1 Introduction: The interplay of languages, cultures, and minds

Teaching and learning a second or foreign language¹ means first of all mediating and learning the words, grammar, pronunciation and morpho-syntax which are part of the linguistic system. These linguistic elements are didactically reducible and thus learnable, following a clearly definable grammatical progression (cf. Harden, Köhler, and Witte 2006). However, language is not only a linguistic system but also the main tool for abstract thought and the central semiotic system of a speech community.² Therefore, in order to be able to use the second language (L2) appropriately, the student also has to learn about the cultural patterns and social structures of the other speech community which guide intersubjective language use. The sociocultural context of language usage, however, is highly dynamic, complex and, in its (inter-)subjective application, very flexible; it is also dependent on the social, cultural, and psychological framework, as invoked momentarily by the language users, for example, by the interlocutors in a conversation. These pragmatic contexts of social language use are structured by relatively loose and dynamic principles rather than by prescriptive rules, which make grammar much more analytically accessible, teachable, and learnable. However, unlike the language system itself, sociocultural principles of language use are not systematically reducible, and they consequently cannot be presented in an easily learnable fashion to the L2 learner. This has led to a situation in many L2 classrooms in primary, secondary, and tertiary-level education where structured learning of the second language as a linguistic system in terms of grammar, syntax, phonetics, lexis, semantics, morphology, and communicative language use has taken priority in the foundational stages of L2 learning which is expanded in the higher stages by the cultural frame of reference of the L2 speech community.

This division of language and culture has been identified as one of the major concerns by the 2007 Modern Language Association (MLA) Ad Hoc Committee Report entitled “Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World.” This report identifies some problems in foreign language departments and language programs at U.S. universities in response to the language deficit which has become an urgent matter in the U.S. after the catastrophic events of 9/11. In particular, the report identifies the division into lower and higher level courses in foreign language programs as problematic since they tend to support the artificial division into language skills (primarily taught at lower level) and cultural content (taught at higher level, mainly through literature).³ As a means of overcoming this division, the MLA (2007) Ad Hoc Committee Report proposes that this situation should be addressed by moving towards “a broader and more coherent curriculum in which language, culture, and literature are taught as a continuous whole, supported by alliances of other departments and expressed through interdisciplinary courses, [which] will reinvigorate language departments as valuable academic units central to the humanities and the missions of institutions of higher learning” (MLA 2007: 3).

It seems obvious that the MLA Report is concerned about the weakening status of foreign language departments in the U.S., and it proposes tactical alliances with cognate academic departments in the humanistic faculty to safeguard the foreign language departments. This move, however, is not only tactically motivated, because interdisciplinarity makes utter sense when the goal of L2 learning is not confined to the linguistic system but is also broadened to include the development of overarching intercultural competence, based on the learner’s increasing awareness of and ability to use cultural constructs of the target culture, while at the same time becoming increasingly aware of the patterns and constructs of his or her native culture; this facilitates the ability to cognitively, emotionally, and behaviorally move between the dominant constructs of the languages and cultures involved in the learning experience. In this book, such a comprehensive, interdisciplinary, and integrated concept of second language learning will be addressed, with all its repercussions for the shift of subjective cultural frames of reference and constructs of identity, but also for the development of intercultural third spaces of learners, tapping into the disciplines of psychology, sociology, cultural studies, anthropology, ethnography, language philosophy, pedagogy, critical theory, and applied linguistics (cf. Chapters 6-10).

The MLA Report (2007: 2) uses the terminology “translingual and transcultural competence” which is different from the concept of intercultural competence used in this book, although the authors of the report propose a definition which seems to oscillate between the two concepts:

In this citation, the phrase “operating between languages,” insinuates the development of a “third place” on the part of the individual student, stimulated and fostered by rich experiential activities in the L2 classroom (cf. Sections 8.2 & 9.6). The phrase of reflecting on the world and oneself “through the lens of another culture and language,” does not imply “that one national language can be mapped onto one national culture” (Kramsch 2012: 18) but that the conceptualizations and patterns of construal, as subjectively mediated in the third place between languages and cultures, are used by the L2 learner as a genuinely new basis for construction. The third place is characterized by the subjective blending of spaces within and between cultures (cf. Section 4.7), operating on the margins of cultural systems of meaning, in borderline zones and spaces in-between traditional cultural patterns, values, and norms, thus constantly developing relevant spheres for the subject where cultural production and subjective positionings take place. The negotiation for meaning in borderline spaces between the languages and cultures evokes the concept of interlingual and intercultural positionings by students; the positionings are characterized by the recognition of linguistic and cultural boundaries and the intent to negotiate concepts, patterns, discourses, and norms in the subjective third space between the languages and cultures.

The concept of translingual and transcultural positionings has other intentions, ⁴ in that it aims to overcome traditional boundaries and position itself above existing cultures, thereby eliminating essentializing constructs such as racism and ethnocentrism. Transcultural individuals can be seen as “culturally footloose, owing loyalty to no single culture” (Parekh 2006: 150). They can be detached from cultural systems of meaning and values and create their own original lifestyle beyond the constraints of culture (for a discussion of the concepts of trans-, inter-, and multiculturality, cf. Introduction to Chapter 8). Hence, the terminology used in this book centers on the “inter” as the space of enunciation in terms of negotiation for meaning which recognizes the cultural situatedness of the subject with regard to language, identity, positioning, activity, and emotion. Since the complex activities of making sense are centered on the learner as an embodied subject, the perspective taken in this book is not that of the learner to whom something is being done (as expressed in the above citation, e.g., that the student is “educated,” “trained,” and “taught”), but it understands the learner as an active and engaged member of a linguistic and cultural community who is constantly negotiating for meaning in all aspects of everyday life in psychological, linguistic, emotional, cultural, and behavioral domains. The L2 classroom is not confined to form/function-focused language learning but it has to fundamentally consider the learner’s development of intercultural competence and should also take into account each learner’s complex and competing expectations, worldviews and beliefs, identities and voices, and anxieties and desires which are initially facilitated by the cultural values and beliefs of the first language (L1) speech community.

This is where this book enters the debate: in the first part it attempts to comprehensively analyze the notions of cultural, social, pragmatic, communicative, emotional, and cognitive contexts of subjective L1 usage and the influence they have on L2 learning and teaching. The comprehensive nature of these analyses means that this part of the book will function as a post-disciplinary handbook that provides a critical review and contextualization of existing research with regard to intercultural dimensions of second language learning. A constructionist-developmental perspective will be applied in order to analyze the complex interplay of cognitive development, cultural patterns, and social structures in L1 acquisition (including the acquisition of concepts, frames, schemata, and plausibility structures) and, from that basis, in intercultural L2 learning. In the second part of the book, the emphasis shifts towards interculturally blended spaces as the transitory domains for subjectively producing novel knowledge. For the field of L2 learning, the constructionist approach has the potential to overcome the traditional dichotomies of own (or native) and other (or foreign) since neither are static and essentialist categories but highly dynamic and complex notions engaged in dialectic processes of accommodation and assimilation, whilst always focused on the developing subject. The intercultural third space provides the ideal terrain for symbolically deconstructing essentialist categories and reconstructing them as the dynamic blended foundation of subjective symbolic construction, based on the complex interplay of languages and cultures in the subjective mind of the L2 learner. The third space between cultural frames provides the nucleus for the subjective development of intercultural competence (cf. Chapter 10) which is a complex construct that includes cognitive, emotional, psychological, and behavioral domains of the learner and is thus difficult to define in terms of its mediation, development and assessment in the L2 classroom.⁵ In Section 10.2, a model of principles for progressively mediating intercultural competence in the L2 classroom will be developed in terms of encouraging and allowing for the blending of spaces between the cultures which integrates many of the concepts, notions, and theories analyzed in the previous chapters. Neither the first nor the target culture, nor the mind of the learner or the intercultural third place, are static and atomistic entities: they all constantly interact and are subject to ongoing change which makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to assess the subjective accounts of intercultural competence of the L2 learner in a comprehensive and inclusive manner (cf. Section 10.3) which involves the psychological and identity-related domains of learners that cannot be verbalized or observed.

The focus on the learner as a subject is easier claimed than implemented in L2 teaching; each individual learner is unique in terms of socialization, lingualization, emotion, experience, memory, constructs of identity, desire, ambition, and many other aspects. However, what learners in a homogenous L2 classroom have in common is the first language and the inherent concepts, frames, and plausibility structures which facilitate smooth intersubjective exchange. Another shared domain of learners in a homogeneous class is the internalized culture which provides them with basically the same frame of mind and patterns of thought and action. Both elements, language and culture, are broadly shared in a speech community, albeit subjectively harbored to different degrees. Subjectivity as a conscious stance is facilitated by culture and language which are also the glue that holds a speech community together and, by implication, makes it distinguishable from other speech communities in terms of frame of mind, habitus, life-world, and worldview. These boundaries are, of course, not insuperable because one can learn the linguistic structures, communicative conventions, and cultural values of other speech communities. However, the arduous process of acquiring a second language and its cultural context requires deliberate effort and engagement by the learner, in particular with regard to communicative conventions and cultural values, because both are highly dynamic and flexible in terms of their actual social use. This process has to be carefully facilitated and guided by more knowledgeable others in the person of teachers. A second language is unlike any other school subject where the subject-matter has to be learned and cognitively internalized; rather, it provides learners with another medium for expressing their most deeply held awarenesses, feelings, conflicts, memories, and aspirations, freed from the constraints of the L1, newly conceptualized through another language, and contextualized in another cultural frame of reference. And it is exactly this transformative potential of the L2 in terms of cognition, emotion, performance, and psychological traits that enormously complicates the efforts of teaching and learning a second (or subsequent) language.

The impossibility of constructing neatly learnable and valid rules for the subjective invocation of social, pragmatic, and cultural contexts by interlocutors in their speech acts has led the two most prominent 20^th century linguists, Ferdinand de Saussure and Noam Chomsky, to introduce an artificial separation of the linguistic system (langue, competence) as a stable object of analysis from the social use of language (parole, performance). Having excluded the dynamic and messy sociocultural and subjective context from the sphere of analysis, the way was cleared to focus solely on the rules of the linguistic system in terms of ideal users of language: “Linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-listener, in a completely homogenous speech-community, who knows its language perfectly and is unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant conditions as memory limitations, distractions, shifts of attention and interest, and errors (random or characteristic) in applying his knowledge of the language in actual performance” (Chomsky 1965: 3). Thus, meaning is considered to reside in the linguistic signs themselves, rather than being created through its use. However, this analytical move, while extremely helpful for making the linguistic system transparent and, therefore, more easily learnable for L2 students, has proven a hindrance for learning and analyzing language in its complex and dynamic communicative, social, and cultural contexts.

In contrast to systemic linguists, functional linguists (such as Roman Jakobson, Karl Bühler, Michael Halliday, and others) have studied the socio-communicative functions of language usage in order to find corresponding structural elements in different aspects of the social use of language. Their basic assumption is that language has arisen in and through society to serve social purposes; consequently, the analysis of language as a social semiotic has to be the starting point for linguistic analysis, and not the isolated system of language. After all, as Jakobson (1990: 332) quipped, “Grammar without meaning is meaningless.”

Another strand of researching performative language use is that of linguistic anthropology, ethnography, discourse analysis, pragmalinguistics, and sociolinguistics which treat language as a cultural practice and speakers as social actors (rather than idealized speakers and listeners). The notion of context assumes a central role for both of these more pragmatic strands of linguistics. Whereas for the functional linguists, in particular Jakobson and Bühler, the notion of context mainly refers to the immediate communicative situation, i.e., the speaker (sender), the listener (receiver), the message and the channel of communication, linguistic anthropologists and sociolinguistics take a much broader approach towards the analysis of context which includes social structures, institutions, and cultural conceptualizations and patterns.

These two strands of sociocultural linguistics (in the widest sense) are complemented by language philosophy, most notably the works of John Searle (1969) and John Austin (1962), which expanded on Ludwig Wittgenstein’s (1953) ground-breaking ideas. Language is no longer seen as a mere instrument for the one-dimensional transportation of meaning from one person to another, but, rather, is conceived as a series of speech acts, or as a tool for, as the programmatic title of Austin’s book suggests, Doing Things with Words (1962). Therefore, the concept of linguistic competence alone is clearly insufficient as the object of analysis for language in social use, and thus the objective of L2 acquisition has to also be expanded to a broader concept of what Dell Hymes (1972) coined communicative competence, which incorporates the domain of performance, in that appropriate social language use must take communicative styles and sociocultural traditions into consideration:

Consequently, the units of analysis shift from the sentence-level to pragmatic situations, speech acts, and social events. Communicative performance is considered a realm of social action which emerges from interaction between speakers and thus cannot be described in terms of individual knowledge. Situations influence not only what to say but also how to say it. The communicative approach to second language teaching and learning, which has gained prominence from the mid-1970s, is the first L2 teaching and learning methodology to try to systematically include the pragmatic context of language use. Students should, in addition to a systemic linguistic competence in the L2, acquire a more general communicative competence, defined as the ability to apply the L2 flexibly and appropriately in a range of pragmatic speech situations pertaining to the authentic sociocultural context of the L2. However, the communicative approach operates within rather limited pragmatic situations which prepare the L2 learner for using formulaic speech in very narrow contexts of stereotypical situations, for example, In the Restaurant or At the Train Station. Although clearly a step in the right direction, the communicative approach has further deficiencies. It largely ignores the sociocultural imprint of learners’ subjective concepts, beliefs, aspirations, attitudes, and emotions because it is mainly orientated at the target language and its pragmatic use in social and cultural conventions; it also does not sufficiently take into consideration the prevalent learning traditions in different regions. For instance, in some countries the learning traditions may be more authoritarian than in others where co-operative learning principles are applied.⁶

Consequently, since the 1990s there have been calls for a further broadening of the concept of competence towards a more inclusive intercultural competence. Intercultural competence not only refers to the cognitive level (knowledge and awareness), but includes the affective level (attitudes and dispositions), the social level (skills and internalized patterns of behavior, patterns of action and interaction), and the cultural level (pragmatic presuppositions, judgments of relevance, interpretive procedures, values, beliefs, and emotions). The goal of the interculturally-oriented L2 learning process is not the acquisition of linguistic skills rivaling those of native speakers, but the development of a competent “intercultural speaker” (Byram 1999: 67) who may be deficient in linguistic competence in relation to the native speaker, but at the same time has a surplus of intercultural competence in comparison to the monolingual person. The intercultural speaker is able to analyze the main thrust of discourses with regard to cultural foundations and backgrounds, and can adapt his or her behavior accordingly: “It is this function of establishing relationships, managing dysfunctions and mediating which distinguishes an ‘intercultural speaker’, and makes them different from a native speaker” (Byram 1999: 67). The interculturally competent person is able to create shared meanings with people from other cultural communities who have different cultural perspectives and values because he or she is in a position, at least temporarily, to suspend the internalized cultural frame of reference and adopt that of the cultural other.

The term intercultural seems to imply that the competent learner is located somewhat between two (or more) cultures. Cultures, however, are not clearly definable entities due to their lack of essence, and there is hardly a single human culture in existence that has not had contact with other cultures; therefore, every culture is already a hybrid culture. Cultures do not so much exist in their artifacts (e.g., works of architecture, music, literature, fine arts, etc.), but rather they are distributed and embodied systems of orientation for every member of a cultural community. However, everyone internalizes the values and beliefs of a culture to different degrees. Furthermore, cultures can be internally plural and “represent a continuing conversation between their different [internal] traditions and strands of thought” (Parekh 2006: 337), while at the same time providing a certain degree of internal coherence. Culture, in a non-essentialist manner, can be understood as a generative matrix, providing the subject and the cultural community with patterns of interpretation and construction in a world which has already been interpreted by others in a sociohistorical dimension.⁷ Without this internalized cultural knowledge of how to understand, feel, behave, act, and interact in a given sociocultural context, a reflective human existence would not be possible. Cultural knowledge, which is mainly tacit, provides the matrix for interpretative practices applied by the group members, individually and collectively, in everyday interactions. For example, in conversations, certain linguistic features (e.g., pronouns, code-switching, prosodic features) invoke the social and cultural context of interpretation that is to be employed by the interlocutors.

If sustained L2 learning aims at mediating intercultural competence as a key qualification, it is unavoidable that the learner will insert his or her subjectivity into the learning process.⁸ This is the case because key constructs of his or her first (or native) cultural community (including constructs of personal identity), mediated by the first language and internalized during the processes of socialization, lingualization, and enculturation,⁹ will be increasingly challenged and qualified by the engagement with alternative constructs inherent in the L2 and its sociocultural context. Although, of course, the learner has most likely met people with migrant backgrounds living in his or her community, or has spent vacations abroad, these encounters do not have the same quality and transformative potential which is provided by the deliberate, intensive, (meta-)reflective, and sustained process of learning a second language and its cultural context.¹⁰

The concept of intercultural competence transcends domains of skill and performance to include “deeper notions of disposition, intention, motive and personal identity” (Fleming 2009: 3). Therefore, intercultural competence cannot be taught as a neat quantifiable product in the L2 classroom; it is a highly subjective, dynamic, and flexible construct that has to be actively acquired by the individual in an intentional, cohesive, and coordinated manner (cf. Witte 2011). This acquisition process starts in the very early stages of L2 learning when the internalized norms, values, and beliefs of the native culture are still dominant for cognition, emotion, and behavior (cf. Section 4.5; Chapter 10). Learning a second language, including its underlying cultural patterns, has the potential to unsettle not only the norms of cognitive functioning for the reader, but also those of emotional and behavioral functioning which have been acquired and deeply internalized through his or her life-long participation in culturally organized social practices, including the ubiquitous use of cultural tools and artifacts, in particular that of language. The cognitive, emotional, and behavioral dominance of the linguistic and cultural categories of construction, which have been acquired during the process of socialization, is gradually reduced (although never quite eliminated), and the learner develops his or her own intercultural constructs and positionings in the process of progressively engaging with the categories and configurations of the other language, culture, and society. The emerging new cognitive and affective bases for subjective construction are located somewhere between the constructs of the L1 and the L2 and their respective cultures; the intercultural third space is characterized by a high degree of subjectivity and dynamism in the L2 learner’s efforts to blend the manifold influences of the cultures and languages involved in the learning process in a meaningful way. The spatial metaphor refers here to the discursive problem of subjective construals which are characterized by increasingly blended or mixed constructs between conceptualizations, discourses, and plausibility structures within and across cultures. Blended spaces are partial and temporary structures that interlocutors construct when talking or thinking about a perceived situation or configuration. Blended mental spaces contain elements of a situation which are typically blended in the mind of the subject, not in a freewheeling and coincidental manner but in a way that is structured by culturally constituted frames (cf. Fauconnier and Turner 2002: 40). Mental spaces are short-term constructs informed by more general and more stable structures of cultural knowledge and associated with a particular domain. They are interconnected in a broader network of mental spaces, and they can be blended and modified as subjective thought and social discourse unfold (cf. Section 4.7).

It is precisely this high degree of subjectivity of the socioculturally structured intercultural third space which requires a sensitive teaching approach, leaving ample room for explorative and collaborative learning activities. Dominance of classroom activities on the part of the teacher and content-based, textbook-driven learning-processes tend to ignore the fact that L2 learners approach the L2 differently from native speakers who have been socialized in the target culture; L2 learners “make quite different associations, construct different truths from those of socialized native speakers” (Kramsch 2009a:13). As embodied selves,¹¹ learners do not respond directly to external input, but to “idealized representations” they have construed (consciously or not) for themselves over time (cf. Kramsch 2009a: 75). These different associations and idealized representations have to be negotiated by the learners in the process of learning the L2, i.e., they have to blend their understandings of the new L2 constructs with their internalized knowledge on cognitive, behavioral, and emotional levels, thus affording subjective stances and identities which are dynamically positioned in the hybrid third space between the languages and cultural frames.

The traditional instructivist teaching approach, based on cognitive psychology, cannot adequately provide this holistic learning environment because it emphasizes the mediation of explicit cognitive knowledge. It is based on the assumption that every human possesses information-processing faculties in order to learn. If this were the case, mental processes would necessarily be rule-governed, just like information-processing devices in computers which apply strict mechanistic rules. However, research on the elicitation of cognitive rules of information processing has been conducted under artificial experimental conditions. Typically, a pre-test was conducted, followed by a post-test, and the results were compared with those of a control group which was not exposed to the experiments.¹² The teaching and learning process has to make use of these mechanisms which are responsible for the processing of information (giving rise to metaphors of input, output, short-term memory, long-term memory, intake, container, hardware system, software program, etc.) with the aim of optimizing the process of learning the rules of the L2. The process of teaching and learning typically focuses on content in the form of task-based learning, as presented in textbooks and prescribed by the school curricula, and it is didactically reduced by the teacher in order to achieve optimal learning processes for the group of learners, as defined by the teacher. The process of learning is conceptualized as the learner decoding the relevant information, relating it to previously acquired knowledge, and storing the processed information in long-term memory.

However, this model of cognitive information processing sends the wrong signal to the classroom practice of intercultural L2 learning by implying that the successive mastering of relevant linguistic rules will automatically result in an adequate performance in interactions situated in the target speech community. The L2 learner is neither a machine-like device of information processing nor an emotionless pawn in the language game; he or she is a unique subject with specific experiences, knowledge, memories, emotions, desires, and learning requirements. The information-processing model is based on idealized and homogenized views of interaction which cannot capture the ambiguity and the context-dependency of processes of negotiations for meaning, as Jerome Bruner remarks: “But (...) the rules common to all information systems do not cover the messy, ambiguous, and context-sensitive processes of meaning making, a form of activity in which the construction of highly ‘fuzzy’ and metaphoric category systems is just as notable as the use of specifiable categories for sorting inputs in a way to yield comprehensible outputs” (Bruner 1996: 5).

Subjective cognition is not, as implied by cognitive psychology, an autonomous and self-contained entity, but it is fundamentally a social construct, produced by interaction with embodied others. Therefore, the generalized cognitive rules on which the teacher centers his or her teaching efforts can only have limited validity for the learner in two dimensions: firstly, in acquiring the information in subjectively relevant circumstances, and secondly, in externalizing the acquired knowledge in real-life situations in the L2 community. The educationalist Wells comments that “such knowledge, however carefully sequenced and authoritatively presented, remains at the level of information that has little or no impact on students’ understanding until they actively engage in collaborative knowledge building to test its relevance in relation to their personal models of the world and, where possible, its practical application in action” (Wells 1999: 90).

It makes sense, therefore, to question the fundamental assumptions of the instructivist approach, in particular the assumptions of the uniformity of rule-governed human cognition, the generalizability of experimentally gained research results, the existence of one reality for all humans, and the existence of an ideal individual processor of information who speaks with one voice (cf. Kukla 2000). The social constructivist (or constructionist)¹³ and sociocultural approaches, informed by the works of Vygotsky, Bruner, Gergen, Harré, Shotter, and others, criticize exactly these assumptions.¹⁴ Instead of generalizing cognitive rules for all learners, it focuses on the uniqueness of each person’s subjective learning trajectories and potential for construction. It takes into account the dynamic roles of social context, subjectivity, intentionality, and the sociocultural, historical, and institutional influences on the subject who is involved in cognitive, emotional, and behavioral development. Once the sociocultural line of development intersects with the biological line in early childhood, the mind of the child is transformed by the conceptualizations and the grammar of language which he or she internalizes and which enables him or her to reflect on experiences and gain conscious control over his or her mental activities (cf. Chapters 2 and 3). External and internal realities are united by the mediating power of language as the most elaborated system of symbols. The constructionist approach, unlike the cognitive tradition, assumes the existence of multiple realities that are constructed differently by each subject because of the inherent diverse voices, beliefs, and attitudes, acquired during the process of socialization in different contexts and to different degrees. On this basis, neo-Vygotskian notions of intersubjectivity, co-construction of shared realities, and dialogized heteroglossia (Bakhtin) are considered important characteristics of the L2 learning process (cf. Chapters 2-4). Therefore, knowledge does not exist independent of the learner but is always intersubjectively generated and subjectively constructed.

If learning is conceptualized as the active construction of knowledge on the part of the learner, the instructivist notion of one-dimensional transfer of knowledge in the L2 classroom has to be revised. Instead, the learner’s own creative potential has to be stimulated in order to actively construct knowledge, together with his or her peers. This implies that the classroom has to provide a rich and varied learning environment which leaves adequate room for explorative, experiential, collaborative, as well as transformative and subjectively meaningful construction activities. Due to the subjective differences in students’ construction-potential, there cannot be the one correct way of achieving learning progress for all learners in the classroom; therefore, the teacher has, together with the learners, to develop a spectrum of diverse possibilities and paths of learning which the learners can subjectively negotiate and select from. The process of teaching and learning has to be flexible and versatile with regard to methodologies, didactics, and materials. Rather than providing for a transfer of knowledge, students are stimulated by adequate and rich learning environments to actively (co-)construct subjective knowledge, as is relevant for their particular interests and subject positionings (cf. Section 4.5). Teaching and learning are, therefore, orientated by the process rather than by the product of learning. This is even more so the case when one considers that concepts such as culture, interculture, discourse, and genre cannot be defined in an essentialist and stable sense.

The constructionist approach fundamentally recognizes the sociocultural and psychological dimensions of language. This is particularly true for the typifying and structuring influence of language on the subjective mind through its inherent conceptualizations, schemata, frames, and plausibility structures. After all, “Language is a guide to ‘social reality’ (...). Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society” (Sapir 1949: 162; emphasis added).¹⁵ Sapir reminds us that language cannot be equated with the social world. Rather, language is a semiotic system that represents to us the social, cultural, and material worlds, but is at the same time involved in our subjective and collective construction of these worlds. Language, therefore, is very closely linked to the structure of our subjective reality. This means that we can only represent our experiences and feelings to ourselves and to others by using the concepts embedded in our language and culture; therefore, our private feelings, memories, and thoughts come into existence through language, even before we communicate them to others.¹⁶ This also means that use of language is a social and cultural act because it requires the co-construction of social roles, based on the implicit cultural knowledge that defines speakers as members of a discourse community.¹⁷

Perceptible meaning usually originates from interaction between people, not within people. The co-construction of meaning is a highly dynamic process because language cannot transmit ideas in a precise, stable, and identical form from one person to another. Intended meaning is always much richer than can be conveyed by the language used by speakers/hearers, or by writers/readers. Speakers/writers frequently compress their thoughts and often imply, rather than state explicitly, what they mean, whereas hearers/readers construct their own version of the intended meaning of what they hear or read. The meaning of a word is, unlike in a dictionary entry, not invariable; it changes according to the situation, mood, and intention of the speaker or writer (which can be indicated by using a certain register, tone, pitch of voice, phrase, or body language) and, in turn, the mood, knowledge, and competence of the recipient. Therefore, communication is neither a straight-forward nor a one-dimensional transmission of ideas: it is always a joint and creative endeavor between the people involved, based on certain linguistic patterns, contextual influences, and tacit cultural knowledge.

Meaning is to a certain extent pre-constructed, not only in the structure and the conceptualizations of language, but also in frames, genres, and discourses (cf. Chapter 4), i.e., in the structured sociocultural use of language, since they produce a particular version of events which, according to Foucault (2002: 54), should not be treated merely as “groups of signs (signifying elements referring to contents or representations) but as practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak.” Consequently, discourses are much more than just sense-making devices: they are constitutive agents that organize and arrange meanings of everyday social life.¹⁸ Therefore, language as a symbolic system has the power to create and shape symbolic realities, which can be real or imagined (cf. Section 4.6). In this role of constructing an agreed, yet contestable, social and subjective “reality,” socioculturally situated language provides the principles, schemata, and patterns for understanding, feeling, acting, and interacting on both subjective and collective levels for the members of a cultural community. These are constantly available to all members on a mainly subconscious level in the form of tacit cultural knowledge; they are only made explicit in exceptional circumstances, for example, when misunderstandings occur in interaction, and are stabilized in social conventions. Hence, culture provides the categorical framework of a communal model of reality (or better, realities) which is shared by all members of a cultural community – albeit subjectively to different degrees. Socially and culturally generated conceptualizations, plausibility structures, genres, discourses, conceptual metaphors, and frames which contribute to structuring the social reality must, therefore, constitute an integral part of L2 learning, not only with regard to the target language, but also to the learners’ first language (cf. Chapters 3 & 9). However, these elements are very difficult to systematically include in the L2 teaching and learning process because of their complexity, dynamism, and flexibility.

In contrast to the communicative approach, the intercultural approach to foreign language learning pays significant attention to the internalized native linguistic conceptualizations and cultural patterns, which have a formative influence on the constructive potential of learners. This formative influence of native linguistic structures and cultural patterns, however, is modified and qualified by the increasingly complex interplay of languages and cultures which takes place in the process of learning a L2. Intercultural competence, therefore, brings about subjective transformations, not only in declarative knowledge (i.e., knowing what), but also in dispositions, values, attitudes, beliefs, emotions, abilities, aspirations, skills, and procedural knowledge (i.e., knowing how). Taken together, these transformations also entail changes in subjective constructs of identity, because the intense cognitive and affective contact with other symbolic worlds makes the learner more deeply engaged in negotiating new subject positions (cf. Chapter 6).

The complexity, holism, and dynamism of intercultural competence present a considerable challenge to the didactics and methodology of teaching and learning in the L2 classroom. They bring about the danger of, on the one hand, reducing social and cultural complexities to neat teachable, learnable, and assessable units which are artificially cut off from the broader social and cultural context of language usage, understood as social and cultural practice. Hence, they fall yet again into the familiar trap of artificiality and simplicity of which the communicative approach can be accused (cf. above). There has to be a structured approach to facilitate, for L2 language learners, an increasingly deeper familiarization with other social and cultural contexts (cf. Section 10.2), while at the same time paying attention to the simultaneous qualification of previously internalized (or native) conceptual and sociocultural categories. If one perceives the process of learning a L2 as an intentional, cohesive, and coordinated endeavor of progressive familiarization with the L2 and its pragmatic and sociocultural context, it seems necessary that in the initial phases of the learning process, social and cultural complexities have to be didactically reduced to learnable chunks, albeit with some degree of simplification and misrepresentation, in order to provide anchors for cognitive and affective engagement with the Other.¹⁹

Following constructionist learning principles, the degree of didactic reduction has to be guided by the learners’ “zone of proximal development” (Vygotsky 1978: 86; cf. Section 9.5), leaving the subjective learner with sufficient space for explorative and creative negotiation for meaning, including the construction of imagined identities. During the intermediate levels of L2 learning, elements of socio-pragmatic and cultural norms, values, and conceptualizations will have to be gradually combined and, at the advanced stages, expanded into a network of sociocultural knowledge regarding socially appropriate language usage which is based on procedural knowledge of underlying cultural construction patterns of the L1 and the L2 (cf. Section 10.2). In this process of mediating and fostering intercultural competence, the focus is less on seemingly fixed and stable cultural entities of the cultures involved, and more on the shifting and emerging third spaces of the L2 learners themselves. The mental (but also emotional) journey into these complex structures has, ultimately, to be taken by each L2 language learner subjectively, although, of course, co-construction of knowledge with peers and teachers is essential for facilitating this process because “knowledge is neither communicated nor discovered by learners: it is shaped by people’s communicative actions” (Mercer 1995: 19). But since every individual constructs his or her own individual intra- and intercultural places on the basis of his or her subjective positions within the complex networks of culture, language, and society that are available to him or her, these intercultural positionings are highly subjective from a personal point of view; at the same time, the subject is also positioned by others (cf. Section 4.5). Ultimately, only the subject can construct meaning for himself or herself which is “marked by a unique subjective state that will be understood as such by others who share a culture” (Bruner 1995: 27) or share roughly the same level of intercultural competence (cf. Section 10.2). Although meaning is construed differently by various cultures, all cultures share the principle of the subject as the endpoint of understanding and constructing meaning.²⁰

Therefore, the subjective activities of construal have to be at the center of L2 teaching and learning, even if learners collaboratively engage in explorative learning activities. Since these activities are not located in a vacuum but are situated in a particular sociocultural and institutional discourse, contextual influences have to be taken into consideration. Moreover, the social and cultural imprints of learners’ beliefs, values, attitudes, concepts of identity, forms of behavior, and structures of interaction (from simple forms of politeness to complex frames and discourses) have to be considered because they will initially form the basis for the engagement with corresponding constructs of the other culture and society. In the course of becoming increasingly engaged in the consideration of L2 constructs, these deeply internalized, socioculturally generated subjective traits will be externalized and thereby made accessible to processes of construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction.

Thus, there clearly exists a necessity in L2 classroom practice and research to further broaden notions of cultural and social context in order to foster, not only the ability to produce linguistically correct utterances in the L2, but also the skills to produce contextually appropriate L2 utterances in a flexible ad hoc manner; since the 1980s this has been deemed to be the foremost goal of L2 learning. However, learners also bring their subjective positionings into play in the L2 classroom which, for them, is typically the first time that they are consciously involved in explicitly reflecting upon their L1, their culture(s), their ways of acting, and their ways of thinking. The constant interplay of languages, cultures, and subjective minds involves a blending of spaces which results in momentary positionings of intercultural places by the subject, be it consciously or subconsciously. In these processes, the spatial metaphors of place and displacement become relevant. The notion of blending spaces shifts the emphasis of analysis from the center of cultural systems of meaning to their margins, to borderline zones and spaces in-between, as the most relevant spheres where cultural production and subjective positionings take place. The hybrid blended place has, in principle, the potential to harmonize and integrate differential structures, patterns, and categories of meaning. However, this harmonizing potential with regard to intercultural encounters is not absolute in the sense of completely eliminating differences and boundaries, thus integrating the Other into the familiar structures and patterns of construal and robbing it of its authentic voice. Rather, the hybrid place has the potential to undermine the articulation of cultural differences from the margins and to deconstruct seemingly obvious and unambiguous categories implied in automated and unreflected language use by the predominantly monolingual person. In this sense, the notion of interculturality has a subversive potential for which it is important from which position, or with what voice, one speaks and (inter-)acts. This is particularly true for advanced L2 learners whose minds constantly move in a cosmopolitan manner between cultures and, ideally, turn their hybrid and multifaceted belonging to different cultures and discourses into creative endeavors of enunciation (cf. Sections 9.6 and 10.2). Therefore, the hybrid status of the inter and the liminality of their positions facilitate, for them, creative and innovative endeavors beyond the realm of their first language and culture, as they have access to different systems of conceptualization. Instead of reducing differences to their origins, it is necessary to recognize them in their conditions of inequality and, from this basis, constantly renegotiate them anew.

In this book, the analysis is oriented around the needs, experiences, and expectations of L2 learners and the complex transformations they will undergo when learning another language and its cultural context. However, the emphasis in this book will be on facilitating stimulating and rich experiences for L2 learners in the L2 classroom and beyond by L2 practitioners, culminating in Chapter 10 which addresses the issue of fostering intercultural competence in a progressive manner. The book thus does not only discuss the blending of spaces in intra- and intercultural dimensions but it also tries to blend the space of scholarly research with that of meaningful and constructive teaching and learning in the L2 classroom.

The focus of the first five chapters will be on the formative influence of the L1 in terms of cognitive development, conceptual domains, and the intersubjective construction of meaning, as well as the underlying cultural beliefs, values, and frames, because in a formalized L2 environment the learner will initially refer to these internalized strands of knowledge when engaging with the L2 and its cultural context. The subsequent three chapters analyze theoretical concepts of identity, culture, and interculture which are relevant for engaging (and engaged) intercultural L2 learning. The theoretical analyses of previous chapters will be discussed in Chapter 9 with a view of their practical application for L2 teaching and learning in an intercultural context. In Chapter 10, a model of progressively fostering and assessing intercultural competence in the L2 classroom and beyond will be presented, based on a critique of the developmental model by Bennett (1993). Thus, the overall structure of the book is inductive, and in terms of content it focuses on pedagogical principles of mediating and assessing intercultural competence in second language learning.

In Chapter 2, the acquisition of language as the central semiotic instrument for the construction of human meaning will be analyzed with an emphasis on the process of the subjective internalization of linguistic structures and cultural patterns. Once linguistic concepts are used by the child, his or her mental capacities are fundamentally transformed. The child is now able to reflect on experiences and gain conscious control over his or her mental activities; the mind becomes socialized by language. The rapid acquisition of language in early childhood has attracted a number of theories (for example, behaviorist, nativist, cognitivist, sociocultural), of which sociocultural theory will be discussed in more detail. Sociocultural theory emphasizes the internalization of the linguistic and social norms from relevant others. By internalizing language, the child can use this sociocultural tool as a basis for his or her private purposes in processes of thought and interaction, initially in the form of egocentric speech which remains orientated towards the speech of others (cf. Section 2.2.2). Subsequently, the child modifies the speech experienced from others into a subjective tool from which it is appropriated to inner speech. In contrast to egocentric speech, it is subvocal and operates with minimal, abbreviated syntax in an automated manner in the mind of the subject (cf. Section 2.2.3). It focuses wholly on sense, which is decontextualized, highly abstract, and only meaningful to the subject. Inner speech is a precondition for operating with decontextualized concepts in subvocal, spoken, and written language. The internalization of norms, concepts, values, beliefs, and attitudes of the first language and culture has a profound influence on the subjective constructs of self, world, and others. This affects particularly the acquisition of another language in its sociocultural context. In the initial and intermediate stages, the internalized L1-mediated knowledge will normally form the basis of L2 construction; this is also the case for inner speech which is located in the L1 domain. However, in the course of L2 learning, these internalized linguistic and sociocultural constructs have to be qualified so as to not subsume the Other under the L1-mediated concepts, thus eliminating it in its authenticity. This transformative process on the mind is reflected in the increasing use of the L2 in the course of L2 learning.

Chapter 3 focuses on the subjective acquisition and development of concepts and socioculturally based plausibility structures, as mediated by language. In the process of socialization, the child not only acquires language, but through it, he or she learns certain categories which structure social reality and subjective cognition, for instance, by means of concepts, schemata, frames, and conceptual metaphors. These categories contain socioculturally pre-constructed conceptualizations of socially realities which the child unquestioningly internalizes. The agreed patterns of “reality” and the structures of the daily life-world (Lebenswelt) of the native cultural community are thus distributed to all its members, including the inherent plausibility structures. The mind, therefore, is socially and culturally produced in the sense that sociocultural symbols, practices and settings guide and structure the categories and patterns in terms of how people think, act, feel, believe, value, and interact. If language plays such a central role in mental processes, linguistic categories and underlying cultural patterns have an influence on the process of construing worldhood and selfhood; hence, the hypothesis of linguistic relativity will also be discussed (cf. Section 3.5). If the culturally sedimented constructs of the social world are linguistically and discursively mediated, the locus for change also must be language and discourse, including those located in another culture. L2 learning, if it is to be meaningful and effective, cannot ignore these configurations, as they are not only relevant for gaining access to the other life-world, language, and culture, but are also important for construing and contesting one’s own concepts of self.

Chapter 4 addresses the collaborative and subjective negotiation for meaning in intersubjective communication. People do not just acquire and internalize categories, as discussed in Chapter 3, but actively and intentionally construct meaning in everyday interaction with others, thereby generating a sphere of intersubjectivity. Intersubjectivity is produced by the ability of interactants to temporarily suspend their own beliefs and attitudes, momentarily adopt the attitudes of others, and as a result change their attitudes, opinions, and positionings. This can be achieved in the spontaneously responsive sphere of intersubjective communication, where the participants act, not individually and independently of one another, but collaboratively by blending mental spaces in order to construe novel meaning (cf. Sections 4.6 & 4.7). The collective conduct of conversation implies that responsibility is shared among the interlocutors and that the course of the interaction itself can therefore determine the contribution of the interlocutors. Interaction does not take place in a vacuum, but, in addition to the immediate setting and the underlying sociocultural context, there are conceptual and social mechanisms for influencing its structure. These mechanisms have developed historically by the thickening of frequently performed activities into habitus (Bourdieu). The habitualized form of linguistic and social patterns in certain contexts becomes recognizable and predictable in terms of structuring the subjective expectations, utterances, and reactions of the interlocutors in the communicative event. Examples of such stabilizing generic devices include speech genre, genre, narrative (storied worlds), and discourse which also require the subject to position his or her self in the generic device, as well as being positioned by the other interlocutors on the basis of observable personal characteristics, such as behavior, breadth of knowledge, gesture, voice, and use of language. Genre, narrative, and discourse, by producing a particular kind of knowledge about a topic, create effects of reality and truth, authority and plausibility, and facilitate to a large degree the individual’s participation in society, but also channel, and thus limit, the individual’s encounters with the social world. Narrative, genre, and discourse are not necessarily confined to one culture but they can be, at least partially, crossculturally employed, once a minimum of shared social practice and language has been established, because the specificity of the knowledge domain can cut across boundaries. Such specialized discourse, e.g., for occupational communities, also has the important function of creating and maintaining professional (and personal) identities. Discourse, narrative, and genre can also provide bridges into other sociocultures and languages, because they transcend boundaries. However, despite their superficial similarity, they are filled with other cultural voices.

Chapter 5 presents a discussion of some of the major theoretical approaches to analyzing communication, starting with Wittgenstein’s (1953) theory of language games. Austin (1962) and Searle (1969) expand on Wittgenstein’s performative approach to analyzing language in its social context by developing speech act theory, which suggests that language not only carries meaning but ordinary language use creates new realities. Paul Grice (1975) develops more refined maxims for the social use of language, building on the difference of implied and literal meaning in interaction. A much narrower approach to analyzing performative language use is that of conversation analysis, discourse analysis, and critical discourse analysis. Although different in their respective analytical methodologies, they intentionally limit their focus of analysis to micro-aspects of conversation with the objective of arriving at rules and principles of the communicative (micro-)structure in its social context. All three approaches view conversation as one of the most salient and significant modes of discourse. In this chapter, it will be shown that prescriptive rules for language use in sociocultural contexts cannot capture the variability and flexibility of using language in all kinds of intersubjective situations because these are influenced by many different factors, such as social standing, the history of interactions between people, affective states of people, motivations and objectives of interaction, the social and institutional context of interactions, and many more. Therefore, they are only of limited relevance for L2 learning, mainly in the early stages of L2 learning which are more reliant on explicit rules. Alternatives to the narrow focus on micro-structures of communication are provided by the broader concept of communicative competence and by activity theory which focuses on the more inclusive notion of activity (rather than just the verbal communication) between people. While the concept of communicative competence addresses pragmatic issues of communication, such as appropriateness and adequacy of the language used, activity theory suggests that an activity is motivated by the transformation of an object (not only a material object, but also a plan, an idea, or a shared goal) into an outcome which can be employed in L2 learning in the form of role play, group work, cultural games, project-based work, or problem-solving activities.

Chapter 6 analyzes theories of identity. This may seem unusual for the constructionist approach adopted in this book since the concept of identity reeks of the kind of essentialism that social constructionism wishes to overcome. However, having been socially constituted, the subject also constructs certain points of view, beliefs, attitudes, voices, and agencies which are frequently repeated and therefore taken by the subject as part of his or her identity. Without notions of self and identity, there would be no need for language as a communicative medium. The subject takes part in many discourses and activities which may emphasize different aspects of identity. Thus, identity is not a single concept. The subject has multiple identities of many facets, as Mead (1967) points out with the distinction of the agentive I and the socially constructed reflective me. Identity, therefore, is not so much a result of subjective constructs as a social product (cf. Hacking 2000: 15). Identity, far from being essentialized, is a multifaceted, dynamic enterprise of the subject and of those around him or her. The subject can, to some degree, fabricate his or her identity by means of autobiographical narration which, because it is simultaneously fictitious and real, leaves room for variation in the past and for initiatives in the future; it also has an inherent aspirational strand. Constructs of identity, be they subjectively construed or socially ascribed, are also influenced by social and cultural forces to which the subject is exposed and in which he or she takes part. These forces provide the basis for the construction and enactment of personal voices and roles by which the subject is identified in different discourses and situations. Identity, therefore, is a constantly ongoing project. Identity is normally taken for granted; it only becomes explicit when problems arise. Since the construct of identity, like every other construct of the mind, relies on language and its underlying cultural patterns, it is prone to fundamental change when alternative concepts of social construction are encountered, for instance, in the process of learning a L2 and its cultural context. Thus, a truly intercultural platform for the subjective construction of a blended identity between languages and cultures can be generated, which serves for a broadening of constructs of hybrid identity in an intercultural dimension.

Chapter 7 explores theories of culture which are relevant to intercultural processes of L2 learning. Culture is not a singular entity, but can be perceived as operating on many levels, for example, on a macro-level of institutions and organizations, on a meso-level of collective group interaction, and on a micro-level of the signifying subject. Processes of signification, or constructing meaning, are enabled and restricted by the patterns and structures provided by the culture of the community into which the subject has been, or is being, socialized. Culture in this sense, then, is not so much a product as a process that influences the subject (e.g., in thought processes), the cultural patterns (e.g., in scope and forms of beliefs, frames, and attitudes), and the social structures (e.g., facilitation of institutions). Culture is to be understood as neither static nor essential but as constantly emerging through interactive processes within intersubjective social practice. Thus, it is more important what culture does to the minds of people (and what people do to culture when they act and interact) than what it has produced in terms of artifacts (e.g., architecture, landscapes, fashions, cuisine, literature, music, etc.) (cf. Street 1993). Culture in this sense can be seen as a text that provides the script for the activities of members of a cultural community, and that can be read or interpreted by an analyst, such as an ethnographer, just like the text of a novel, poem, or drama can be read and interpreted by a literary critic. Although inherent in culture are constellations of conflict, difference, dynamism, and mixing of influences, culture provides the subject and the collective with a dynamic and coherent system of rules, explicit and implicit, which has been established by the group in a historical dimension in order to ensure their survival. These rules (in the widest sense) involve attitudes, values, beliefs, norms, and behaviors, shared by the group but harbored differently by each individual member. They have been communicated across generations; therefore, these rules are relatively stable but have the potential to change over time (cf. Elias 1939; Matsumoto 2000: 24). Culturally inherited attitudes, norms, beliefs, and behaviors are typically internalized by children without questioning their genesis or validity. Concepts of culture do not, by any means, imply complete homogeneity, but they recognize partial and limited coherence and continuity as well as the impossibility to define, in detail, the distinctions from other cultures. Cultural norms only become explicit when problems arise, for example, through encountering different culturally constructed attitudes, beliefs, values, and behaviors. This is a typical feature of L2 acquisition which, therefore, has to include the discussion of native cultural patterns.

Chapter 8 discusses constructs of interculture and the third space. Interculturality implies a subjective (and collective) blending of aspects of diverse cultural norms, beliefs, and attitudes, without any one of the cultures involved assuming a dominant status. This interplay of cultural aspects in the mind of the subject facilitates constructs of a life-world from an emerging subjective position, located in-between cultures. Notions and processes of the hybrid inter, although originating from concrete interaction between two or more sources (e.g., people, cultures, societies, discourses), are usually not reducible to monolithic societal, cultural, or subjective psychological processes since, on the one hand, they constitute something genuinely new, and, on the other hand, they themselves have already been constituted by processes based on hybrid spaces between people, discourses, genres, or narratives. One strand of the dynamic inter includes translational activities which transcend the realm of language and include social and cultural domains; translation is understood not as a simple monodirectional exercise of translating elements of one culture into concepts of the other, but as a complex operation of dialogue and interaction, thus elevating reciprocal translations (as processes of negotiation) to constitutive acts for emerging identities and (inter-)actions. Intercultural third spaces are facilitated from the margins of cultures, rather than from the core, although they assume central relevance for the individual as the emerging space of subjective construction. Third spaces are inextricably linked to the process of understanding the foreign and to the simultaneous process of alienating the familiar. Only on this basis can a careful cognitive departure in the direction of understanding aspects of the target culture take place. Since L2 learners have to bring their subjectivity into the process, because engagement with the L2 and its sociocultural context will affect their constructs of identity and their discursive positionings, their basis of construction will increasingly move to a blended space between the cultures. Space in this context is understood more as a social construct than as a discursive problem; it refers to the collective production of spaces as a multilayered and occasionally contradictory social process, of a specific social and psychological location of cultural practices, and of a dynamic of social relations which implies the dynamism and fragility of space.

Chapter 9 will revisit the main issues discussed in previous chapters in relation to L2 teaching and learning, in particular the role of the L1 in L2 acquisition, the function of interlanguage and translating (as opposed to translation), and the relevance of metaphorical competence. For the process of learning a L2 on the basis of the internalized norms, beliefs, and attitudes inherent in the native language, it is helpful if some aspects of the procedural knowledge acquired in the process of socialization can be utilized in order to construct situations in the target language and culture. Configurations lending themselves to temporarily stabilizing context cross-culturally include, for example, conceptual categories and structures (such as concepts, prototypes, frames, schemata, and plausibility structures), as well as socially constructed contexts of interaction (such as narrative, genre, and discourse). In contrast to other school subjects, L2 learning involves the reconstruction and reconfiguration of constructs of the self which is triggered by engaging with other linguistic and sociocultural conceptualizations, other constructs and interpretations of self and Other, other ways of talking and acting, etc. Here, efforts of explicit teaching reach their limit, and the learner has to subjectively negotiate meaning between the L1 and L2 constructs which can only be done by rich experiential learning contexts. Rather than treating the learner as a passive pawn in the learning game, he or she has to be considered as a unique subject with his or her own experiences, feelings, memories, desires, ambitions, and motivations. Deep engagement in the learning process can be achieved by guiding students to discover new knowledge, be it collectively or subjectively, in carefully composed circumstances and conditions that promote explorative and independent learning in the zone of proximal development.

In Chapter 10, a model of progressively more complex pedagogic principles which can facilitate and guide the fostering of intercultural competence in the process of institutionally learning the second language and culture will be presented which, different from the well-known “Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity” (Bennett 1993), includes dimensions such as the second language, the intercultural third space, and processes of blending linguistic and cultural elements. This model proposes pedagogic principles on how to shape curriculum and instruction with the objective of fostering intercultural competence by encouraging and allowing for the blending of spaces between languages and cultures, based on insights from research in variety of fields, as introduced in previous chapters. The fostering of intercultural competence is a long, intentional, cohesive, and coordinated process, and it typically develops in an overall progressive manner. However, it does not always follow a linear progression but can be cyclical, circular, or even regressive at times. This proposed model of pedagogic principles cannot provide concrete recipes for the direct teaching practice, nor can it claim validity for culture-specific and institutional peculiarities. The purpose of this model is to provide some constructive principles (and not prescriptive rules) for fostering intercultural competence in a general progression form the simple to the complex in the constructionist L2 classroom which can inform the framework of teaching and learning intercultural competence. The different principles of the model can also provide some criteria for the assessment of intercultural competence, since such a complex construct can hardly be assessed in its totality. A particular challenge for assessing intercultural competence is presented by its inherent dimensions of beliefs and attitudes, as well as concepts of intercultural third spaces, inner speech, identity, genre, subject positionings, cultural frames of reference, plausibility structures, blending of spaces, schemata, and frames, each of which is highly dynamic, multi-layered, culturally and subjectively charged, and difficult, if not impossible, to verbalize. In the concluding Chapter 11, the main issues discussed and analyzed in this book will be summarized.