The Brightest Light in the Darkest Night

An Analysis of Transcultural Communication Through Stuart Hall’s Cultural Theories

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.211020.127How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Babel, Cultural identity, Diaspora, Representation and Stereotype

Abstract

The film Babel embodies the globalisation and multiculturalism of the world. This essay discusses cultural barriers and explores the possibilities of transcultural development and cultural identity. It employs a semiotic analysis to Babel to focus on the argument that fluid identity in the transcultural context can lead to new possibilities under global cultural and multicultural development, rather than negative and struggling aspects. From Stuart Hall’s cultural theories, it analyses the positive and negative cultural exchanges in this film, and it is divided into two main sections. The first part investigates the reasons for the cultural communication barriers in the storyline at different levels: their cultural identity and how particular identities play a role in transcultural communication, which is explored through power theory and representation theories. The second part shows how cultural identity and communication conflicts are orchestrated by the director, for example, how the characters’ diaspora experiences affect their cultural identity and why negative cultural barriers contain positive possibilities. In a transcultural world, we should remain open to different cultural identities.

Copyright

© 2021, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Yiming Wang
AU  - Mian Zhou
PY  - 2021
DA  - 2021/10/21
TI  - The Brightest Light in the Darkest Night
BT  - Proceedings of the 2021 International Conference on Public Relations and Social Sciences (ICPRSS 2021)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 44
EP  - 48
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.211020.127
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.211020.127
ID  - Wang2021
ER  -