How to construct a common and consensual multicultural civic discourse

Abstract

The 21st-century construction of a new Chinese political discourse faces the same dilemma that Chinese intellectuals first identified in the 19th century – how to make currently pre-eminent Eurocentric sociocultural, economic and political theory and praxis compatible with Sinocentric sociocultural, economic and political circumstances. At the same time, among Chinese thinkers and strategists, there is a growing self-confidence in China’s ability to play a pre-eminent role in a new post-Western world order. Euro-American faith in the convergence of all societies into a single economic, social and political model defined by the heritage of the European Enlightenment and by Euro-American history is challenged by the emergence of new economic powers outside the Euro-American sphere that resist this model. Eurocentric sociocultural, economic and political theory and praxis must adapt themselves to the emerging paradigms and praxis of an emerging multicultural world order. During a historical period when Afro-Eurasian connectivity was at its height and Ibn Battuta and Marco Polo traversed Eurasia, Ramon Llull (1232–1316) tried in his Ars Magna Generalis (ca. 1274) to develop a new common and consensual terminology and logic of key terms and beliefs that would facilitate mutual understanding among Christians, Jews and Muslims. Shortly thereafter, in his Muqaddimah, Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) elaborated a universal theory of history. Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) tried something similar in Principi di Scienza Nuova d’intorno alla Comune Natura delle Nazioni. The development of new cross-cultural paradigms on a common, multicultural and consensual basis is needed, based on better knowledge of the non-Euro-American languages and cultures involved and more collaborative international and multicultural efforts to promote and build better mutual knowledge and understanding. Mutual respect requires mutual knowledge in order to construct a common and consensual multicultural civic discourse that could lead to more innovative and productive paradigms and more meaningful cooperation.

Keywords

civic discourse comparative cultural studies cross-cultural communication cross-cultural semiotics discourse analysis

The rhetorical construction of a communicative strategy for dialogue with China should be fully cognisant of and sensitive to the criteria of China’s moral order, with special emphasis on mutual recognition, parity of esteem and mutual benefit. Any other discourse will be perceived semiotically to be unilateralist and exploitative. Respect for diversity is paramount, as is the ability to harmonise diversity. This would require the analysis and interpretation of the civic discourse and the rhetoric that construct a Eurocentric social reality as well as the analysis and interpretation of the civic discourse and rhetoric that construct a Sinocentric social reality.

The social sciences, especially as practised in Europe, have developed an important tradition of discourse analysis and its relation to power: Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, the control or ownership of information and knowledge, as a counterpart to Max Wever’s institutional violence in the construction of power; Michel Foucault’s concepts of the archaeology and the genealogy of the discourse of power; Louis Althusser’s concept of interpellation; Gilles Deleuze’s and Felix Guattari’s concepts of dominant and subversive discourses; or Jürgen Habermas’s concept of discourse ethics and the rules of civic discourse, among many others.

In traditional Chinese political thought, the establishment of an official discourse that could order society was a major concern of both thinkers and policymakers alike, and the Chinese imperial examination system combined intellectual and literary competence with the administration of power, fostering a complicity between intellectuals and policymakers that continues to function today (Lewis 1999). In East Asia, especially in China, there are new, alternative and developing traditions of analysis whose hypotheses and conclusions are waiting to be integrated into (or modify) the Euro-American academic framework of applied discourse analysis and comparative sociocultural studies. Multicultural rhetoric would require a critical capacity to analyse, demystify, reformulate or create new rhetorical and metaphorical structures without privileging received rhetorical and metaphorical structures.

There is also a genealogy for the theoretical approach being proposed here. The contemporary study of language and culture oscillates along a continuum running from universalism to linguistic and cultural relativism. Abraham Maslow proposes a universal pyramid of human needs. Manfred Max-Neef also proposes a taxonomy of fundamental human needs. Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker propose an innate and universal capacity for language that would be common to all cultures, while relativists explore the possible consequences of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, alluding to the work of Edmund Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf, who showed how different cultures segmented reality in differing ways, raising the possibility that an incommensurable segmentation of reality could impede mutual understanding – universals at one extreme versus culture-bound terms and elements at the other.

Ferdinand de Saussure developed an approach to language and semiology that divided the sign into signifier, signified and referent. But his theory bracketed the referent in order to concentrate on a more limited aspect of language: signifier → signified. Connotation was divorced from denotation. By separating langue from parole, this binary division also separated theory from praxis. This made it possible to abstract a universal approach, but it also obviated the possibility of dealing with specific social practices. It gave rise in some cases to theories in which language became a filter between humans and the world they lived in, such as Jacques Lacan’s symbolic order. Charles Sanders Peirce took a different approach in developing his theory of semiotics into a triadic relationship: sign → object → interpretant. Peirce’s approach did not ignore social practice. Roman Jakobson insisted on social and material practice through another triadic relationship: signifier → signified →referent (Jakobson 1959). Jakobson’s referent has connotations in specific social and material processes, connotations that are not always isometric or commensurable across cultures.

Raymond Williams moved the study of language and meaning into the realm of practice.

There are quite basic and very complex problems in any analysis of the processes of meaning. Some of these can be usefully isolated as general problems of signification: the difficult relations between words and concepts; or the general processes of sense and reference; and beyond these the more general rules, in social norms and in the system of language itself, which both enable sense and reference to be generated and in some large degree to control them. (Williams 1985, 21)

Because they are embedded in social activity, both language and meaning and communication are conditioned by and condition social processes:

Yet just because ‘meaning’, in any active sense, is more than the general process of ‘signification’, and because ‘norms’ and ‘rules’ are more than the properties of any abstract process or system, other kinds of analysis remain necessary. The emphasis of my own analyses is deliberately social and historical. In the matters of reference and applicability, which analytically underlie any particular use, it is necessary to insist that the most active problems of meaning are always primarily embedded in actual relationships, and that both the meanings and the relationships are typically diverse and variable, within the structures of particular social orders and the processes of social and historical change. (Williams 1985, 21–22)

For Williams, language itself and communication are constituent elements of social and material processes and activities (Williams 1977), making them socially and historically contingent:

This does not mean that the language simply reflects the processes of society and history. On the contrary…some important social and historical processes occur within language, in ways which indicate how integral the problems of meanings and of relationships really are. New kinds of relationship, but also new ways of seeing existing relationships, appear in language in a variety of ways…Earlier and later senses coexist, or become actual alternatives in which problems of contemporary belief and affiliation are contested. (Williams 1985, 22)

John L. Austin (1962) developed a theory of speech acts that gave an impetus to pragmatics, a branch of linguistics that reacted against the bracketing of the referent practised by Saussure. Words have an illocutionary force that can make things happen, causing a perlocutionary effect. Theories of social constructivism or the social construction of reality were developed by Peter L. Berger and T. Luckmann (1966). Yuri Lotman took the role of signification further by elaborating the concept of a semiosphere: ‘the semiotic space, outside of which semiosis cannot exist. The ensemble of semiotic formations functionally precedes the singular isolated language and becomes a condition for the existence of the latter’ (Lotman 2005, 205). More recently, neurophilosophy has been enlisted to promote cross-cultural understanding (Al-Rhodan 2019).

Almost all of these theories and approaches were developed in generally monolingual and/or monocultural circumstances. They need to be adapted to multicultural circumstances if they are to serve for the construction of a common and consensual cross-cultural or multicultural civic discourse. During a historical period when Afro-Eurasian connectivity was at its height and Ibn Battuta and Marco Polo traversed Eurasia, Ramon Llull (1232–1316) tried in his Ars Magna Generalis to develop a new common and consensual terminology and logic of key terms and beliefs that would facilitate mutual understanding among Christians, Jews and Muslims (see Eco 2016). Shortly thereafter, in his Muqaddimah, Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) elaborated a universal theory of history. Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) tried something similar in Principi di Scienza Nuova d’intorno alla Comune Natura delle Nazioni. If the centre of the 21st-century world order is moving from the ‘Western’ to the ‘Eastern’ hemisphere, perhaps the recovery of an Afro-Eurasian approach to the development of new paradigms on a common cross-cultural, multicultural and consensual basis would be more apposite.

Habermas’s discourse ethics try to rescue Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative from a postmodernist relativistic disqualification by establishing procedures that respect the rights and opinions of everyone involved in the creation of norms. Rather than imposing universal norms a priori, Habermas’s civic discourse proposes the validation of norms – on a universal basis – through dialogue based on mutually recognised and equal rights to participate and to approve – or disapprove. Only consensual norms can become common norms. Like Kant’s, Habermas’s approach has its roots in Socrates’s belief that reason is both universal and unique, and that everyone can recognise reason, and having recognised it, people would behave accordingly. Relativism and postmodernism have raised doubts about the universality of reason, at least of reason as it has been defined in the ‘West’ by the post-Socratic tradition (Hall and Ames 1987 and Majie 2002 deconstruct the post-Socratic tradition through the prism of Chinese thought). The ‘West’ justified colonialism on the basis of ‘Universal Reason’ and the ‘One True Faith’, both of which happened to coincide with ‘Western’ norms and values, which were assumed to be ‘self-evident truths’, to be reasonable, and therefore right. Anyone who denied them would therefore be unreasonable, and wrong, in which case there would be no need to honour or respect their unreasonableness.

The fluid forms of belief in “a God of one’s own” might…result in a subjectively desired and realized separation of powers “within the realm of the absolute” that opposes the claims to exclusivity of the monotheistic religions…The example of Japan makes clear that this syncretic tolerance has spread out imperceptibly through the space of a free-floating religiosity (where if it has been noticed at all it has been met, in Europe at least, with a greater or lesser degree of contempt). But in addition it has also permeated institutional forms, where it functions perfectly naturally. People in Japan have no difficulty at all in visiting a Shinto shrine at specific times of the year, marrying in accordance with Christian rites and being buried by a Buddhist monk. The fact that this surprises us is the product of our monotheistic horizon of a monogamous God (“Thou shalt have no other Gods before me!”). This is quite alien not just to the religious eclecticism prevalent in Japan, but also to East Asia in general. Peter Berger, the sociologist of religion, reports that according to the Japanese philosopher [Hajime] Nakamura, “the West has been responsible for two basic mistakes. One is monotheism – there’s only one God – and the other is Aristotle’s principle of contradiction – something is either A or non-A. In Asia every intelligent person will tell you that he knows full well that there are many gods and that things can be both A and non-A)”. (Beck 2010, 62–63; see also Nakamura 1964, 1992)

Classical Chinese thought also developed concepts of civic discourse. The 道德經 Dàodéjīng says, 言有宗, 事有君 yán yǒu zōng, shì yǒu jūn, ‘Words have an ancestor; affairs have a sovereign’ (Lau 1963, 171). The parallel structure here indicates that an ‘ancestor’ (or genealogy à la Foucault) dictates the meaning of words or terms or social roles defined by those terms, just as mundane affairs are ordered or dictated by a sovereign or ruler. Classical Chinese political thought understood the discourse of power. The concept of 名實 míng-shí took it for granted that ‘names’ or ‘words’ (名 míng) should point to (指 zhǐ) or indicate ‘reality’ (實 shí). This formulation prefigures Saussure: 名 [→指→] 實, signifier → signified. The emphasis in Chinese thought was placed on ‘reality’ (實 shí), as illustrated by the admonition not to mistake a finger pointing at the moon for the moon itself. But ‘names’ in classical Chinese were also actions or social roles (a given word could be subject or verb, and in many cases, both at the same time). The concept of 形名 xíng-míng meant that there was a clear relationship between ‘function’ or ‘role’ (形 xíng) and ‘name’ or ‘term’ (名 míng). A ‘General’ was by definition ‘someone who won battles’. A person calling himself ‘General’ who lost battles was by definition a liar, a fraud and would be punished accordingly. Taking on a role meant being obliged to fulfil that role: 形 xíng ←→ 名míng, function ←→ name. Confucius codified civic discourse in the concept of 正名 zhèng-míng: the ‘rectification’ or ‘ordering’ (正 zhèng) of ‘names/terms/roles’ (名 míng), by which he meant that a common social consensus that would determine a common understanding of the keywords that structure society and the social duties that had to be established. By way of example, he gave the phrase 君君臣臣父父子子 jūnjūn chénchén fùfù zǐzǐ: a sovereign (君 jūn) should behave like a sovereign (君 jūn), a minister or subject (臣 chén) should behave like a minister or subject (臣 chén), a father (父 fù) should behave like a father (父 fù) and a son (子 zǐ) should behave like a son (子 zǐ). This meant that everyone should understand and agree upon what it meant to be and to behave like a sovereign, minister, subject, father or son. Trouble arose when there was a lack of consensus on the meanings of these terms/roles because they ‘resonated’ (共鳴 gòngmíng) throughout society. At the macrocosmic level of society, in general, a benevolent ruler would name benevolent ministers; if the ministers were benevolent, the subjects would be benevolent as well. At the microcosmic level of the family, those subjects were fathers, whose benevolence would inspire benevolence in their sons. If a corrupt ruler named corrupt ministers, the opposite would happen, and this corruption would resonate throughout society. So, the establishment of a consensus (à la Habermas) on the proper understanding of social roles was for Confucius the most important duty of government. Mozi established three criteria (三表 sānbiǎo) as objective means for establishing this consensus on the meanings of keywords: their origin (本 běn) in the actions and behaviour of the ancient sage kings (古者聖王之事 gǔzhě shèngwáng zhī shì); their usage (原 yuán) in everyday life as evidenced (實 shí) through the eyes and ears (耳目ěrmù) of the ordinary people; and by observing (觀 guān) how efficient (用 yòng) they were in benefitting (利 lì) the establishment of a well-ordered state and society. It could be said that the classical Chinese concept of civic discourse shares with Habermas an appreciation of the role of consensus in establishing common norms and with Williams an appreciation for the importance of social relations and practices in pragmatics and the social construction of the meaning of societal keywords.

Such classical concepts have a continuity in contemporary Chinese thought. In his analysis of the concept of person or individual in Chinese discourse, Yang Yiyin states, ‘Researchers have found that the ren (人) or person in Chinese cultural constructs is not the independent individual, but involves a reciprocal relationship of linkage with another’ (Yang 2009, 53). As a noun, the term 人 rén refers to a ‘human being’. The term 仁 rén is the action or function of 人 rén: to behave like a human being. To be human means to behave like a human; inhumane behaviour denies one the status of being human. This means that there must be a consensus about what it actually means to behave like a human being. The graphic etymology of 仁 rén is a human being (人 rén) standing beside the number 2 (二 èr), implying that no one exists in a vacuum, there is always more than one person. Thus, 仁 rén ‘refers to the communication of sentiment between people; to be alienated from interaction and mutual communication with others is to cease to be a person. This cultural construct defines the person in terms of the interrelationship between two persons’ (Yang 2009, 53). This conceptual difference complicates cross-cultural understanding of person or individual.

Qin Yaqing has written that, ‘If “rationality,” rooted in individuality, has been a key concept for Western society, then its counterpart in Chinese society can be “relationality”’ (Qin 2009, 5).

Therefore, relationality, i.e. the concept of relations as the hub of human activities in society, makes up the core of social knowledge and social life. The political philosophy of Confucianism starts with relations and defines social classes and political order in terms of relationships. Social and political stability first and foremost relies on the management of relations. Social norms are mostly the norms of relation-management and social harmony is characterized by the domination of morality and mediation of disagreements. (Qin 2009, 14)

Qin differentiates relationality from the Western rationality or the logic of causation and suggests that this differentiation leads to alternative methodologies as well as theories.

The logic of causation…assumes that things or variables shall be separated from each other and causation be established between them. Where there is a cause, there is an effect to follow. However, in the Chinese way of thinking, relationality is to be found in the relational web as a whole. In other words, things or variables change along with the change of their relations; individuals in the web are subject to changes in the relational web as a whole; and similarly the interaction among individuals can have an impact on the web. This is perhaps why Western social scientists try to control variables that may interfere so as to focus their research on the causally connected variables, while Chinese scholars tend to include as many variables as possible in dealing with a subject of research. (Qin 2009, 15)

Ethnocentrism, whether Eurocentric or Sinocentric, becomes an impediment to any cross-cultural approach to the construction of a common and consensual multicultural civic discourse. Chad Hansen has defined the translation fallacy:

Another feature of the standard theories [of Chinese thought as taught by Hansen’s professors of Chinese Studies] is that they attribute the conceptual structure of a Western theory of mind and language to Confucian writers. This results from the translation paradigm that tempts us to treat English as fixing the possible meaning structure of Chinese…I call this the English-is-the-only-real-language fallacy in honor of my son, who first formulated it in those words. “Why,” I asked him, “do you say that English is the only real language?” “Because every other language means something in English.”…The translation model motivates the conventional cliché, but the problem with this cliché becomes acute when the translator proceeds with the interpretation. She assumes that what she did before – the translation – is objectively verifiable and what she is about to do is subjective and speculative. The translator’s speculations are then guided by inferences that she draws from the scheme of beliefs and theories in which the English word functions. This naturally tempts us to the interpretive hypothesis that Chinese philosophical theories are like our own. The result is a circular argument that their philosophy must have the same conceptual structure that ours does. (Hansen 1992, 7–8)

The acquisition of one’s own culture is a process known as enculturation. Hans Georg Gadamer developed a reception theory that could help to contextualise the ethnocentric problematic of enculturation. He proposes the concept of a horizon, a shared repertoire of cultural referents or references, that is common to everyone who forms part of a given sociocultural group in a given place in a given era. Members of such a group will share the same cultural references within (but not beyond) their horizon. By sharing these cultural references, they participate in the intertextuality of their own culture’s texts or semiotic manifestations. As a result, they participate in the intersubjectivity that will be common to the comprehension of the texts or semiotic manifestations of their own group. The concept of intersubjectivity implies that there are many cultural references that every member of the group will share in common and many subjective experiences that, though individual in each case, take place within commonly shared sociocultural structures (like learning how to read from the same texts in a common school curriculum). As a result, all members of the same group, in the same place and in the same era, will share common elements that will permit mutual comprehension (see Golden 2009a, 2009b, for a fuller exposition of the following arguments). For Gadamer, the horizon delimits the cultural perception of the world of everyone living within it, just as the sea-faring horizon marks the outer limit of what a sailor can see:

Reception theory also speaks of the hermeneutic circle. Hermeneutics refers to the interpretation of texts, the discovery (if not invention) of the different meanings contained in a text, implicitly as well as explicitly. Semiotics extends hermeneutics to the interpretation of non-semantic sociocultural manifestations as well. People who form part of the same sociocultural group in the same place in the same era will also (unconsciously, perhaps) share the same criteria for interpreting the same cultural manifestations within the shared cultural horizon of the cultural references of their shared world, in roughly the same way. This common way of interpreting things is one of the most fundamental elements of their enculturation. As a result, the hermeneutic circle acts as a complementary horizon that conditions people’s capacity to interpret their world.

This model considers the situation of individuals enculturated within the same sociocultural group. Cross-cultural communication requires a new model. A different culture has its own separate cultural horizon and hermeneutic circle. In the case of different Eurocentric cultures, there will be a high degree of overlapping, but in the case of the Sinocentric and Eurocentric cultures, there will be very little (until the existence of a somewhat shared history in modern times). They are two very different sociocultural complexes that do not share cultural horizons or hermeneutic circles. They are to a large extent separate worlds (or divergent Lacanian symbolic orders):

Cross-cultural mediation, in order to avoid cultural imperialism, requires the capacity to move within cultures and between them, adapting transfer strategies to differing purposes. Some theories of cross-cultural communication might try to englobe both cultures within a single (and static) perspective, granting the observer a privileged point of view that is superior to either of the cultures in question, and thereby raising ideological implications that would be difficult to defend, such as attributing to oneself an ahistorical and asociocultural omniscience, or the overbearing (and self-deluding) arrogance of an imperial metropolis.

I do not think it is possible for a non-native to acquire a fully native understanding of another culture. A person enculturated in the Eurocentric context would have to make an effort to understand the bases of Sinocentric culture. The process of acquiring another culture is acculturation, and it is different from enculturation because it is a conscious process that requires a broadening of one’s own Eurocentric cultural horizon (in my own case) in order to include a minimum of overlapping with the repertoire of cultural references within the Sinocentric cultural horizon:

The acquisition of cultural references from a different culture is not sufficient to facilitate understanding of their role as referents in that culture, however. Interpreting these cultural referents according to one’s own hermeneutic circle is likely to produce misunderstandings or distortions. This is a danger inherent to ethnocentrism. To avoid this danger, I must also broaden my own Eurocentric hermeneutic circle so that it includes a minimum of overlapping with the Sinocentric hermeneutic circle in order to understand the bases of Chinese culture on their own Sinocentric terms, without imposing my own ethnocentric cultural imperatives or filters:

This would be necessary for any case of cross-cultural communication or comparative cultural studies. Someone from the Sinocentric semiosphere would have to reverse the flow of acculturation.

On the basis of this model, one can begin to define the sociocultural traits that delimit each culture as well as the sociocultural processes that conserve these traits – or modify them. It is also worth noting that acculturation changes the person who undertakes it, who is no longer confined to a native cultural horizon and hermeneutic circle, nor fully assimilated into a foreign culture, but has become someone who inhabits a new territory between the two cultures that are now in contact. This process of inevitable and necessary hybridisation, were it to be extended to a larger group of persons over time, would produce a new cross-cultural or multicultural territory that would replace the previous closed and mutually exclusive sociocultural worlds. It is a process that expresses itself through comparative literary and sociocultural studies and cross-cultural influences, on the one hand, and immigration on the other.

Some attempts are being made to provide both data and methodologies for establishing the differing and divergent cultural criteria that could impede the cross-cultural construction of a common and consensual multicultural civic discourse in empirical ways. Richard E Nisbett and international teams of researchers use clinical psychology to study how different cultures perceive the world in differing ways (Nisbett 2003). Anna Wierzbicka and Cliff Goddard have proposed a Natural Semantic Metalanguage as a descriptive tool for transcribing diverse cultural discourses neutrally (Goddard 2008). Lu et al. (2002) have developed cross-cultural approaches to Chinese communication studies (for a more detailed analysis of the following arguments, see Golden 2006). In a multicultural context, Heisey defines civic discourse as ‘communication designed to construct meaning by establishing a critical awareness of alternative explanations through viewing “language and culture as factors affecting behaviour”’ (Heisey 1999, 222). In a comparative study of Chinese and American views on world opinion, Wang Minmin wonders:

is it ethical to ask China to adapt to an established conception of world opinion…? However, even if it is ethical to expect and even to require China (or any nation) to conform to a more universal code of ethics than it does now…[Were it possible to establish] a set of negotiable yet binding communicative rules and values, world opinion would both allow civic discourse and act as the binding power of an international norm. [Such] communicative rules [could] also be seen as what Xing Lu refers to as multicultural rhetoric, which is “a system capable of honouring both universal values and cultural insights in the practice and formulation of rhetorical perspectives” [Lu 1998: 308]…Communicative rules and values would imply that we must first acknowledge the differences in moral orders on both sides, but then also move beyond this to realize the common ground on which both sides stand – which is the search for a more complete truth (in such a way that promises world peace). (Wang 2002, 219–24)

There are perennial problems in East Asia over the official school books used to teach the history of Japanese military expansion during the first half of the 20th century. Attempts have been made to solve this problem through the constitution of joint Japanese, Chinese and Korean editorial committees in order to produce a consensual history of the period (Obinata 2006). East and Southeast Asian foreign policy can be illustrated by musyawarah dan mukafat – ‘the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) way’. Founded on indigenous Southeast Asian village procedures, important questions should be decided through prolonged deliberations (musyawarah) in order to obtain consensus (mukafat). These attitudes have led to a diplomatic style of musyawarah and mufakat, or consultation and consensus, that is different from that of the European Union or the United States. The ASEAN avoids taking stands on issues that exceed the comfort levels of all its members. The resulting consensus politics may be used to smooth over, obviate and even occasionally resolve interstate disputes and conflicts among its members (Howe and Park 2017).

Since 1981, the World Values Survey has studied ‘changing values and their impact on social and political life’. A global network of social scientists, coordinated by an international team of scholars, ‘has over the years demonstrated that people’s beliefs play a key role in economic development, the emergence and flourishing of democratic institutions, the rise of gender equality, and the extent to which societies have effective government’ (www.wordvaluessurvey.org). One result of their studies is the Ronald Inglehart-Christian Welzel ‘cultural map of the world’, the most recent example being:

http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs.jsp

This map correlates Traditional values versus Secular-rational values on one axis, and Survival values versus Self-expression values, on the other.

Societies near the traditional pole emphasize the importance of parent–child ties and deference to authority, along with absolute standards and traditional family values, and reject divorce, abortion, euthanasia, and suicide. These societies have high levels of national pride, and a nationalistic outlook.…Societies with secular–rational values have the opposite preferences on all of these topics.

The second major dimension of cross-cultural variation is linked with the transition from industrial society to post-industrial societies – which brings a polarization between Survival and Self-expression values.…A central component of this emerging dimension involves the polarization between Materialist and Postmaterialist values (www.wordvaluessurvey.org).

Such contrasts in values, largely associated with different standards of living, greatly affect the ‘mind-set’ of various cultures, and these differences, were they not to be taken into consideration, could greatly affect a cross-cultural approach to the construction of a common and consensual multicultural civic discourse.

Largely for the purpose of cross-cultural business management, research carried out by Geert Hofstede, Gert Jan Hofstede, Michael Minkov and their teams has defined six dimensions of national culture: power distance, individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, long term orientation and indulgence. Their ‘Culture Compass’ makes it possible to compare various national cultures, as illustrated by the following example:

https://www.hofstede-insights.com/country-comparison/

Again, awareness of such sociocultural differences could greatly affect a cross-cultural approach to the construction of a common and consensual multicultural civic discourse.

The development of new cross-cultural paradigms on a common, multicultural and consensual basis would require better knowledge of non-Euro-American languages and cultures and first-hand knowledge of the policies being carried out in the Afro-Eurasian context. It would also require more collaborative international and multicultural efforts to promote and build better mutual and common knowledge and understanding, including more cross-cultural collaborative international and multicultural teams to promote and build better mutual and common knowledge and understanding, perhaps along the lines of the Europe-China Cultural Compass (2010) or the Dictionary of Untranslatables (Cassin et al. 2004, 2014) or the Reset DOC (2019) Intercultural Lexicon (ongoing). Mutual respect requires mutual knowledge in order to construct a common and consensual multicultural civic discourse that could lead to more innovative and productive paradigms and more meaningful cooperation.

Footnotes

ORCID iD

Seán Golden

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