Introduction to Psycholinguistic Theory of Intercultural Communication

The author analyzes intercultural communication (IC): the speech activity to organize joint activities in a multicultural environment. In course of communication within a single culture, communicants produce speech messages that involve only linguistic signs bodies and require common consciousnesses for understanding. The speaker presents the reality with images of one’s verbally modeled consciousness to the recipient for perception; the latter uses this model to construct the perceived message content from the one’s consciousness images. The sign communication suggests a common language and images of consciousness. There isn’t seen any common consciousness in IC results in cognitive conflicts requiring instructive training to develop common consciousness and language, or an intermediary (interpreter) as a bearer of the proper consciousness. Understanding in IC requires preliminary definitions of key words in speech messages. Understanding with non-linguistic consciousness images among bearers of different ethnic cultures requires a preliminary acquaintance with these images. The theoretical underpinning of understanding in IC can involve A.N. Leontiev’s world image theory and the three-level model of the consciousness image by A.N. Leontiev - V.P. Zinchenko, including existential, reflective and spiritual levels. The world image is knowledge developed by an ethnic culture bearer in the enculturation to navigate in the reality. The existential level contains cognitive means providing for the orientation in the ethnic environment, at the reflexive level, the knowledge about reality ensures the ethnic survival in this reality. At the spiritual level, the consciousness bearer communicates with other individuals resulting in a human attitude to reality.