Cross- cultural Communication This page intentionally left blank

How linguistics influences communication
The key influences are the study of semiotics, the study of signs, and the study 
of the relationship between language and thought and language and culture.
There are three interrelated questions:
Does the way we use language influence the way we think?
Does the way we think influence the language we use?
Does culture influence language or is it the other way round?
Semiotics
Semiotics was introduced by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure 
(1857–1913). It is defined as ‘the study of signs and symbols and their use 
in interpretation’ (Oxford English Dictionary). Saussure put forward the idea 
that language is a cultural phenomenon and that it produces meaning in a 
special way. He developed the theory that any linguistic item such as a word 
represents a sign. A sign has three basic characteristics: it has a concrete 
form, it refers to something other than itself and it is recognized by other 
people as a sign. The physical form of a sign he called the ‘signifier’. The 
mental association it refers to is the ‘signified’.
To illustrate the concept, we can take the word ‘friend’. A friend may 
mean someone who is not hostile to you, someone with whom you have 
a friendly association, a close lifelong buddy or someone who opposes the 
same things that you do. Similarly, the word ‘boyfriend’ or ‘girlfriend’ may 
signify a person you are going out with or in other countries simply a friend 
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What is Cross- Cultural Communication? 3
with no sexual connotation at all. The point is that ‘friend’ is a common 
word in all languages, but has very different connotations according to the 
society that uses it. Therefore, part of cultural study is to find out whether 
the same words mean the same thing in different cultures.