Istvan Lenart: Application of Lacuna Theory in the Business Context

Lacuna Theory is a tool for identifying and analysing interculturally discrepant verbal consciousness of language users of variant cultural/ethnic background. The theory was developed by the Russian Ethnopsycholinguistic School, namely by Y. Sorokin (Sorokin 1977) and I. Markovina (Markovina 1982, Sorokin and Markovina 1983), then further elaborated by other researchers (Ertelt-Vieth 2003; Grodzki 2003; Panasiuk 2006). Lacunas are “items that exist in one culture and not in another” (Antipov et al. 1989, 85.p.), providing a conceptual framework for contrasting two or more cultures.

This lecture gives an overview of the research Intercultural Lacunae in Hungarian-Vietnamese Communication, with Emphasis on Entrepreneurial Interactions (Lenart 2016) that attempted to utilize Lacuna Theory in the business context, at the first time with such a systematic approach since the inception of the theory. Excerpts from the research will provide concrete examples of lacunas from Hungarian-Vietnamese interactions both in general and in the business setting, as well as introduce the new complex methodology developed by Lenart.