| Edward T. Hall is a famous American cultural anthropologist, and he is also recognized as the pioneer of the field of intercultural communication research. During the progress of his reflection of the proposition itself of traditional culture, he carried on the original and modern ethnic, eastern and western culture fieldwork, then focused on the difference between the domestic culture and external peripheral cultures, tending to study the diversification of the social individuals’ cognitive experience to the living world. After a long period of fieldwork and teaching practice, he explored the potential cultural clues or data that existed in the the interaction between individuals or between groups. And finally he discovered the hidden structure influencing the human society running.This thesis consists of four body chapters apart from introduction and conclusion. The first chapter focuses on the forming process of Hall’s cultural theory, stressing the important influence of his growing experience and practice towards the producing of his cultural theory. This chapter illustrates the factors that influenced and shaped Hall’s cultural theory through looking into Hall’s living experience and career. The second chapter refers to the role played by non-verbal cultural code including voice, gestures, time and space in the process of human communication. This chapter explores the people of different culture in the process of interaction of the main aspects of cultural differences through reading The Silent Language, including time, High-Low contexting and proxemics three aspects, reveals their impact on all aspeccts of our everyday life.The third chapter makes a further analysis of the basic orientation of Hall’s culture and the ways in which context mechanism influences social individuals’ understanding of the meaning and explores the normative system which makes the social individual communicative behavior in order. The Fourth chapter attaches great significance to the internal logic of Hall’s cultural theory for the purpose of finding out the academic clues of his cultural theory. This chapter integrates the preceding discussion about his cultural theory, thinking about the enlightenment he brought to the research of the field of cross-culture, and then points out the inadequacies of them. Based on the analysis of the body chapters, this thesis attempts to draw the following conclusion: Hall’s cultural theory tried to show us the resistance and resistance power emerging from linking various complicated cultural phenomena, the construction of all constitutions and social relations and other external environment together. And culture keeps existing in such construction through conflict, change, creation and use. He leads us to research hose social phenomena in our daily life again which are too familiar to perceive. It also provides possibility for us to change our living model and cognitive model, promote our choices effectively exercise our rights consciously. That is to say, a “third culture” interactive space will appear when two different person-in-culture make self-examination at the same time. The third culture is not a simple mixture of two cultures, but to some extent, the adjustment at the comprehensive level. And it exists in the process of specific interactive behavior of different person-in-culture. And what is astonishing is that in the process lies a new structure, under which, there is not any stipulation in advance. The third culture are constantly pursued and constructed as a source of creativity. It on one hand includes the original deterministic specifications of different person-in-culture and on the other hand reaches the fusion of other different values, ways of thinking and the cultural identity. But the dynamic and unstable thinking clue formed in this way is always hidden, ignored and even absent. This is the very causation of the conflict and contradiction between different person-in-culture. In fact, it involves the relation between culture and power. |
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