Space as a communicative code and cognitive-functional modelling of acculturation in fiction

Abstract

Drawing from the field of intercultural communication in which space is referred to as a non-linguistic form of communication, as well as linguocultural studies that treat it as one of the cultural codes used to categorize the world, put it in order and evaluate it, the author of this article focuses on the use of space in cognitive-functional modelling of acculturation in contemporary multicultural fiction. The research examines how acculturation, which is defined as a process of change that affects one’s personal psychological space as a result of continuous intercultural contact, is constructed in the short story “How to Pronounce Knife” (2015) by S. Thammavongsa. A study of the following key binary oppositions pertaining to the physical and the psychological space in the short story is caried out: centre – edge, up – down, front – back, inside – outside, regular (traditional) configuration/layout – deformed configuration / distorted layout. Taking into account the acculturation-related symbolic meanings attributed to these spatial oppositions by S. Thammavongsa, the author concludes that the invisible “air bubble” that the protagonist of the story under analysis carries around in a new culture resembles a tesseract, or a 4D hypercube, which rotates about the XW and YW planes, rather than an ordinary 3D sphere.

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