Research On The Intercultural Communication Of TCM Culture

It is well known that Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) shows amazing efficacy in health-keeping, has unique function in curing chronic diseases and difficult and complicated cases and enjoys greater popularity throughout the world. But TCM culture, an indispensible part of Chinese civilization, is far from highly appreciated, which will have a negative impact on the internationalization and modernization of TCM in the long run.The dissertation, based on the theory of interculturality, intends to explore the international transmission of TCM culture in the perspective of acculturation with an aim to put forward a theoretical model for reference and develop certain strategies of promoting the dissemination of TCM culture overseas. Research methods such as historical analysis, comparative analysis, integration of theory and practice, are all well applied.The work and main conclusions are as follows:A brief review of the international transmission of TCM culture which covers thousands of years is given for historical study to summarize rules, draw lessons from the past, find reasons behind the phenomenon and gain enlightenments for future practice.The dissertation, then, probes the commensurability and incommensurability of heterogeneous medical cultures, analyzes the underlying causes why different medicine paradigms, the traditional Chinese medicine and the Western medicine, can not be reduced into each other, and hopefully forms a theoretical model to bridge the cultural gaps and create a dynamic process of cultural inheritance, development and innovation.In view of encoding and decoding, a comparison between inter-lingual and intra-lingual translations and certain encoding and decoding strategies are introduced in order to paint a faithful picture of TCM culture. It’s not always easy to persuade people overseas to accept something different to their beliefs but we can make full use of second encoding, a special medium of cultural exchange in the worldwide scale."8W Model" is put forward to facilitate the spread of TCM culture and a sharing process of cultural creation, modification, and transformation is expected to take shape. The dissertation also argues that accurately conveying the information is not the whole story and greater efforts should be made to standardize TCM terminology, promote Chinese language worldwide and develop Chinese language into a media one.Acculturation takes time and the issue is how to shorten the process and make the passage smoother. The dissertation discusses the implementation of certain strategies adopted by plural entities, namely the government, organizations and enterprises related. As influential disseminators, they have their own advantages in facilitating acculturation and play leading roles in cultural guidance at macro level, cultural promotion at meso level and cultural marketing at the micro level respectively, which help to form holistic strategy arrangements jointly for promoting fruitful cultural interaction and productive international dissemination of TCM culture in an orderly and sound manner.TCM culture is still very much in the initial stages of westward transmission. Hopefully, the findings illustrated in the dissertation can shed much light on the issue, help to tackle acculturation, popularize TCM culture and make it well received worldwide.