［40］. First they have to be ″instantiated″ by having their general generic details replaced with the specific details of the situation at issue. The instantiated cultural model is still only a conceptual structure,and several different (even,mutually contradictory) ones may be taken into consideration for any given situation. Finally one particular instantiated model is ″realized″ in the actual concrete situation.This can be an action plan for ones own behavior,or a device for interpreting the behavior of some other people.It is important to note that at any given moment only one instantiated model can be realized.But we can quickly jump back and forth between different realizations.
The relationship between the abstract collective cultural model and the private realization of the model by interlocutors in a concrete situation is the same as in linguistics between ′phonemes′ and ′phones′ or between ′morphemes′ and ′morphs′. We consider ′phones′ as the actual phonetic realization of ′phonemes′,and morphs as the actual forms used to realize ′morphemes. In his pragmatic acts theory,Mey (2001) also spoke about ″pragmemes″ that are instantiated in pragmatic acts in speech situations［48］.A particular pragmeme can be substantiated and realized through individual pragmatic acts.In other words,a pragmatic act is an instance of adapting oneself to a context,as well as adapting the context to oneself.Consider for instance: (3) She is after my money.
Like I care.
″Like I care″ is a pragmatic act that expresses the pragmeme ″I do not care″,which can be also substantiated by several other concrete pragmatic acts such as ″I do not care″,″I do not mind″,″its none of my business″,etc.According to Mey,pragmatic acts are situationderived and situationconstrained. There is no onetoone relationship between speech acts and pragmatic acts because the latter does not necessarily include specific acts of speech.Consider for instance:
(4)Mother: Joshua,what are you doing?
Joshua: Nothing.
Mother: Will you stop it immediately. (Mey 2001)［48］216
The pragmeme represented by the pragmatic act ″Nothing″ can be described as ″trying to get out (opt out) of a conversation″ that may lead too far.
But pragmemes in the sense as Mey uses the term are not cultural models.They are more like scenarios within cultural models.However,the process of instantiation happens similarly both in the case of pragmemes and cultural models.
3. Practices
Culture includes many practices or routines.Feldman and Pentland (2003) argued that routines (i.e.practices) consist of two elements: the ostensive and the performative［49］.The ostensive element comprises individuals cognitive understanding of the processes,while the performative element consists of actual behavior in the actual situational context.From a sociocognitive perspective both of these processes should be of interest for us.Cognitive understanding relies both on cultural and private models,and on how these models are applied by cognitive processing,spanning from excessive automatic (as in categorical) thinking to selfreflective (as in reflective) thinking (see Ringberg and Reihlen 2008)［17］.When categorical thinking is applied,people establish meaning by automatically integrating incoming stimuli based on existing cultural and private models. Kecskes (2008) argued that in the process of communication speakers private context generated by intention gets encoded in lexical units and formulated in an utterance (actual linguistic context) that is uttered (or written) ″out there″ in the world by a speaker in a situation (actual situational context),and is matched (″internalized″) to the private cognitive contexts ″inside″ the head of the hearer (prior knowledge)［1］.Meaning is the result of interplay between the speakers private context and the hearers private context in the actual situational context as understood by the interlocutors. Research in social cognition indicates that several epistemic factors can affect the applicability of categorical thinking (Ringberg and Reihlen 2008)［17］.For instance,people usually apply categorical thinking in everyday routines,when they have high cognitive load,are under pressure to make quick decisions,have limited cognitive capacity,and/or are distracted.Categorical thinking generally leads to efficient processing of regular sociocultural interactions and stimuli.As a consequence of relying on categorical thinking,environmental stimuli are ′pushed′ into existing mental models.This may prevent the person from adjusting to divergent inputs and unusual circumstances.In communication this phenomenon is observable in the use of prefabricated linguistic units and situationbound utterances.Consider for instance:
(5)Assistant: Can I help you,Madame?
Customer: Thank you. Im just looking.
In this conversation ″Can I help you?″ and ″Im just looking″ function as plain situationbound utterances (Kecskes 2000;2002)［3334］. The customer is distracted because she is busy looking at clothes and wants to get rid of the assistant.
Reflective processing works in a different way. It requires the ability of people to sustain a high level of cognitive responsiveness and combine,or broaden internalized cultural and private models in thoughtful and creative ways to improve their sense making.The degree of application of categorical versus reflective thinking varies across situational contexts,and life experience and general acumen are also important variables.In reflective thinking,cultural and private models are applied in nonautomatic fashions.Ringberg and Reihlen (2008)［17］923 argued that reflective thinking is a proactive process that occurs when a person has the cognitive capacity and need for deliberate cognition to engage with stimuli that are not easily or usefully made sense of by a categorical application of private and/or cultural models.Categoryinconsistent information may activate reflective thought processes among some people through which they recombine cultural and private models in deliberate ways to improve the relevance of their sensemaking of a particular situation (e.g.Bodenhausen,Macrae and Garst 1998;Wilson and Sperber 2004)［5051］.This can be demonstrated in the following conversation:
(6)Jill: I met someone today.
Jane: Good for you.
Jill: He is a police officer.
Jane: Are you in trouble? Jill: Oh,no,I liked the man.We met in a cafe.He was nice and polite.
Jane: Not all of them are...
In this conversation there is a clear difference between the two womens private context tied to the word ″police officer″.The collective cultural model attached to ″police officer″ has been changed in Jills privatized model as a result of the positive experience while this is not the case with Jane.She appears to have a private model that is close to the collective cultural model.
The sociocognitive approach incorporates cultural and private models into categorical and reflective processing.This means that most of the time a cognitive system is neither fully closed nor fully open,it is neither fully determined nor independent of external sensory inputs,and people are neither autonomous processors nor cultural dopes.Consequently,meaning creation and knowledge transfer are located somewhere on a continuum between fully automatic and fully idiosyncratic.This depends on several variables that include the nature of peoples private and cultural models,level of categorical and reflective thinking,and environmental feedback mechanisms.The sociocognitive approach broadens traditional positivist and socialconstructionist positions by situating sensemaking within the mind (and body) that may be influenced but rarely determined by environmental feedback mechanisms (Bandura 1986;Bunge 1996)［18,52］.The sociocognitive model provides a more comprehensive and systemic understanding of the roles of cognitive factors and environmental feedback mechanisms.
Ⅵ. Role of Enyclopaedic Knowledge in Creating Intercultures
Interculturality has both an a priori side and an emergent side that occur and act simultaneously in the communicative process.Consequently,intercultures are not fixed phenomena but they are created in the course of communication in which participants belong to different L1 speech communities,speak a common language and represent different cultural norms and models that are defined by their respective L1 speech community.The following conversation (source Albany English Lingua Franca Dataset collected by PhD students) between a Brazilian girl and a Polish woman illustrates this point well.
(7) Brazilian: And what do you do?
Pole: I work at the university as a cleaner.
B: As a janitor?
P: No,not yet.Janitor is after the cleaner.
B: You want to be a janitor?
P: Of course. In this conversation interlocutors represent two different languages and cultures (Brazilian and Polish),and use English as a lingua franca.This is the prior knowledge that participants bring to the interaction.They create an interculture,which belongs to none of them but emerges in the course of conversation.Within this interculture the two speakers have a smooth conversation about the job of the Polish woman.Neither of them is sure what the right term is for the job the Polish woman has.There are no misunderstandings in the interaction because each participant is careful to use semantically transparent language in order to be as clear as possible.The Polish woman sets up a ″hierarchy″ that is nonexisting in the target language culture (″cleaner → janitor″).However,this is an emergent element of the interculture the speakers have been constructing.This is where the L1based encyclopaedic knowledge of the speakers becomes very important.Speakers propose certain ways to create common ground.These particular ways rely on their prior experience governed by their first language culture.
Intercultures come and go,so they are neither stable nor permanent.They just occur.They are both synergetic and blended.Interculturality is constituted on the spot by interlocutors who participate in the conversation.But isnt this a phenomenon that also occurs in intracultural communication? Why and how should we distinguish intercultural communication from intracultural communication? Basically the currently dominant approach to this issue is that there is no principled difference between intracultural and intercultural communication (e.g.Winch 1997;Wittgenstein 2001)［5354］.This is true as far as the mechanism of the communicative process is concerned.However,there is a qualitative difference in the nature and content of an intracultural interaction and an intercultural interaction.Speakers in intracultural communication rely on prior knowledge and culture of a relatively definable speech community,which is privatized by individuals belonging to that speech community.No language boundaries are crossed,however subcultures are relied upon and representations are individualized.What is created on the spot enriches the given culture,contributes to it and remains within the fuzzy but still recognizable confines of that language and culture.In the case of intercultural communication,however,prior knowledge that is brought into and privatized in the communicative process belongs to different cultures and languages,and what participants create on the spot will disappear and not become an enrichment and/or addition to any particular culture or language.Intercultures are ad hoc creations that may enhance the individual and the globalization process but can hardly be said to contribute to any particular culture.This is exactly what we see in example (7) above.Speakers created a hierarchy between ″cleaner″ and ″janitor″ just to create common ground and assure their own mutual private understanding of a given situation.This interculture disappears when they stop talking.However,this is not always the case.Intercultures can also be reoccurring for a while in certain cases such as international negotiating teams,international classroom,international tourist groups,etc.Kasper and BlumKulka,(1993) talked about ″intercultural style″ which means that speakers fully competent in two languages may create an intercultural style of speaking that is both related to and distinct from the styles prevalent in the two substrata,a style on which they rely regardless of the language being used［55］. Kasper and BlumKulka (1993) claimed that the hypothesis is supported by many studies of crosscultural communication,especially those focusing on interactional sociolinguistics (e.g.Gumperz,1982;Tannen,1985)［5657］ and research into the pragmatic behavior of immigrant populations across generations (e.g.Clyne,Ball,and Neil,1991)［58］. Ⅶ. Conclusion
In this chapter the focus has been on the nature and role of encyclopaedic knowledge in relation to intercultures.A sociocognitive approach was used to interpret and discuss the issues raised in connection with the subject matter.This theory helps us understand how encyclopaedic knowledge through its cultural models can function both as a repository of knowledge that changes diachronically and as synchronically changing emergent knowledge created in the process of communication.A significant part of encyclopaedic knowledge is instantiated in cultural models that provide scenarios,scripts or action plans for individuals to interpret and behave in a particular situation,or process and interpret the behavior of others in various life situations.
The sociocognitive approach (Kecskes 2008;Kecskes 2010b;Kecskes 2011)［1,34］ defines interculturality as a phenomenon that is not only interactionally and socially constructed in the course of communication but also relies on relatively definable cultural models and norms that represent the speech communities to which the interlocutors belong. Consequently,interculturality has both relatively normative and emergent components.In order for us to understand the dynamism and everchanging nature of intercultural encounters we need to approach interculturality dialectically.Cultural constructs and models change diachronically while cultural representation and speech production by individuals changes synchronically.Intercultures are ad hoc creations.They are created in a communicative process in which cultural norms and models as representatives of encyclopaedic knowledge are brought into the interaction from prior experience of interlocutors and blend with features created ad hoc in the interaction in a synergetic way.The result is intercultural discourse in which there is mutual transformation of knowledge and communicative behavior rather than transmission.The emphasis is on transformation rather than on transmission.
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Received date: 20120621
Website: http://www.journals.zju.edu.cn/soc
Online first date: 20120703
Authou profile: Istvan Kecskes is Professor of Linguistics and Communication at the State University of New York,Albany. His research focuses on pragmatics,second language acquisition and bilingualism. In his latest publications he has been writing on a sociocognitive approach to pragmatics that attempts to synthesize the ″socioculturalinteractional″ and ″cognitivephilosophical″ perspectives.