Umwelt-Semiosis: A Semiotic Perspective on the Dynamicity of Intercultural Communication Process: A Semiotic Perspective on the Dynamicity of Intercultural Communication Process

Semiotics has shed much light on both communication studies and cultural studies, and thus informed the investigations into intercultural communication, an area increasingly concerned in academic research. This paper incorporates our previous semiotic probes into intercultural communication, especially the semiotic model of the intercultural communication process, with the insights that have been recently highlighted in studies of edusemiotics and biosemiotics to further explore the detailed sign-relations embodied in intercultural communication contexts. Based on the conceptualizations of umwelt and semiosis and their interrelation which constitutes an umwelt-semiosis framework, we explore in depth the dynamic process of intercultural communication. Through an analytic of the mutual affection between the communicator's umwelt as the functional cultural background of the communicators and semiosis as the act of communication, we explain in detail the dynamicity by which communicators' culturally embedded manners of thinking and behaving cannot only affect, but also be affected by the process of intercultural communication. Finally, we indicate that such dynamicity can be consciously manipulated by communicators should we reconceptualize communication following a triadic viewpoint instead of the dualistic one that has dominated sociological studies.