Ideograma como metáfora da cultura japonesa e seus processos de significação

Abstract

Most of the comparative researches between Japanese and Western cultures are marked by the historical analysis of certain events concerning migration processes and influences of those movements, as well as by the attempt of encapsulating the several investigations in tight taxonomies, looking for the main differences and similarities between the two cultures. In those processes, it is not rare to find dualist and stereotyped formulas that consider, for instance, Japan as the culture of the emotion and the West the culture of the reason.

This dissertation has as starting point the ideogram. However we do not intend to undertake a history or a linguistic analysis of the topic. Some information about these aspects is present during the dissertation to aid the readers that just begin their contact with the Japanese studies. The aim of the research is other, since it was made in a Program of Post-Graduation in Communication and Semiotics and not in a Department of Japanese Culture. In a wide sense, it develops a preliminary study of what would be a semiotics of the ideogram based in Charles Sanders Peirce theory. In a more specific sense, it elaborates the main hypothesis of this research, in other words, the understanding of the ideogram as the metaphor of the Japanese thought. To accomplish that, some concepts, some ways of perception, certain characteristics of the language, some specific forms of the communication and their manifestations are studied. These~ selected items can be understood as sub-systems of the same net of information, sharing aspects of similar states.

We expect that this work contributes to a better understanding of the Japanese culture, their communication processes, and the complexity involved in the multiple connections present in this culture, which no more should be labeled as "East" or "emotional culture"