This paper explores the problems which arise when people attempt to communicate across cultural boundaries. I draw on my fieldwork experience in various settings in Eastern and Central Europe -camps, courts, schools and businesses -where I found that communication works best when trust is established, and that the necessary step to fulfil this condition was to learn how to unlearn deeply rooted assumptions on both sides. The paper begins with a discussion of racial and ethnic stereotypes, drawing on a range of insights from evolutionary psychology and cognitive science. I then turn to memory myths, suggesting how to apply recent findings from specialized memory research. In the second part of the paper, I challenge the concept of "intercultural", which can all too easily legitimate the "clash of civilisations" ideology. In order to establish real intercultural communication, I suggest that we must abandon models of verbatim translation and instead take advantage of recent anthropological insights into how language works, how meanings are socially constructed and how shared understandings are achieved. In all this, I build on the work of linguistic and legal anthropologists who are already contributing to this endeavour and conclude with some meditations on the related themes of counter-dominance and laughter. Keywords: anthropology, applicability, communication, interpreting, culture, memory, stereotypes, unlearning
Doubt is the beginning, not the end, of wisdom.George Iles
IntroductionAnthropology is the study of what it means to be human. Its relevance and applicability to human problems has been assumed since this discipline's inception. In this paper I explore its relevance to language and communication. My specific focus is on how to avoid getting lost in translation as insiders and outsiders, experts and non-experts, the powerful and the powerless attempt to communicate across cultural boundaries. My argument is that as we enter this process of two-way communication on each side, it is important to learn, but equally to learn how to unlearn. To illustrate my thoughts, I will provide examples from my observations in various I have examined various settings in which official communication with asylum applicants takes place and present my findings from participant observation and ethnographic interviews with asylum applicants and discussions with border staff and decision makers. First, I examine how myths about memory manifest themselves during interviews in legal settings, comparing these myths with contemporary scientific findings concerning how memory works. During discussions with teachers and business personnel conducted while assisting with the teaching of "intercultural communication" and preparing educational materials for use in schools, I discovered they were interested in lists of rules about "do's and don'ts". I explore how this stance is linked to processes of stereotyping, and clarify to what extent unlearning could be helpful. Second, I focus on the failure to distinguish between language...
