A COGNITIVE PRAGMATIC APPROACH TO INTERCULTURAL DIALOGUE
A COGNITIVE PRAGMATIC APPROACH TO INTERCULTURAL DIALOGUE

Summary/Abstract: Starting from the “relevance theory” put forth by Sperber and Wilson and Sperber’s epidemiological perspective on culture, Vladimir Žegarac proposes an analysis of the intercultural communication situation from the internalist perspective of cognitive psychology, replacing the linguistic and extra-linguistic context with a cognitive one, represented by the set of already existing assumptions which interact with new information within the communication process. Culture is defined through the set of meanings shared by a social group, and communication involves the social interaction along with the inclusion of new meanings into the initial set. But the communication process always implies the risk of failure because of the fact that the assignation of a meaning depends on the interlocutor’s ability to reason in the same way as the communicator and to select the appropriate context for interpreting his/her act of communication. And as the cultural knowledge of the individual determines the context of communication, the risk of failure is even higher within the intercultural interactions where the individuals have different cultural backgrounds. Žegarac’s approach is the best expression of the problems of the intercultural dialogue. It is proved that its performance depends on the intercultural knowledge to a great extent.

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