The lacuna model is a tool for unlocking culture differences or missing "gaps" in text. The lacuna model was established as a theory by Jurij Sorokin and Irina Markovina, further developed by Astrid Ertelt-Vieth and Hartmut Schröder and practical research tested in ethnopsycholinguistics, Russian studies, American studies, Arabic studies, Germanics studies, Finnish studies, literature studies, foreign language acquisition, film studies, journalism, translation studies, cultural studies, advertising research, human resource management, transcultural studies, and cross-cultural and intercultural management. There are a few classifications of lacunas in existence. Astrid Ertelt-Vieth labels the first dimension and the second dimension of all lacunas.
Mental lacunas are differences in cognitive and affective states.
Lacunas of activity recognize different ways of processing information, talking, moving, as well as other activities.
Object lacunas are the differences in objects, the human body, and the environment.
Axiological lacunas are cultural based meaning/understanding of all mentioned above lacunas.
All lacunas could be confrontative, contrastive, implicit, explicit, relative, profound, absolute, relational and structural. The Lacuna model is utilized to analyze cultural differences on a micro-level, i.e. it is looking at individual interactions and potential gaps caused by these interactions. It can be used both as stand-alone tool or in combination with established frameworks in cross-cultural communication such as Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory, Trompenaars' model of national culture differences, Schwarz’ framework and the GLOBE Study.
Intercultural communication
Lacunas and gaps can often be observed in intercultural communication. In the beginning, the lacunian approach was used to analyze foreign texts and translations from one language to another. For example, English operates with two articles “the” and “a”, without differentiating between gender. In contrast, many other European languages, e.g. German, French, Italian, etc., have gender-specific articles. For example, for each “the” in German language, there are three gender specific articles “der”, “die” and “das”. Another very common example refers to nonexistence of concepts and terms. Thus, there is no word in English, German, French, Italian and many other languages for the Russian term “путевка“. The Chinese word “Guanxi”, which describes basic dynamics in the personal network of influence, also has no analogy in West-European languages. In intercultural communication, lacunas address not only gaps in language structure and linguistics, but also non-verbal differences that result from different social structures and experiences. In this case, a lacuna can represent differences in behavior, living conditions and structures, and processes.
