Logvinov Alexey Andreevich
State budget educational
institution of secondary vocational training college social workers № 16, Director,
Russia, Moscow
ETHNOMETHODOLOGICAL APPROACH TO
INQUIRY OF SOCIAL COMMUNICATION PROCESSES
The expansion of international sociocultural
communication is accompanied, on the one hand, with the desire to contact other
cultures and establish equivalent relations between individuals, groups of
people, and the whole countries. On the other hand, it increases the rejection
of “alien” social and cultural values and strengthens the preference of “one’s own” as the example
to follow. Quite often, a reappraisal of the native culture values takes place,
leading right up to the rejection of them and the acceptance of the “alien”
sociocultural codes. The main concepts of intercultural communication, such as
“one’s own”, “alien”, “conflict”, “tolerance”, “stereotype” and etc.,
acquire new meanings, due to the new phenomenon of global culture,
which arises as one of the most important effects of globalization.
The onset of globalization has been caused by many reasons: industrial
and electronic revolutions, formation of the common market for goods and labor,
migration on a global scale, and expansion of international contacts. Humanity
goes through social transformations in all areas of life, which is reflected in
the appearance of united economical space, the interaction of various cultures,
changes in behavioral stereotypes, moral principles and values, and educational
and professional standards [5].
Globalization affects states and nations, as well as individuals,
causing the need for every individual to understand the global changes and
opportunities for effective socialization in the new environment.
B.R. Mogilevich, Doctor of sociological science, observes that
cross-cultural communication is implemented through the process of interaction
between global and local cultures, between the “open” society of individuals
and the fundamental sociocultural settings. In this aspect, globalization
represents, in fact, the new phase of interaction between social communities as
an attribute of the modern development of social communication.
Cross-cultural
communication plays one of the most important roles in the process of study and
evaluation of the current condition of the human society, especially when it’s
important to determine the optimal borders between globalization preservation
of social and cultural pluralism, between terror and tolerance. Communicators understand social standards of
“alien” culture during the process of cross-cultural communication, thus creating
conditions for their successful socialization and acculturation, which
contributes to development of modern individual opened to multicultural
collaboration [3].
The consideration of the
problems of cross-cultural communication through the system of social science
allows to determine deeply and comprehensively the tendencies of interaction of
different social groups because the communicational aspects of human activity
represent different aspects of social communication, which ensures the
existence and development of human relationships in the process of information
transfer. Awareness of the importance of the cross-cultural communication as
the necessary condition to determine individual’s place in the global world is
crucial for Russia now, when the country is not completely free from past
heritance and faces numerous risks caused by modernization.
Overcoming of stereotypes,
implementation of tolerance into the society life, precise identity of all
strata of Russian society is impossible without intercultural communication as
the social mechanism to overcome the contradictions between global and local
aspects of human life in the modern world.
In the second part on the
XX century in Russia there were researches of cross-cultural communications;
they were conducted when the educational paradigm of teaching of foreign
languages changed that the study of foreign literature achievements became the
essential component of educational process. In this aspect it’s essential to
emphasis on the works of E.M. Vereshchagin,
V.G. Kostomarov [1], S.G. Ter-Minasova [6].
The importance of
intercultural communication in the life of modern Russian society increases
during the process of overcoming out of date stereotypes of cross-cultural
interaction with the growth of social migration and the number of
conflict-situations on ethnic grounds. The need of cross-cultural communication
as the necessary condition for successful socialization of individual in the
global world updates the importance of this process from the point of social
communication of different cultures. The importance of cross-cultural
communication increases with the forming of tolerant relationships between
different sociocultural communities in order to prevent different, particularly, inter-ethnic conflicts.
During the process of
social communication representatives of different cultures exist not only in the objective reality but also in the world of social relationships,
which includes the following components: moral and value standards, traditions,
habits, language, religious affiliation, etc.
Tolerance as a concept with
the interdisciplinary status implies openness to new, self-confidence, the
ability to accept the importance of the others, take part in competition [2; 3]. The problem of tolerance affects all
members of the global society characterized by the wide range of controversial
and complex phenomena of the material and spiritual life, and is an integral
part of the processes of social and intercultural communication.
Sociological aspect of
tolerance is characterized by moral and personal attitudes as the actualization of deliberate and individual motivation in the form of a conscious and
intelligent approach to life, which implies that the individual and
society are responsible for its actions
in a given situation.
Definition of “Tolerance” assumes the existence of a
dialectical "intolerance", which is characterized by rejection and
hostility to any “alien” idea. Negative emotions, describing hostility and
rejection reflect in contempt, disgust, anger, aggression, inability to dialog
or compromise (see for example [2; 4]). In a given case cross-cultural
interaction is supported with mutual tolerance, responsibility, the priority of
the dialogic and compromise as a conflict resolution of all types and corroborates interdisciplinary status of intercultural communication as an integral
component of sociological knowledge [2].
It needs to make a special
note that communicational channels both natural (arisen during anthropogenesis)
and artificial (created by people and are designed to ensure the understanding
of individuals in the social reality, where "I" and "you",
"I" and "Others" are in the constant process of social
interaction [3]) are basic for evolution process of social communication which
correlates with the social stratification of society. Originally the appearance of each new channel of social communication appears as a
response to the challenges of civilization. Particularly:
- Language (50 ka) defined the social information transformation by
the oral communication in context of mini-communication;
- Literature (III century BC) as the transmission of information
through documents meant social differentiation on a "literate –
illiterate" and the division of social groups to workers of mental and
physical labor;
- Formulation of techniques and methods of text organization and
identification of text genres, styles and language standards;
- Ethno communication as communication between ethnic groups’
individuals, ethnic group / groups;
- Multimedia (XIX century), which marked a technical revolution of
the social communication and channels, resulting in the appearance of such
communication channels as the telegraph, photography, sound recording, radio,
cinema, the Internet. Through the multimedia social communication in the
information society has worked on a different level, connecting peoples,
nations, civilizations, etc.
Ethnomethodological
approach to the study of social communication involves the study of everyday
communication of communicators with has a particular meaning, while moral values
that govern the processes of communication are at the heart of
social actions. The social communication is endowed with a self-reflection of
communicants in the process of interpretation intersubjective meanings of each
other words in the process of speech activity where the main component is not
the content of the information, but a background meaning in the form of rules
that define the speech patterns.
Thus, methodological and
practical status of intercultural communication as an integral part of social
communication is performed in the process of social interaction of individuals –
members of different socio-cultural communities with adequate correlation of
joint social actions.
Литература
1.
Верещагин Е.М.,
Костомаров В.Г. Язык и культура. –
М.: Русский язык, 1976. – 248 с.
2.
Майковская Л.С.
Феномен этнокультурной толерантности в музыкальной культуре и образовании:
монография. – М.: Граф-Пресс, 2008. – 260 с.
3.
Могилевич Б.Р.
Межкультурная коммуникация в системе социологического знания. – Саратов:
Научная книга, 2008. – 275 с.
4.
Невмержицкая Е.В.
Этнокультурное воспитание молодежи в процессе изучения немецкого языка:
концепции и реалии: монография. – М.: Граница, 2010. – 160 с.
5.
Невмержицкая Е.В. Das kleine Energielexikon. Словарь.
– М.: Граница, 2011. – 96 с.
6.
Тер-Минасова С.Г.
Язык и межкультурная коммуникация: учебное пособие. – М.: Слово/Slovo, 2008. –
264 с.