Page 61 - Communication Processes Volume 3 Communication Culture and Confrontation

36 Guy Poitevin

or practical moves. In this perspective, no more than the oral or the
written, the concept of culture can hardly be considered as a general
category per se.
As a matter of fact, such a conflict may not necessarily propound
mutually exclusive discourses. It may be construed as an interactive
meet under different figures. For instance, the specific relevance of
processes of exchange, co-optation, assimilation, reappropriation,
and so on of cultural forms needs to be recognized and given as much
importance as processes of autonomous differentiation through
counter-culture and rejection.
Consequently, the same following questions need to be raised in each
case and for each figure of interaction: how and why do the various
levels—from the classical to the popular—and the different forms of
transmission—through the spoken and the written word—interfere with
one another and possibly borrow from and/or reject one another at any
given period of time? In no society can we find the literati totally isolated
from the common man or the classical forms alien to folk forms; nor
can observe popular traditions keeping themselves completely aloof
and unaffected by those forms considered as classical or normative.
Communication of the idioms is the rule though with highly significant
differences in modality. We have, therefore, to answer questions such
as the following:

1. What are the immediate contexts, extent, modes of production
and the motives of those significant differences of idioms? This
question relates to the place and intentionality of the cultural
assertion.
2. Can we define a cognitive model to account for the reciprocity
and the discrepancy at the same time of a variety of figures? This
question pertains to the domain of cultural anthropology.
3. Of what nature is the conflict and what are the stakes of the
latterin a given period? This question relates to drives for
hegemony crossing through the wide historical socio-cultural
constellation.

In this respect, to take one contemporary example, processes of
cultural domination have taken new dimensions today with the tre-
mendous industrial development of the mass media, in front of which