A Semiotic Approach To The Unconsciousness In Culture

With the rapid development of the global economy, there has been a sharp increasing in cross-cultural communication. People are always in touch with and experiencing various cultural symbols or reality unconsciously, which are seldom perceived from unconsciousness to consciousness. Cultural unconsciousness is a rather inherent and internal phenomenon, which is paid so much attention by the human science all the way and gives rise to such a large number of discussion and focus. According to American culture scientist White: unconsciousness is one sort of concept which can be interpreted by psychology and also by culture science... In general, the whole cultural field is an unconscious field to most common public even a lot of social scientist. To a large extent, only when the recipient understands the cultural connotation and background enough, can the understanding of the "unconsciousness" be much more smooth and meaningful, so is the communication especially the cross-cultural communication itself. From another perspective, social culture's controlling on human being's thinking and behavior achieves mainly when the subject is unable to realize or have not realized. If the subject could effectively utilize this special "unconsciousness" in culture to interpret cultural symbols or reality, it will be much helpful to the daily life and communication especially in the cross-cultural environments.Semiotics is a new and developing frontier subject in the field of social science. It covers both verbal and nonverbal codes and puts the language user and the outside world into sign process. Our concept, language, communication and other human activities are dependent on the signs. Actually, enormous socio-cultural phenomena are signing process. The theoretical framework and research findings of semiotics can be adopted in innumerable subjects such as philosophy, linguistics, literary theory, aesthetics, history, anthropology, etc. It has become a very powerful analytical tool of these fields and opened a new way for making a thorough study of them. It is one of the most essential theories for modern academic study (Chen & Wen, 1999:9). Therefore, semiotics is of great theoretical relevance and methodological value to culture and its unconsciousness study. The fact is that semiotic-motivated explorations in culture, in contrast with the prosperous developments in other fields, are still rather deficient in quantity and quality. It is the need that stimulated the author to embark on the semiotic study of culture and its unconsciousness.This thesis intends to analyze the "unconsciousness" phenomena in various cultural fields like food, furniture, cars fields and so on. All of these "unconsciousness" phenomena will be analyzed by applying the theory of semiotics. This will help the public link the signs and code with their corresponding culture and try to propose a concept that signs are not just expressed meaning. On the other hand, the practical significance of cultural study can be also proved in the cross-cultural education and management.