<p>Existing frameworks for cross-cultural understanding focus predominantly on learning about others while treating self-cultural awareness as a parallel capacity. We propose that this approach overlooks a structural upstream condition: the metacognitive articulation of one’s own foundational identity—one’s relationship to national origins and religious or philosophical grounding—which we term Foundational Identity Languaging (FIL). Drawing on Valsiner’s hierarchical model of semiotic mediation, we identify a specific failure mode in which hyper-generalized affective-semiotic fields—the deepest sensibilities guiding cultural conduct—remain powerfully operative at the affective level yet fail to ascend to linguistically mediated, dialogically shareable articulation. We term this condition unlanguaging and argue that it has direct consequences for cross-cultural engagement: without metacognitive access to one’s own foundational premises, the capacity to recognize analogous premises in others is not reliably available—it may occur through circumstantial empathy or prolonged immersion, but it cannot be systematically cultivated or transferred across contexts. FIL functions not as a cause of foundational-level understanding but as a semiotic catalyst—establishing the conditions under which such understanding can reliably emerge. We illustrate this mechanism through the case of Japan, where both national-origin awareness and religious self-identification are simultaneously attenuated, producing what we call dual unlanguaging. Testable predictions and falsification conditions are specified. This perspective reframes intercultural competence as requiring not only knowledge about others, but the prior articulation of one’s own deepest assumptions as assumptions.</p>