Workshop:

Danubius University of Galaţi, Romania

Organizer: Dr. Cristinel Munteanu, Professor in Danubius University of Galaţi

The workshop Intercultural Communication and the Risk of Aberrant Decoding, which took place on October 9th, 2023 at "Danubius" University of Galați, aimed at re-evaluating the concept of 'aberrant decoding' (initially theorized by U. Eco), while trying to re-establish its primary meaning, and better defining this concept, with an emphasis on the importance of 'context' in the case when such a type of decoding occurs. The participants, guided by Professor Cristinel Munteanu, PhD, vividly discussed some interesting aspects in connection to the reality of intercultural communication, taking as a point of departure a series of examples given by Prof. Cr. Munteanu, either from history (real examples), or from literature (imaginary examples). Although the notion of 'aberrant decoding' has proven itself really useful in intercultural communication, however, the participants also found out that (due to J. Fiske, mainly) the concept in question is still applied in a reductionist manner, the linguistic or verbal component being neglected (or even ignored) in this case. Nevertheless, as it was pointed out during the workshop, this was not Umberto Eco's intention. At the same time, the participants tried to prove (and succeeded in proving) the fact that linguistic aberrant decoding also appears in the case of terminologies and ideologies when they are expressed in a discourse.