文化分析如何可能?重访爱德华·霍尔的外事服务所时期

Could Culture Analysis be Possible? Revisiting the Foreign Service Institute Period of Edward Hall

爱德华·霍尔常常被作为“奠基人”角色进入跨文化传播研究的视野,但本土传播学界尚未对他的人类学者身份展开深究。霍尔的思想主张和行动实践并非凭空产生,他任职于美国官方组织外事服务所(The Foreign Service Institute)的五年光阴,不应“割裂”于时代背景以配合主流传播学术史叙事,或者仅作为线性叙事的某一段历史,实际上,这段特殊的时期牵涉包括语言学家和人类学家在内的多方主体互动过程,映射了彼时美国人文社会领域科学转向的思潮和学科领域之争,也与霍尔此后的学术选择紧密关联。本文通过知识社会学路径重访霍尔任职于外事服务所这段时期,来“祛魅”理所当然的主流叙事。

Although Edward Hall always be cited as the founder of intercultural communication,the local communication area has not yet explored his role as an anthropologist. Hall’s ideas and practices did not emerge out of thin air, and his five-year tenure at The Foreign Service Institute, an official U.S. organization, should not be separated from the context to fit the mainstream narrative of communication history, or as just one segment of a linear narrative. In fact, this particular period involved the interaction of multiple subjects, including linguists and anthropologists, and mapped the scientific turn in the humanities and social fields in the United States at that time and the struggle over disciplinary fields. This paper revisits Hall’s time in the Foreign Service through the path of sociology of knowledge to demystify the dominant narrative that is taken for granted.