Guest as Special Status of "Other"

Abstract

—The research discusses a special status of the “Guest” as a variety of the Other, based on the cultural-specific features of the personal representations of the “I am the Other” interaction. More than 100 proverbs are used about the guest and hospitality of various culture peoples, and qualitative methodology (content analysis and context analysis) is applied to determine the content and meaning of the Host-Guest representation. The results of content analysis allow decoding the content of social practice of hospitality, and context analysis provides the identification of its semantic vectors (emotional, reference, supportive, symmetry, subjectivity, sacrifice, etc.). The highlighted contexts reflect and broadcast culturally significant connotations of hospitality due to the social notions of hospitality that exist in culture and provide various ways to categories a guest. A socio-psychological analysis of social practice of hospitality is proposed, discussing the different perspectives of the vision: the host, guest, host in-group and guest in-group. The applied aspect of the study lies in the fact that its results can be used as a kind of semantic matrix in the development of programs of education and training in interpersonal interaction and intercultural communication of representatives of various ethnic groups.