In this essay review of Alin Olteanu: "Multiculturalism as Multimodal Communication: A Semiotic Perspective" ([Series Numanities – Arts and Humanities in Progress 9; Dario Martinelli, serieseditor], Cham: Springer, 2019) I discuss culturalism, multiculturalism, and polyculturalism, and a problematic style of reasoning seen in some contributions to the humanities, a style here called "associative hermeneutics", with no genuine theory construction. As a contrast to this style, I illustrate some challenges of understanding multiculturalism through an example, the question of how to interpret friendship across cultures as seen from the point of view of cross-cultural friendship research.