Explicit and Implicit Meanings of Cultural Communication

Abstract

The monograph represents the outcome of studies carried out by researchers from Poland, Russia and Ukraine. The notion of culture became the core concept which drew contribution from representatives of various fields and disciplines of humanities such as cultural studies, linguistics, sociolinguistics, psychology, literature studies, theory and history of culture or political studies. We have chosen to construe that notion as a system of symbols and meanings: explicit, or palpable ones, which assume the concrete shape of the products of human labour and thought, as well as hidden, or intangible, less perceptible aspects of human behaviour. Such a methodological framework enabled us to approach the issues of cultural communication in an innovative, versatile and interdisciplinary fashion. As a result, we offer the Reader this very monograph, which demonstrates its interdisciplinary nature as well as the possibility of harmonious fusion of knowledge yielded by the investigations in social and philological sciences. The monograph addresses a range of issues relating to cultural communication, which encompasses human behaviours, products and outcomes of the latter, methods of symbolic exchanges, patterns of response and interpretation, systems of norms and prohibitions which induce particular actions. Hence cultural communication subsumes processes in which social groups communicate with one another through everyday exchange and artistic output.