Ethno-Cultural Influences on Multimodal Text Perception

Abstract

The article investigates inter-cultural artistic communication which occurs through multimodal texts in general and feature films in particular. Artistic communication faces a challenge when its source and target belong to different ethnic and/or generational cohorts. The similarity or difference of communication codes depends on the level of adequacy of the sender's and the recipient's discursive competences. Discursive competences imply the ability to provide an adequate interpretation of situations depicted in the film, it is based on the knowledge and understanding of cultural, social and historical peculiarities of the society to which the creator belongs and which he or she depicts in the film. If the recipients ignore one of the semiotic systems incorporated in the multimodal text, the complete comprehension of the artistic text message can become unattainable. The authors conduct comparative analysis of how the Russian film "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears" is perceived by Russian and American college 'Gen Z' students. In case the culture codes of the work of art contradict some rules and codes ingrained in the society to which the recipient belongs, the interpretation of the author's message can be hindered, which entails the artistic communication disruption. The analysis yields factors that determine the interpretation of an artistic message. The authors find that the differences in ethno-cultural backgrounds present a greater obstacle to the creator's artistic message successful decoding than a generation gap between the creator and the recipients.