Autocommunication, Negative Influence and Cross-Cultural Studies

This paper aims to interpret Jurij Lotman’s concept of autocommunication in terms of the trite theme of ‘negative influence’ in cross-cultural studies.By situating retroactively Lotman in the historical context of the 1970 s when the research field of influence study was undergoing heated debate, the paper fills in a missing link of the reception of Lotman by Anglo-American and Chinese readerships in the early and the middle 1970 s.The paper argues that with regard to his own revision of Roman Jakobson’s model of communication, Lotman demonstrates reflexively and bears witness to the phenomenon of ‘negative influence’, where the recipient at once adopts and rebukes his sources.The paper raises and attempts to answer the following set of pertinent questions:(1) What ‘negative influence’ is;(2) How ‘negative influence’ can be recast in the Jakobsonian model of speech communication;(3) How ‘negative influence’ can be reinterpreted in terms of ‘autocommunication’ or the other way around;(4) What implications ‘autocommunication’ has in the writing of national and transnational literary historiography.