Actively respond to cultural differences and promote Chinese culture to the world better.
In the congratulatory letter of the first summit forum on the construction of a cultural power and the important speech of the forum on cultural inheritance and development, General Secretary of the Supreme Leader emphasized that "we should better shoulder the new cultural mission and continue to promote cultural prosperity, build a cultural power and build the modern civilization of the Chinese nation at a new historical starting point". In the Party’s Report to the 20th CPC National Congress, the General Secretary stressed the need to "strengthen the capacity building of international communication, comprehensively enhance the efficiency of international communication, strengthen the capacity building of international communication, comprehensively enhance the efficiency of international communication, deepen exchanges and mutual learning among civilizations, and promote Chinese culture to better go global. Deepen the exchange of civilizations and learn from each other, and promote Chinese culture to go to the world better. " In recent years, the pace of Chinese cultural products going abroad has been accelerated, and great achievements have been made in both physical objects and copyright trade. However, the progress of core media cultural products such as movies, newspapers and publications is still not satisfactory. Compared with the western developed countries and their media, "we are sometimes in a situation where we can’t say what we have said and can’t spread it internationally. There is a’ deficit’ in the inflow and outflow of information, a’ contrast’ between the real image of China and the subjective impression of the West, and a’ gap’ between soft power and hard power." Chinese culture has been affected to some extent when it goes abroad. Cultural differences are the key factors that affect the acceptance of international audiences of media cultural products. To actively deal with cultural differences, we should do the following:
Familiar with the dimension system of cultural differences that affect the acceptance of media cultural products
This system includes four dimensions: language, history and habits, way of thinking and values. The language dimension mainly includes characters, sounds, images, posture and other indicators. The dimension of history and habit includes historical facts, customs, social customs, moral traditions, experience and other indicators; The dimension of thinking mode includes image thinking and abstract thinking, comprehensive thinking and analytical thinking, linear thinking and circular thinking. Values include privacy, achievement effectiveness, competitive innovation, freedom and equality, youth and health, individualism, humanitarianism, materialism, time orientation and action orientation. We should start from these four dimensions, analyze the obstacles to acceptance caused by cultural differences in the production, distribution, exchange and consumption of cultural products, and adopt appropriate strategies, or reduce or link up or dilute or recognize these cultural differences, so as to realize the optimal acceptance of Chinese cultural products for international audiences.
Grasp the mechanism of cultural differences affecting the acceptance of media cultural products.
Cultural differences affect the acceptance of cultural products with its internal mechanism, which is embodied in seven forms: novelty approaching mechanism, which means that because of novelty and strangeness, the receiving subject has a kind of opposite sex like it, forming a kind of sensory acceptance or inductive acceptance; The mechanism of defamiliarization rejection refers to the stereotype rejection and structural rejection of strange things because the recipient has his own knowledge map and cognitive picture; Biased understanding mechanism means that consumers deviate from the original intention of media products under the influence of their own values and ways of thinking; The mechanism of reverse misreading means that the meaning understood by consumers is just the opposite to the meaning given by producers, and the starting point of giving meaning may be intentional confrontation or unintentional coincidence; Identity coping mechanism means that consumers decode completely according to the dominant meaning of the encoder and are in a passive position; Confirmatory compatibility mechanism means that consumers give their culture a certain existence space under the premise of maintaining their dominant position in cultural values, which is a kind of compatible acceptance; The mechanism of ideological field sharing the same roar refers to the existence of an ideological field, which brings together the cultural values and thoughts of the exporting and importing countries and other cultural values and thoughts contained in the products, and works in many directions to form a landscape with different voices sharing the same roar.
Effectively apply the dimension system of cultural differences and the theory of influence mechanism to maximize the avoidance of negative effects of cultural differences.
In the production process, cultural production is a kind of spiritual production, symbolic production and meaningful presentation, which determines the freedom and flexibility of media cultural production. Producers can use various symbols for unlimited creative production, and it is possible to control the cultural composition of products and minimize cultural differences. Production modes to reduce cultural differences include: "ABC" mode (that is, "american born chinese mode", which embodies the cultural values of the exporting country in the core essence of products, and can completely reflect the cultural origin and characteristics of the host country in the form and even content of products); "Mix-and-match model" (that is, connecting and combining communication elements and market elements from different countries, resulting in a situation where you have me and I have you); "Pure Universal Cultural Model" (that is, in the production of media products, no matter the content form or the core spirit, the materials used are all domestic cultural elements that express the basic values of all mankind).
In the consumption process, cultural differences have been solidified in products, and it is impossible to reduce them. Only by trying to make consumers recognize their cultural values. External communication is effective in happy consumption, which is realized in cultural trade. The key to cultural trade is consumers’ conscious and voluntary purchase. The premise of purchasing is to obtain the value recognition of our cultural products from consumers, and the path to realize the value recognition is intercultural, common cultural significance space and spiritual utility compensation. Intercultural refers to mutual understanding, mutual respect and mutual tolerance between different cultures, aiming at mutual openness and eternal dialogue between cultures. Its premise is to highlight China’s cultural dominant position, to face up to the cultural differences of nation-states, to export fine products representing the core values of Chinese excellent culture, and to stir up consumers’ cultural thinking and change. The common space of cultural significance is a common understanding of the meanings of symbols such as languages and characters used in communication, and a similar or similar life experience and cultural background. To cultivate China’s cultural significance space for American and European audiences, firstly, we should optimize the international business environment and maintain and expand the trade and investment between the United States and Europe in China; The second is to improve the education environment for studying abroad and train more international students in China; The third is to liberalize the field of health care and accommodate more NGOs; Fourth, support the export of audio-visual products and expand Chinese cultural literacy education. Spiritual utility refers to the degree of spiritual satisfaction that consumers get from cultural products. National cultures are a rigid demand for their own countries, while for other countries,It is a non-rigid demand, and international media cultural products play more of a spiritual utility compensation than a substitute role. The national cultural system of a country is a vital cultural ecosystem. When it is destroyed, it must be buffered and compensated by some force. When the cultural ecosystem does not have enough power to compensate, foreign cultural products play this compensation role at the right time, which will not impact the national culture of the host country, but will help it eliminate the adverse effects caused by those externalities and improve the spiritual welfare of consumers in the host country.
(The author is a professor at anhui university of finance Base of Socialism with Chinese characteristics Theoretical System Research Center and a researcher at the Media Research Institute of China Press and Publication Research Institute.)
Liu Jianhua Source: China Youth Daily
Source: China Youth Daily
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