Dragon能否表示龙--对民族象征物跨文化传播的试验性研究

Can "Dragon" Express the Chinese Long? A Pilot Study of the National Symbol in the Context of Intercultural Communication

以西方历史上颇多负面描述的dragon来表示中国龙,是否会干扰中华民族正面形象的跨文化传播?利用心理测试和内容分析方法,本研究发现:(1)虽西人对dragon有更多的负面特征认知,但实验条件下,美国被试对dragon与中国被试对龙的态度均为中性;(2)在复杂传播环境中,因问题框架、动机和意愿等因素影响,被试可能使用特征认知之外的多种信息,导致态度大幅度偏离实验建立的基线。发现显示,在不同的传播环境中,决策者采取不同的信息搜索策略,以实现旨在满足动机的态度重建。因此,就民族象征符号的传播效果而言,符号本身的特征不是问题的关键,它象征的对象是什么、在什么样的传播情境中执行其象征功能才真正重要。

On the basis of psychological tests and content analysis,the authors examine the question of whether the dragon,a beast with negative connotations in the West,can be used to signify the Chinese long(龙),or whether such use would affect the positive image of the Chinese people in intercultural communication.Their findings are as follows.Firstly,although Westerners perceive the dragon as having mostly negative traits,under experimental conditions American attitudes toward the dragon and Chinese attitudes toward the 'long' were both neutral.Secondly,in the context of complex transmission,participants in the experiment may have used other sources of information in addition to their perceptions of these creatures' characteristics due to the influence of problem-frame,motivation,wishes and other factors,leading to a large deviation from the base line established by the experiment.These findings show that in different communication environments,decision makers adopt different strategies for gathering information to achieve an attitude-reconstruction that will satisfy their motivation.Therefore,the effect of disseminating national symbols does not depend on their characteristics;what is really important is what they symbolize and in what circumstances they are transmitted.