A Cultural Semiotics-Based Intercultural Study

This thesis is based on the theory of Cultural Semiotics presented by the Russian scholar Yuri, Mikhailovich, Lotman, a representative of western semiotics and a co-founder of the Moscow-Tartu School. According to Lotman, the core concept of Cultural Semiotics is the text, based on which his research range freed from the linguistics fields and was widen to a larger scope to language, social reality, psychology, and culture phenomenon. Lotman believes that text, as the basic element of cultu(?)al semiotics study, has functions of memory, delivery and creation. Any cultural phenomenon is supported and limited by text functions. This thesis focuses on the cultural semiotics-based study on the design concepts of China pavilions in the World Expo.As a carrier and reflection of culture, text refers to any kind of cultural phenomenon, even culture itself. World Expo is a cultural stage of intercultural communication of participating nations of unique culture characteristics and humanity, and the most attractive actors on the stage are national pavilions carrying participating national cultures and culture transmission approaches. This thesis interprets design ideas of China pavilions from the perspective of cultural semiotics to analyses how to build the image of China. In addition, concept of the self-presentation of cultural centrism is introduced to judge the cultural functions of China pavilion design concepts in intercultural communication.Therefore, in case study one, this thesis with the help of questionnaire, taking the typical design concepts of China pavilions from the 1982 Knoxville World Expo to the 2010 Shanghai World Expo as example, acquires different respondents'cognitive degrees of Chinese cultures. The author, cost six months, collects 356 pieces of status of the eastern(China, Japan, Korean, etc.) and western(USA, Canada, UK, etc.) world; afterwards, the correlative statistics are input into SPSS 17.0 in order that K-Means Cluster Analysis in accordance with the host time. On the basis of this analysis, the presentation extent of text functions and its current trend can be deduced. In the following case study two, the discourse and contrastive analysis on design ideas from Shanghai World Expo is carried out, and the self-presentation of cultural centrism is concluded. Then the author, referring to the outcomes of two case studies, expounds functions of cultural text with difference of time from the perspective of cultural semiotics, elaborates the different presentation extents and their accounts of western and eastern cultural centralism and at last, suggests how to treat the cultural conflicts under the background of intercultural communication dialectically.