10.1 Critique of Bennett’s (1993) developmental model of intercultural sensitivity

Milton J. Bennett’s (1993) Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS) is rooted in research into the experiences of Westerners working abroad (e.g., Peace Corps volunteers) and was motivated by perceived cross-cultural communication problems that impacted negatively on the collaboration between individuals from different cultural backgrounds. In the 1980s, the contexts for intercultural competence research expanded to include study abroad, international business, and cross-cultural training. Intercultural research in these fields was primarily interested in four main goals: “(1) to explain overseas failure, (2) to predict overseas success, (3) to develop personnel selection strategies, and (4) to design, implement and test sojourner training and preparation methodologies” (Ruben 1989: 230). In this context, Bennett developed the dynamic model of DMIS which is supposed to be able to explain and predict how individuals respond to cultural differences and how their responses evolve over time if the levels of cultural challenges increase in relation to the intensity of the subject’s exposure to the other culture.

Although the DMIS is aimed at resolving these cross-cultural communication problems of practitioners working outside of their native culture, it has been hugely influential for educators and trainers over the past decades (cf. Paige and Goode 2009: 339) whose interest is primarily focused on facilitating and developing intercultural competence in the classroom, typically located in the learners’ first culture. This interest in the DMIS is hardly surprising, given the fact that intercultural sensitivity does not occur suddenly but evolves over time, due to the evolutionary nature of interaction and relationships.¹⁰⁹ Bennett’s DMIS draws on rich traditions in developmental psychology and on insights into the development of human relationships in intercultural encounters that involve the evolution of increasing intercultural competence by means of ongoing interaction, which in turn leads to greater co-orientation and incorporation of the other’s cultural perspective in intercultural (inter-)action. The DMIS attempts to identify the levels of awareness of, and sensitivity and ability to adapt to, the different patterns of cognition, emotion, and behavior inherent in other cultures. It proposes a continuum of six developmental stages of intercultural competence, which are grouped into three ethnocentric stages (i.e., the individual’s culture determines his or her central worldview) and three ethnorelative stages (i.e., the individual’s culture is one of many equally valid worldviews), as follows (cf. Bennett 1993: 30-65):

1. In the first ethnocentric stage, denial, the individual tends to deny the existence of differences between cultures by erecting subjective psychological, social, or physical barriers in the form of isolation and separation from other cultures.
2. In the second ethnocentric stage of defense, the individual reacts against the perceived threat of specific features of other cultures by denigrating the other cultures in terms of negative stereotyping and simultaneously promoting the perceived superiority of one’s own culture. In some cases of long-term sojourners abroad, for example, for Peace Corps volunteers, a reversal phase may occur, during which an identification with the other culture sets in, and the own culture is subject to disparagement.
3. Finally, in the third ethnocentric stage of minimization, the individual overtly acknowledges cultural differences in a trivial manner on the surface but naively considers all cultures as fundamentally similar, thus adopting the attitude that “one need only be truly one’s self to ensure successful [intercultural] communication” (Bennett 1993: 44).
4. During the first ethnorelative stage of acceptance, the individual tends to respect and accept cultural differences with regard to behavior and values, without evaluating the existence of cultural difference positively or negatively.
5. In the second ethnorelative stage, adaptation, the individual develops the ability to shift parts of his or her frame of reference to other, culturally diverse frameworks through empathy and pluralism.
6. In the last stage of integration, the individual expands and incorporates other worldviews into his or her own frame of reference.

These six stages comprise a continuum from least interculturally competent, which is still determined by monocultural constructs, to most interculturally competent, which integrates elements of the first culture and other cultures in the subject’s potential for construal on a cognitive level; together, they illustrate a dynamic way of modeling the development of intercultural competence, assuming that the own perspective is gradually changing and opening up to newly encountered differential cultural constructs. The basic assumption is that the fundamental experience of cultural difference activates a subjective holistic process of development which evolves from initial ethnocentric stages to the more (inter-)culturally inclusive ethnorelative stages, thus reflecting the increasing intercultural awareness and sensitivity of the intercultural learner.

The DMIS, although designed for intercultural practitioners and trainers with the goal of enhancing their awareness of the intercultural development of their trainees, has also found its way into the theory and practice of second language teaching and learning. For instance, the DMIS was used to assess the outcomes of the intercultural module of the large-scale DESI study (DESI = Deutsch Englisch Schülerleistungen International [German English Pupils’ Performances International]) that was conducted between 2001 and 2006 with 9,623 ninth-grade pupils in Germany with the aim of evaluating their intercultural competence with regard to the English language and culture (cf. Hesse and Göbel 2007). The intercultural study within DESI used only two artificially constructed critical incidents to elicit the data for determining the developmental stages of pupils’ intercultural competence which is clearly too reductionist to evaluate their competence in a comprehensive, reliable, and valid manner (cf. Section 10.3). This, however, is a structural flaw of DESI, and not of the DMIS.

The DMIS is “phenomenological in the sense that it describes a learner’s subjective experience of cultural difference” (Bennett 1993: 22; emphasis in the original). This statement already indicates that the model is aimed at intercultural educators and trainers (and not students) who prepare professionals for a sustained sojourn in another sociocultural context that is characterized by patterns and structures vastly different from the First World context into which they have been socialized (Bennett repeatedly mentions the USA as the source culture). Thus, the DMIS is aimed at a target group that is significantly different from second language education in which, typically, the experiences provided in the classroom are neither authentic nor necessarily designed for immediate use in the sense that a sojourn of the L2 learner in the target culture is actually envisaged (with the exception of the communicative approach). In the DMIS, Bennett is quite rightly concerned with cultural differences and experiences, but he does not pay any attention to the linguistic patterns which are reflective of and constitutive for the cultural context of a speech community. Hence, the role of the language which is at the core of cultural construction is not given its proper status as the central semiotic system of a given socioculture. It is questionable whether deep understanding of a culture is possible if it is not approached through its central semiotic system, i.e., its language, as Fantini (2009: 459) suggests: “The lack of second language proficiency, even minimally, constrains us to think about the world and act within it entirely in our native system, a decidedly ethnocentric approach.” When languages other than English are alluded to in the DMIS, for example, in experiences of students’ “homestay in France” (Bennett 1993: 47), it is evident that the American students in France are not able to meaningfully speak or understand French (Bennett 1993: 47). Even when the author refers to examples of his own experience, for instance, of ordering sushi in a restaurant in Japan (Bennett 1993: 54), he makes it clear that his linguistic knowledge of Japanese (in contrast to his knowledge of Japanese customs) is very limited and leads to misunderstandings even in such a simple communicative situation. These reported experiences hint at a fundamental ethnocentric approach in terms of understanding differential cultures; the other culture is approached, and thus deformed, by translating its cultural, habitual, pragmatic, and communicative features into the native language of the visitor, thereby stripping them of their sociocultural context of use and eliminating them in their authenticity.

The complete lack of attention paid to foreign languages becomes even more evident in some of the “developmental strategies” proposed, for example, the idea of generating cultural self-awareness through “discussion” (Bennett 1993: 45), presumably conducted in the L1 of learners. Bennett relates to foreign languages only as “the most obvious of behavioral differences” (Bennett 1993: 48), that is, as a form of communicative behavior that can be observed from the outside, without actually learning or understanding it from the inside. Although Bennett clearly supports the Whorfian hypothesis of linguistic relativity (cf. Bennett 1993: 48), he does not follow up on this by elaborating on linguistic relativity, but instead focuses on “differences in communication style” (Bennett 1993: 48). In a similar manner, the developmental strategies suggested by Bennett for the stage of adaptation emphasize the training of empathy by engaging in “dyads with other-culture partners, facilitated multicultural group discussions, or outside assignments involving interviewing of people from other cultures” (Bennett 1993: 58). The languages of these interactive activities are not explicitly stated, but it seems likely that interaction is facilitated by the dominant language of the trainers and the trainees, i.e., English. This procedure cannot provide deeper insights into the culture and the habitus of the members of other speech communities, as specific patterns of linguistic conceptualization and construction, and the plausibility structures inherent in the foreign language cannot be deciphered by the cultural outsider who wants to gain an understanding of the other cultural practices. Therefore, Bennett neglects the linguistic dimension of cultural practices. He also fails to make the important connection between linguistic-conceptual and cultural relativity. The DMIS, therefore, excludes subjective processes of negotiating for meaning which are linguistically and conceptually induced. Rather than going into the nitty-gritty of the subjective dimension of stages of intercultural construal, the DMIS remains operating on a sociocultural and descriptive level. This is owed to the main target group of the DMIS (i.e., development aid workers such as Peace Corps volunteers) who will provide assistance and advice to members of other cultural communities, but are not expected to learn the others’ language, or intentionally develop intercultural third places.

Furthermore, the DMIS operates with the sociological terminology of “oppressed minority groups” (Bennett 1993: 28, 33, 38, 40, 42, 56, 62) which is not immediately relevant for second language acquisition processes, and, at times, it uses rather extreme examples for exemplifying an argument. For instance, “the Nazi extermination of Jews and other ‘undesirables’ and the Khmer Rouge elimination of educated Cambodians” (Bennett 1993: 33) are used in order to illustrate the sub-stage of separation as “the intentional erection of physical and social barriers to create distance from cultural difference as a means of maintaining a state of denial” (Bennett 1993: 32). The Nazi extermination camps and the Khmer Rouge elimination of educated Cambodians came into existence as a result of the state-sponsored terrorism of dictatorships in order to maintain their structural power; they are not the result of German or Cambodian subjects’ ethnocentric constructs of otherness and separation on a mass level. The difference between “us” and “them” was constructed mainly by extremist politicians under the leadership of Hitler and Pol Pot respectively, and was directed against certain groups of their own citizens, not against cultural others.

Another critique of the DMIS concerns the finer strands of the procedural design of the model. Bennett constructs the DMIS as a linear model of adding stages of knowledge to the original stock of knowledge held by the learner (cf. Bennett 1993: 52) which in its core remains unaffected (although knowledge is, of course, transformed in the newly constructed dimensions). This seems astonishing, as the progression of stages suggests that the initially prevalent ethnocentric views are gradually replaced by ethnorelative attitudes. The DMIS is additive-progressive as to the development of stages in the sense that stages cannot be skipped in the developmental process (cf. Bennett 1993: 41), because this would entail the danger of reverting or degenerating to earlier stages. For example, for the stage of adaptation, “Maintenance of one’s original worldview is encouraged, so the adaptations necessary for communication in other cultures extend, rather than replace, one’s native skills. (...) [O]ne might temporarily behave or value in a way appropriate to a different culture [but this] does not threaten the integrity or existence of one’s own cultural identity” (Bennett 1993: 52; emphasis added). It appears to be obvious from this statement that the DMIS tends to treat existing knowledge as a monolithic block in cognition that can only be expanded but not intrinsically changed, deconstructed, restructured, transformed, or reconfigured. However, as is evident from the discussion in Chapter 7 of this book, previously acquired knowledge does intrinsically change and is reconfigured in the process of acquiring new knowledge. This is particularly apparent in the acquisition-process of new linguistic and cultural knowledge in cognitive, emotional, and behavioral dimensions, which leads to a relativization of existing knowledge in the sense of developing intercultural third places which then function as a genuinely new basis for subjective construal. Only for the last stage of the DMIS, integration, does Bennett (1993: 59) imply that the acquisition of new cultural knowledge does have a transformative effect on existing knowledge. Although he does not say so directly, he cites Adler (1977: 26; italics in the original, cited in Bennett 1993: 59) that the culturally sensitive person is “always in the process of becoming a part of and apart from a given cultural context.” However, Bennett then goes on to define the identity of the interculturally sensitive learner “in pluralistic terms; that is, to see one’s self existing within a collection of various cultural and personal frames of reference” (Bennett 1993: 59). The use of the term “collection” points, again, to an additive approach, rather than an ongoing de- and reconstruction of identity, which its oscillating and blending elements of self and Other, thus changing them in terms of validity and quality.

In this context, Bennett states that, while one could lose or discard one’s primary cultural affiliation in the stage of adaptation, one can in the following stage integrate “disparate aspects of one’s identity into a new whole while remaining culturally marginal while staying outside the constraints of any particular one [culture]” (Bennett 1993: 60). This statement can be interpreted as a description of the evolving intercultural stance of the learner which is no longer tied to any one particular culture. However, it could also be interpreted as the learner’s over-reliance on constitutive static elements of the cultures when developing cultural identities, while neglecting the learner’s subjective engagement in negotiating his or her intercultural awareness on the background of individual experiences, emotions, memories, and needs. This seems to be implied when Bennett characterizes the first sub-stage of integration, “contextual evaluation” (Bennett 1993: 60-63), as “a development beyond adaptation where one attains the ability to analyze and evaluate situations from one or more cultural perspectives” (Bennett 1993: 61). Again, this suggests the application of perspectives in an additive manner, for example, approaching a situation from a particular cultural angle, e.g., Japanese or US-American (Bennett 1993: 62), and not so much the blending and fusing of the many levels of constructs to suit one’s own subjective intercultural stance. This element of blending linguistic, emotional, normative, value-related, and habitual categories of the cultures involved is not given proper attention in the DMIS. In short, the whole dimension of the intercultural third space is not considered in this model, although it would lend itself to the inclusion into the DMIS as one of the central spheres of intercultural development.

In the last developmental stage of the DMIS, “constructive marginality,” which is supposedly “unnecessary for most nonprofessional purposes” (Bennett 1993: 63), Bennett uses rather negative terms to characterize its content, for example, stating “that marginality describes exactly the subjective experience of people who are struggling with the total integration of ethnorelativism. They are outside all cultural frames of reference by virtue of their ability to consciously raise any assumption to a metalevel [...]. In other words, there is no natural cultural identity for a marginal person” (Bennett 1993: 63; emphasis added). What is overlooked in this definition is the fact that every form of identity is linguistically and socioculturally facilitated, and subjectively and collectively construed, be it consciously or not. Therefore, interculturally competent subjects do not “struggle” to develop their intercultural third space, but they are in a privileged position to consciously and subconsciously blend and fuse cultural spaces in cognitive, emotional, and behavioral domains, and are thus enabled to deal effortlessly with potentially tricky intercultural situations charged with difference. These persons do not suffer from the loss or a lack of “natural cultural identity,” but they are fully aware of their enhanced and privileged identity-constructs which can draw on more than one set of linguistic conceptualizations, cultural patterns, and social norms.

More than twenty years since its inception, Bennett’s DMIS is still considered to be one of the most influential models for conceptualizing the developmental stages of intercultural sensitivity, mainly due to the detailed definition of the different stages the learner has to pass through in a particular sequence in order to develop and internalize a high degree of intercultural sensitivity. Bennett claims that the DMIS is developmental, in that it develops intercultural sensitivity in learners and practitioners in a linear manner with the objective of preparing them for work in foreign sociocultural contexts. He states that the purpose of this model is to “describe how cultural difference is comprehended and [to] identify strategies that impede such comprehension” (Bennett 1993: 22). The DMIS “describes a learner’s subjective experience of cultural difference, not just the objective behavior of either learner or trainer” (Bennett 1991: 22; emphasis in the original), thus it is firmly anchored in the pedagogical framework of a learner-centered approach; it supposedly employs all devices, methodologies, and strategies necessary at every single developmental stage to fulfill the learner’s subjective needs and ambitions in the complex process of developing his or her intercultural self. By emphasizing the developmental nature of the model in terms of clearly defined and sequenced stages, the DMIS seems to provide a comprehensive learning model for students that, according to Bennett, guarantees the progressive development of their subjective intercultural competence, provided that their learning process goes through the different stages in the prescribed manner. However, the DMIS is often premised on hypothetical claims for which no evidence is provided. For example, when Bennett (1993: 39) warns against the introduction of the notion of cultural relativity at the “superiority” stage (which constitutes a sub-stage of “defense”) “as an antidote to bigotry and aggrandizement,” he suggests that “excessive discussion of cultural differences in behavior or values may backfire, leading people toward more intense superiority or into retreat to denigration” (Bennett 1993: 39). In a similar vein, he frequently warns of “skipping ahead” (Bennett 1993: 41) to a later stage in the DMIS for fear it might be counterproductive and cause the learner to revert to an earlier stage, since he or she is ostensibly not yet developmentally ready for those more complex developmental stages (e.g., Bennett 1993: 39; 41; 46; 47, etc.).

Furthermore, the DMIS is conceived from the point of view of the teacher and trainer, and not the learner; the model thus focuses on a description of concepts, strategies and techniques of how to create a learning environment that may facilitate the fostering of intercultural sensitivity. As such, the model cannot guarantee that the development envisaged will actually result in “intercultural sensitivity development and personal growth” (Bennett 1993: 66). The DMIS does not address the question of how learners actually develop intercultural sensitivity in their minds, bodies, and selves when they are going through the various stages of development anticipated in the model. In fact, the learners in this model are only imagined in cognitive and behavioral terms, while the complex psychological and emotional domains of learning and development are largely ignored. Thus, the DMIS cannot fully achieve its stated intention of constructively focusing on learners’ complex experiences of cultural difference (cf. above), which clearly have profound psychological, identity-related, and emotional implications for each learner. Instead of focusing on the learner’s subjective development of intercultural sensitivity in all its complex dimensions (see, for example, Byram 1997, or Deardorff 2011), the DMIS rather seems to provide a curricular model for teachers and trainers based on a linear process of learning with prescribed stages which the learner must complete in order to achieve intercultural sensitivity; it seems to suggest concepts and principles which teachers and trainers could employ to ensure that learners can actually accomplish the different stages. Therefore, Bennett’s DMIS is not so much an acquisition model with developmental learning stages as a descriptive curricular model in which the proposed stages are merely convenient ways of organizing a syllabus aimed at fostering intercultural sensitivity.

The model also has other weaknesses, particularly if applied to the development of intercultural competence in L2 learning (for which it was originally not intended but is now frequently used). The absolute disregard for the role of languages in the process of developing intercultural competence is its biggest drawback, since in L2 learning intercultural sensitivity is developed to a large extent with and through the other language as the central semiotic system of the foreign culture. This posits considerable challenges for the learner in terms of the linguistic system and inherent conceptualizations, but also in terms of its socioculturally appropriate use in terms of social indexing, genre, Discourses, metaphors, frames, narratives, contextualization cues, and habitus. Another shortcoming of DMIS is the tendency to operate with fixed (rather than dynamic) categories and the failure to integrate the hugely important third space into the model. Therefore, Bennett’s DMIS has to be reconceptualized with a view to describing the pedagogic principles for progressively mediating and fostering intercultural competence in the context of second language learning.

10.2 Mediating intercultural competence in the L2 classroom — A model of progressive principles

This section will introduce pedagogic principles intended to integrate these considerations. In contrast to the developmental model of Milton Bennett (1986, 1993), it refers specifically to L2 learning, rather than to a professional context. Fundamental concepts, such as the intercultural third space, inner speech, constructs of identity, genre, D/discourse, positionings, and plausibility structures, all absent from Bennett’s model, will be integrated. However, the model is not intended as a prescriptive guideline in a performative dimension with a clearly defined framework of assessable descriptors and standards of culture learning (with the implication that cultural attributes are defined in essentialist manner), as, for example, the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Council of Europe 2001) or U.S. National Standards for Foreign Language Learning (http://www.actfl.org/publications/all/national-standards-foreign-language-education) provide; it is rather intended as a descriptive model of principles and developments which can inform and guide the deliberate fostering of subjective intercultural competence in the L2 classroom (and beyond). Such a model can not only be useful for the engaged L2 student who is cognizant of the development of subjective attributes of the third place, but also for curriculum planners and teachers who may be unsure how intercultural competence develops in the minds of L2 learners and how to facilitate, foster, and scaffold these developments.¹¹⁰

When the following model uses the terminology of progressive principles, it does so with an understanding that these principles are not mutually exclusive, just as they are not in L1 acquisition. Of course, the transitions between these principles are dynamic, and the learning process is not always progressive in a linear way, but can be cyclical, functionally interdependent, and even occasionally regressive; it can provide different paths to the same outcome (equifinality) and one path to multiple outcomes (multifinality) (cf. Spitzberg and Changnon 2009: 5). The terminology of a progressive set of principles does not imply achieving the intended outcomes by simply ticking off proposed activities, but the focus on the learner’s subjective ZPD includes the possibility of repetition, regression, and revisitation of previous principles, as well as leapfrogging certain elements included in principles (possibly with a view of revisiting them at a later stage with a different and more competent perspective). Techniques, methods, strategies, technologies, and tasks for facilitating particular learning processes within certain principles are varied, but they are all aimed at offering creative learning environments which provide ample experiential opportunities for the learner to engage in activities and projects which are meaningful for his or her current level of learning with a view of looking ahead to the next ZPD of the L2 learner; they include texts, images, critical incidents, diaries, journals, portfolios, role plays, films, project work, cultural games, scenarios, but also activities mediated by electronic media such as Facebook, Twitter, Email (Tandem), Skype, and Internet discussion forums. Electronic media have the advantage of facilitating direct access to members of other cultural communities, and, when pedagogically managed in a careful and sensible manner, they can contribute in a major way to increase learner’s preparedness to invest time and effort in the L2 learning processes. They can also greatly contribute to developing aspects of intercultural competence through direct dialogue with cultural others, as well as retrospective reflection on authentic views and experiences of partners, who are situated in another culture and therefore apply a different cultural frame of reference in their (inter-)actions. By keeping a journal or diary throughout the learning process of their experiences, thoughts, emotions, fantasies, and action orientations when encountering real or fictionalized others, learners are in a position to assess retrospectively the degrees of cultural and linguistic adequacy and appropriateness for the manner in which they have responded to these (real or imagined) cultural others (cf. Brenner 2012: 131). This procedure enables learners to metacognitively evaluate their own learning processes. Within different principles, the various modes of learning provide learners with multiple and diverse opportunities for direct and indirect contact with the target culture, allowing for thoughtful, subjective, and collaborative engagement to gradually develop an understanding of the other (and also the L1-mediated) culture as well as more direct experiential engagement with aspects of the target culture; thus, learners are encouraged to develop the ability to discover and understand salient features of the context which influence meaning for communicative acts within and across cultures. Therefore, although the model understands the overall learning process as progressive and dynamic negotiation for and acquisition of intercultural knowledge, skills, and abilities; it can at times be regressive and revert to aspects of a previous principle of learning. Hence, the terminology of principles is only used for the purpose of analytical presentability; it is preferred to the concepts of stages and phases because it implies that principles have no fixed endpoint of development, as intercultural competence is a porous and dynamic concept without a clearly definable end-product of, for instance, the interculturally most competent person. The model of pedagogic principles for fostering intercultural competence in the L2 classroom in an increasingly comprehensive manner does not intend to imply to represent distinct learning stages of developing intercultural competence; they are designed to be descriptive and cannot guarantee learners’ acquisition of intercultural third places by means of blending spaces. The orientation of the model is not developmental but curricular, that is, addressed to teachers, trainers, and educational policy makers. The efforts of learning have, of course, to be made the students themselves, but the structured and experientially-based L2 classroom can provide a wide range of activities to foster intercultural competence in a carefully guided way. The model therefore proposes principles of how to conveniently shape curriculum and instruction, based on insights from research in a variety of cognate fields (as presented in the previous chapters).

A model such as the following cannot provide concrete recipes for immediate teaching practice, nor can it claim validity for culture-specific and institutional peculiarities. It also cannot claim universal validity because it has been developed primarily in and for a Western cultural and learning context, and even here there exist, of course, differences between sociocultural practices.¹¹¹ What such a model can provide, however, are general principles (rather than prescriptive rules) of mediating intercultural competence which can inform the framework of teaching and fostering (and to a lesser extent assessing; cf. Section 10.3) intercultural competence. More concrete adaptation and modification has to be carried out according to the specific spatio-temporal conditions, institutional traditions, and the particular interests and ambitions of the subjective learners with regard to their learning of a second language and developing an intercultural frame of reference. It also has to be acknowledged that the model contains speculative elements which are based on the research findings presented in the preceding chapters; only some elements have been empirically tested. Therefore, it remains a desideratum to examine the model in long-term empirical research.

 

Principle 1 – Acknowledging ignorance

Human beings typically grow up and live within a culturally structured world. In order to become full members of a cultural community they have to internalize culturally created and intersubjectively (symbolically, mainly linguistically) mediated systems of meaning, beliefs, and significance so that they are able to organize their lives and social relations (cf. Chapters 2-4). Purely monocultural societies are no longer the norm in postmodern times; due to worldwide activities of migration and the economic, political, technological, and cultural forces of globalization, many children nowadays grow up in multicultural societies. Thus, they may be exposed to more than one cultural community and its particular signifying practices and ways of doing things. This exposure to different cultures does not mean that cultural boundaries are insuperable (as multiculturalists want us to believe) nor that they are dissolved and, as a consequence, the individual grows up as a global citizen, who is not influenced by nor loyal to a particular culture (as transculturalists want us to believe; cf. Chapter 8). Growing up and living in a multicultural society means that minority cultures and the majority culture still have their respective internal coherence and identity. The mind of the child, growing into his or her native culture, be it the minority or the majority culture in a multicultural society, is still formed by the cultural systems of meaning, norms, beliefs, and attitudes of his or her primary (or native) cultural community. However, socialization into a minority culture typically implies that the subject becomes aware of certain constructs and ways of life of the majority culture; the reverse can also be true for someone socialized into the majority culture, but typically to a lesser degree because he or she might not feel the necessity to engage with the cultural other. Therefore, the individual who grows up in a minority culture may be culturally more aware and enjoy access to cultural others.

This constellation does not imply, however, that the members of the minority culture will internalize the cultural patterns of the majority culture; on the contrary, they may challenge assumptions of the majority culture from the basis of the internalized norms, values, and beliefs of the minority culture. Of course, they can also challenge certain aspects of their native culture due to access to constructs of both the minority and the majority culture, as is now happening in Britain, for example, where many young Indian and Pakistani women (and men) are challenging the traditional concept of arranged marriage.¹¹² A precondition for challenging aspects of life in any culture, minority or majority, is the cultural self-assuredness and cultural identity of the subject. In order to be in a position to constructively engage in cultural dialogue, the subject must have acquired and internalized cultural systems of meaning, belief, and emotion so that he or she has at his or her disposal a deeply held system of reference for the purpose of assessing and judging elements of other cultures, and of the native culture.¹¹³

These culturally constituted systems, together with the social experience of the individual as being an integral part of a community (for example, in terms of language, culture, religion, tradition, gender, ethnicity, morality, etc.), also constitute the identity of the subject, which is not a notion internal to the individual, but is suspended in an area of tension between the subjective and the collective (both understood as multilayered and dynamic concepts) (cf. Chapters 2-4). This culturally shaped identity provides the subject with a basis for conscious action and subconscious emotion. Both are experienced as something unique to the individual and to the community in which he or she is participating. Hence, the concepts of culture and identity imply boundaries that can be accepted, rejected, challenged, or contested. However, before the basic conclusion of the parallel processes of lingualization, socialization, and enculturation after adolescence, the monolingual subject relies primarily (sometimes exclusively) on the internalized systems of meaning and belief for the activities of thinking, feeling, (inter-)acting, experiencing, memorizing, fantasizing, and desiring. Therefore, the position of the subject at the beginning of the process of learning the second language at school (typically between the ages of four and nine years old) is characterized by a situation that is dominated by the shaping influence of the first language, culture, and community.

The internalized L1-mediated cultural patterns of meaning, emotion, and behavior in primary socialization are reconfigured and re-emphasized in secondary socialization in terms of consciously and intentionally acquiring knowledge of linguistic categories, genres, concepts, Discourses, frames, and schemata (cf. Chapters 3 & 4). For acts of meaning (or signifying practices), monolingual subjects typically apply the acquired L1-mediated values, norms, attitudes, beliefs, rules, and patterns of construal of their cultural community which they naively assume to be universally valid, at least in the early stages of socialization. This dominance of the internalized L1-related concepts and cultural patterns, which goes hand in hand with a non-awareness or ignorance of alternative cultural systems of meaning and significance, is normally characteristic of the initial period of beginning to learn a L2.¹¹⁴ The typical monolingual and monocultural learner is, at this stage, unaware of the relativity of linguistic and sociocultural configurations, because access to these, be it on holidays abroad or by contact with cultural others at home, such as immigrants living in the L1 society, is very limited in the sense that normally the mental dominance of the native cultural constructs is not challenged and hence not qualified.¹¹⁵ Monocultural speakers continue to think and speak with “the established knowledge of their native community and society, the stock of metaphors this community lives by, and the categories they use to represent their experiences” (Kramsch 1993: 43). This constellation ensures effortless acts of thinking, feeling, and behaving, and smooth interaction with intracultural others because the shared pool of acquired cultural and linguistic patterns of behavior makes interaction predictable for the interlocutors and facilitates a hassle-free intersubjective diffusion of cognitive and emotional spaces among interlocutors. This ease of intracultural intersubjective understanding in terms of cognition, emotion, and behavior, and the resulting sense of wellbeing, loyalty, and psychological security, reduce the subjective need to engage with alternative systems of meaning, significance, action, and emotion. The term ignorance, used to denominate this first principle, implies that the person is not aware of, or sensitive to, the validity of alternative construals of “reality.”¹¹⁶ If confronted with these, they are simply integrated into the acquired patterns of construal of his or her native language and culture, thus eliminating the Other in its authenticity.

As long as people are not intrinsically interested in other languages and cultures, they will at best only register other cultural concepts and configurations, but remain basically indifferent, and therefore their internalized cultural constructs will not be challenged. This may even be the case for members of a minority culture within a multicultural society who, at the beginning of formal schooling, normally have to learn the language of the majority culture in a structured manner, but may remain loyal to the internalized cultural patterns of significance, belief, behavior, and emotion of their primary community. The preparedness to intrinsically engage with another linguistic and cultural system of meaning is therefore dependent on circumstances or experiences that interrupt the intracultural and monolingual comfort zone of the individual. These circumstances and experiences can be very wide-ranging, for example, migration to another cultural community (be it for work or other reasons), perceived injustices inflicted by members of other cultures, perceived economic, social, or academic advantages of speaking a second (or subsequent) language(s), adoption of another cultural, religious, or social identity, and many others.

One of the main reasons for learning a second language, however, is schooling, because in most (Western) legislations at least one foreign language is on the syllabus for some primary and most secondary schools; therefore they are compulsory for students.¹¹⁷ The element of compulsion to learn a second language, however, does frequently not per se create the ambition to deeply and intrinsically engage with the school subject at hand; on the contrary, the fact that the requirement to learn a school subject necessitates the investment of time and serious academic effort at an age when adolescent learners might have other interests and preferences, may lead the individual to resist this perceived pressure, for instance, by not seriously engaging in the learning process. In the typical context of institutional schooling, this preparedness to invest time and effort into acquiring cultural capital is, at the beginning, present to varying degrees, and sometimes may not be noticeable at all.¹¹⁸

There are many factors which influence the degree of dedication from students, including the perceived usefulness of the school subject for personal, social, or professional purposes, the attitudes and choices of peers (i.e., peer pressure), the ability of the teacher and of the learning materials to stimulate and enthuse the student, and, in the case of L2 learning, the level of perceived attractiveness of the target language, culture, and society. However, among the main factors are the social background of the student’s family and their preschool learning experiences, particularly with regard to literary practices. These two factors are closely linked, as, for example, Heath (1983; 2009) has shown in the long-term ethnographic study she conducted in the Piedmont Carolinas area in the United States of America (Heath 1983: 18). Heath (2009: 347) compared the manners in which parents “socialize their pre-school children into a literacy orientation” in three distinct social communities which she describes as white middle-class, white working-class, and African-American working-class communities. Although this classification can be criticized as crude (since it does not consider any variation and overlap between these communities and also pays insufficient attention to individual trajectories), Heath could convincingly show that there are significant differences in the quantity and quality of children’s exposure to literature by parents reading to them and, hence, introducing them to ways of dealing with life in terms of skills, such as being able to be patient, suspend reality, ascribe “fiction-like status to everyday objects” (Heath 2009: 345), use communicative structures, decontextualize issues, and reconfigure them in a different context, and being aware of narrative tropes.

Of the three social groups examined, unsurprisingly, the white middle-class children had the most intensive exposure to literature in terms of quantity and quality, followed by white working-class children who were, however, not exposed to the same genre of fantasy-based stories but more to simpler fact-related narratives. In contrast to middle-class parents, white working-class adults “do not, upon seeing an item or event in the real world, remind children of a similar event in a book and launch a running commentary on similarities and differences” (Heath 2009: 352). Hence, children are denied the possibility of becoming aware of the richness of possible worlds, as presented in fiction, and their possible links to reality. Heath (2009: 353; emphasis in the original) comments: “Any fictionalized account of a real event is viewed as a lie; reality is better than fiction. (...) Thus, children cannot decontextualize their knowledge or fictionalize events known to them and shift them about into other frames.”

African-American working-class children were, according to Heath, rarely exposed to literature at home; instead, they were immersed in rich and constant “human talk and noise from the television, stereo, and radio” (Heath 2009: 354). This enabled them to develop complex and creative oral skills in terms of playing with language, for instance, through rhyming and storytelling, even if “there are no reading materials especially for children” (Heath 2009: 354). However, children were not given any scaffolding by their parents to make connections between real-life situations and their own playful use of language, since parents felt it was inadvisable for them to “simplify their language, focus on single-word utterances by young children, label items or features of objects” (Heath 2009: 357). Thus, when starting school, these children were confronted by a completely unfamiliar learning environment. Whereas a few children from this group learned the interactional literacy skills necessary for successful passage through mainstream school, the majority did not adapt to the new learning environment. According to Heath (2009: 358): “[T]he majority not only fail to learn the content of lessons, but also do not adopt the social-interactional rules for school literacy events. Print in isolation has little authority in their world. The kinds of questions asked about reading books are unfamiliar.” However, the skills and abilities which these African-American children learned in their families were ignored by mainstream school: “The children’s abilities to link metaphorically two events or situations and to recreate scenes are not tapped in the school; in fact, these abilities often cause difficulties, because they enable to see parallels teachers did not intend, indeed, may not recognize until the children point them out” (Heath 2009: 358; emphasis in the original).

As Heath could show, early socialization and lingualization (in terms of orality and literacy) has a profound effect on how children engage and perform in school. Children who are exposed to oral and written language by their parents in a creative, imaginative, regular, and interactive manner could easily deal with the requirements of mainstream school, because they were well prepared and used to learning and interacting with written texts in ways expected of them in school. This is the case to a much lesser degree for white working-class children due to the type of texts (if any) they were exposed to in their family and the way these texts were dealt with (if at all). The children with an African-American working-class background face totally unfamiliar types of questions, exercises, and interactions at school, because their primary socialization did not put great value on literacy and child-directed language and learning scenarios, since children were linguistically treated like adults. Hence, according to Heath, the degree of success in school is clearly predetermined for these children by the way they were brought up in their family before starting school. However, mainstream school is orientated around the expectations and requirements of the educated middle class (at least in Western cultures).¹¹⁹ Thus, it sidelines working-class children by not allowing for the particular skills and abilities they have acquired in their family homes. Clearly, there is a need to address this issue by adapting institutional schooling, at least in the primary levels, to accommodate the experiences, needs, and aspirations of children who have experienced their primary socialization in marginal communities.

The research by Heath and others has clearly shown that learners have enjoyed potentially very different kinds of primary socialization, instilling in them various degrees of ability to learn in the manner expected of them in institutionalized schooling. The ability to learn efficiently includes different skills, such as study skills (e.g., maintaining attention; using available materials for independent learning; grasping the intention of tasks and exercises; working effectively with peers; organizing materials; organizing one’s learning strategies), heuristic skills (e.g., coming to terms with new experiences; observing, analyzing, inferencing, finding, and understanding new information; using new technologies), communicative skills (e.g., using appropriate register and voice; adequate positioning of self and other; understanding, sending out, and responding to contextualization cues; constructing intersubjective spaces; using genre; analyzing Discourse; using conceptual metaphors; constructing narratives; understanding and using frames; prompting assistance from others, if needed); sociolinguistic skills (e.g., use of politeness; linguistic codification of certain fundamental social rituals; paying attention to social norms in terms of norms of relation between generations, sexes, or social groups); pragmatic skills (e.g., appropriate communicative behavior in particular situations, drawing on scripts or scenarios of intersubjective exchanges; mastery of D/discourse, cohesion, and coherence). All of these skills are typically acquired in primary socialization, albeit subjectively to various degrees.

Of course, at the start of (and throughout) schooling, pupils are not accomplished members of the speech community; their personalities are still developing, and therefore each of these skills is explicitly developed and expanded in secondary socialization (cf. Section 2.4) so that pupils become increasingly competent in their appropriate use. However, a precondition for learning in secondary socialization is the preparedness to invest time and effort into exploring new information and new experiences, complemented by the willingness to take initiatives or even risks in exploring new perspectives and new spaces. Although this kind of preparedness is ideally encouraged and reaffirmed throughout schooling, it develops to different degrees among students so that the efforts of the learning community are characterized by a mix of differently developed skills, competences, and preparedness to invest in the learning process. The fostering of intercultural competence exploits these pre-existing skills and competences with a view of intentionally developing them further by enabling students to construct their linguistic and cultural identity by gradually integrating increasingly diversified experiences of otherness. This might also include encounters of linguistic and cultural diversity which, for instance, learners in multicultural societies may have previously experienced or are experiencing during the time of their learning.

For these reasons, the structure and content of the initial L2 classes cannot be overestimated in their relevance for stimulating learners’ intrinsic interest and preparedness to invest time and effort in sustained learning for the new school subject. Of course, willingness to invest time and engage in learning activities is not a stable feature; it is a dynamic trait which is strongly influenced by the respective social and learning environments to which learners are exposed, including the variety, purposefulness, and relevance of the learning activities. Engaging and stimulating classes which provide a variety of meaningful configurations to be explored by learners and which are offered through different media and social forms of learning, as well as being a pleasure to attend, can create, maintain, or recalibrate the preparedness to invest time and effort in a very positive manner.

 

Principle 2– First contact with the second language and culture in the classroom

The L2 learners do not enter the L2 classroom as blank slates; normally, they have already acquired the L1 (and possibly other languages) during primary socialization, including the social habitus and the cultural patterns in which the L1 is embedded. Typically, this would have been achieved in different manners and to different degrees of creativity and literacy, including the socially appropriate use of metaphors, contextualization cues, genres, D/discourses, frames, and narratives. Before starting to learn the foreign language, the learner will normally have heard and seen something about the foreign culture, be it on TV or the Internet, or among the family or friends. Thus, “By the time learners begin the study of a L2 context and its culture, they have already formed certain concepts, stereotypes, and expectations about L2 cultural realities. These expectations are not fixed and immutable. But they will influence the way learners comprehend and interpret a L2 culture (C2)” (Savignon and Sysoyev 2002: 510).

These stereotypes and concepts can have an impact on the perceived value of the foreign language and culture from the point of view of the subject (and hence on his or her preparedness to invest in and engage with the learning process) and the L2 speech community in general; media in particular have a huge influence on how cultures are presented in the public perception, thus generating an image of particular cultures in the cultural memory of a speech community which is very difficult to change or deconstruct. For example, Alice Kaplan, a professor in French at Yale University, describes in her autobiography that after the death of her father, her mother considered moving to France. This prospect immediately evoked very positive image of France in her imagination: “I imagined a house near the water. (...) I can see myself there underneath a palm tree. I will be a French girl, like Madeline in the Madeline books (...)” (Kaplan 1993: 31; cited in Schumann 1997: 113). Young Kaplan projects here the image of France and French life, as portrayed in children books she read as a child, onto the desired hypothetical life in France. This positive image of France certainly contributed to Kaplan’s ambition to learn French, although she and her mother never actually moved to France at the time. However, having a positive image of the culture and language of the other speech community can have a powerful influence on the ambition to actually learn the language. Another reason, which in fact also drove Kaplan’s interest in learning French, is the desire to escape from the perceived dreariness of the L1 world that can be very restrictive for young teenagers: “Precisely because they learn the foreign language in isolation from the real world, these youngsters project onto it their dissatisfactions with their own and their dreams of a better world. Language for them is not just an unmotivated formal construct but a lived embodied reality” (Kramsch 2009a: 6).

However, once the learner has decided on learning a particular L2, the encounter with the L2 takes place on a very concrete level which is very different from the general stereotypes acquired during socialization. The very first contact with the target language and culture, as mediated in the classroom, can have a strong affective impact on subjective and communal constructs of identity (cf. Section 9.6). For the first time, the learner consciously experiences that one cannot express oneself in the subconscious and automated manner of the L1, because, in this early phase of L2 learning, the means of expressing one’s spontaneous ideas in the L2 medium have not yet been internalized; learners at this very early period of L2 learning look at the second language as a system to be learned and not (yet) through it in terms of cultural meanings. In addition, the learner has to produce the “strange” noises of the L2 in the classroom for all of his or her peers to hear. This experience can be deeply disturbing, especially in the difficult ontogenetic stage of adolescence when the learner may be unsure of his or her constructs of personal and social identity. The carefully constructed social prestige and self image can be put at risk by the learner being reduced to stuttering and use of “inadequate” words and sounds when trying to express utterances in the L2 in the presence of peers. These learners may perceive the L2 as a threat to their integrity and identity as subjects. If they reluctantly learn the L2, they often find themselves in a situation characterized as follows: “What drives them to learn the forms but retain their own accent and grammar is a deep desire to preserve what is theirs” (Kramsch 2009a: 15). This potentially face-threatening aspect of early L2 learning can be softened by consciously enhancing learners’ self-esteem through, for example, engaging learners in organizing the classroom as an integral community of practice, offering a relaxed, constructive, and comfortable space for the learners to negotiate for new meanings and to fill the gaps that are opened up by the engagement with the Other. Kohonen (2001: 38) comments:

The “reasonably balanced self-concept” can be brought into the first L2 class, as it may have developed during primary socialization and fostered in school prior to the start of L2 learning; but it can also be developed in the space of the L2 classroom through collaborative efforts of negotiating for meaning, including negotiating for new concepts of self. However, the self-concept or self-identity, even if it was previously seen and experienced by the subject as “reasonably balanced,” can become unbalanced by the first encounter with the second language in the L2 classroom, as Kramsch suggests: “For young people who are seeking to define their linguistic identity and their position in the world, the language class is often the first time they are consciously and explicitly confronted with the relationship between their language, their thoughts, and their bodies” (Kramsch 2009: 4-5). It is the quality of language as the tool for voluntary thought and its structuring qualities for ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving, including the necessity of physically producing unusual L2 sounds and sound patterns, that makes the impact of L2 learning so consequential for the learner. The unbalancing of the “reasonably balanced self-concept,” triggered for the learner by negotiating different linguistic expressions and constructs and their cultural contexts, is a necessary step for rebalancing the concept of self, which is no longer located in the culture and language of the L1 speech community but in the evolving third space. This development is aided by the fact that in the typical months and years of first encountering the L2 in the institutional context of schooling (i.e., the dif ficult years of adolescence), the identity of learners is subject to many changes, due to the strategic moves of positionings in preparation for adulthood. Here, the perceived threat of losing face can have an adverse effect on the willingness to further engage with learning the L2. Typically, in subsequent classes, these learners tend to depend more on teacher-directed work, do not “assume an active role during the course” (Kohonen 2001: 52), and find L2 work demanding and distressing. Consequently, these learners might decide to withdraw from active participation in class and reassure their selves by monolingual means in a monocultural environment.

In this situation, the facilitators of L2 learning, the teachers and institutions, have to be cognizant of the impact of L2 learning on construct of identities, but also of the impact of the L2 classroom on the display of learners’ identities (cf. Section 9.6). Since institutional L2 teaching and learning typically take place for learners when they are in their adolescence, i.e., in a difficult period of constructing identities between childhood and adulthood, which is characterized by developing their selves in comparison to significant others, their display of self to a group of peers may be very different from their image of self conveyed to family or teachers. This situation often results in a situation where learners strategically perform their identity in the classroom: they may appear interested and eager to learn in the classroom but very disinterested when interacting with their peers who may view academic interest and success as nerdy. Based on this observation, Taylor et al. (2013: 5) suggest that the notion of self has several components which can be differentiated according to internal and external dimensions. The private (internal) self relates to a person’s intimate representation of self-attributes (both actual and aspirational), whereas the public (external) selves are socially displayed, according to the relational context or audience (this aspect has also actual and possible dimensions, for example, displaying the self according to presumed impositions, expectations and ambitions of others). In their large-scale empirical study with 4,151 students and 157 teachers across four European countries, Taylor and her colleagues (2013) found significant differences in student achievement based on the level they could display their private selves in the classroom; the degree of bringing their private selves into the classroom community largely depended on the teacher’s appreciation of the student’s subjective identity in class. If the classroom did not provide for a relaxed, nurturing, and encouraging atmosphere and did not allow students to speak as their private selves, to bring their interests, fears, and desires into classroom discussions, students tended to strategically display their external identity traits, hence disengaging their inner selves from the learning process. If, however, students were encouraged and supported in their learning efforts, and were also encouraged to bring in their private selves, the learning process was much more relevant and meaningful for the learners. Even academically disengaged students could be encouraged to bring their inner selves into the learning process “by showing students the subject (...) can be personally relevant and enriching, so that an initial tendency to please by showing a possibly superficial academic interest may be internalized and adopted as a personally relevant goal” (Taylor et al. 2013: 17). Thus, the levels of (dis-)engagement in the L2 learning process and learning activities are very dynamic and may be influenced (and even reversed) by the classroom atmosphere which should be characterized by mutual trust, openness, respectfulness for private selves (also for the teacher and relevant others), and personally enriching learning activities. Levels of student engagement are dynamic, as are constructs of identity; the L2 classroom, especially in the early stages of L2 learning, should try to engage learners holistically and should provide a trustful atmosphere so that learners can open up their private selves to engagement in the learning experience with a view of developing new identity positions.

In such a constructive and supportive L2 learning environment, the initial encounter with different expressions, sounds, and constructs of the other language and culture is much more likely to be experienced by learners as having a liberating effect on the mind. Learners can use the L2 as a medium in a playful and poetic manner because the grammar, the sounds, and the meanings are not yet fully understood. The production of unfamiliar sounds, prosodic patterns, and unconventional meaning can be a pleasure to explore because the learner is transgressing the phonological and semantic patterns of the L1. Sounds and meaning can be playfully combined in ways unintended by the L2 system, for example, relating the sound of the English eye to the phonetically identical but semantically different German Ei [egg]. This kind of playfulness in making connections between items of the L1 and L2 can also serve as an important mnemonic trick to store the lexical item in an original and therefore more effective manner in one’s memory, thus helping to build up a lexical and phonetic memory which, at this early stage of learning, is necessary to bridge the gap in referential relation between the linguistic signs and the objects or events they denote. The distance to the other language can be a pleasure and fun to explore, because the gaps between the languages can, for the moment, be filled in unconventional and imaginative ways. It can also generate the satisfying experience that one can express oneself, albeit in a simple manner, in a different medium to that of the L1, thus assuming another linguistic frame of reference for the purposes of construing and performing one’s self. By using the L2, the learner has the opportunity to take on a different voice which may have repercussions for the construction of identity, but also for the subjective (conscious and subconscious) construction and blending of spaces with regard to perceptions, emotions, and attitudes. Because the efforts of construction are necessarily executed in a very unconventional manner at this very early phase of learning the L2, new layers of meaning may be uncovered by and for the acting subject with respect to the L2, but also the L1, and most importantly, for the interlingual and intercultural spaces that are beginning to open up. These new meanings offer, at least to some extent, an escape from the normality and conformity of one’s everyday life:

The first encounter with the second language can also generate an awareness of language as a symbolic system. The terms used to denote objects or events in the first language are different from those used in the second language, and there is often no systematic reasoning behind the constitution of these terms; they are obviously used as symbolic form in an arbitrary manner in a language (even if they are used in non-arbitrary manners within the language as a system). This realization by the learner, also with regard to his or her first language, can be a first step in the direction of recognizing relativity in terms of language and, by expansion, culture and thought, which may be exciting and thus stimulate deep subjective engagement in learning the other language, perhaps even leading to them having thoughts “they never had in their mother tongue” (Kramsch 2009a: 5).

Hence, the first encounter with the L2 which does not yet explicitly put emphasis on underlying cultural patterns, can evoke varying reactions in the learners; this reaction is also influenced by the actual classroom atmosphere in terms of degrees of openness to students’ interests, experiences, fears, and consideration of their inner selves. A positive reaction might be inquisitiveness and increased willingness, or even enthusiasm, to invest time and effort in the pleasurable and self-enriching experience of developing one’s cultural capital. A neutral reaction might be to sit back and await further developments and experiences. And a negative reaction might be to resist the perceived destabilizing impact of the L2 on one’s constructs of identity and to withdraw to the seemingly familiar and reassuring territory of the L1 and its sociocultural context. These reactions are not, of course, irreversible; they can be modified in subsequent learning processes, especially when learners are encouraged to bring their private selves into the classroom. However, it would be helpful if the teacher were aware of these possible reactions, and structure the initial encounter with the L2 in such a way that no-one will be exposed to potentially face-losing situations in the classroom, thus avoiding, or at least minimizing, the danger of provoking negative reactions in terms of discontinuing engagement and withdrawing to the assumed certainties of the L1 and its cultural context. A constructive approach to the initial encounter with the L2 could be, depending on the age-bracket and intentions of learners, the creation of a relaxed, non-threatening, playful, collaborative, inclusive, and explorative learning environment in which learners can trustfully bring in their private selves and try to find their own early voices in the L2 (in a metaphorical and in a literal sense).

 

Principle 3 – Initial links to the life-world of learners

While the previous principle centered on the first encounters with the second language and its different sounds, conceptualizations, and ways of structuring the social world, this principle is less concerned with looking at the L2 as a system and more with looking through the language at the underlying cultural frame of how experiences, things, and memories are constructed and expressed, and how intersubjective interaction is appropriately conducted. At this early period of L2 learning, processes of understanding the “reality” of the other speech community, as, for instance, portrayed in the L2 textbook, are still determined by the native cultural frame of reference so that the other culture may just be seen as different. L2 textbooks that are aligned to the communicative or intercultural approaches typically introduce a carefully constructed progression as to pragmatic communicative situations of everyday life, set in the target culture. This situational progression normally starts with introducing oneself to another person, using the socially appropriate and expected rituals of greeting, including set phrases of politeness and standard physical contact (if any). Both can vary greatly between cultures, and not applying them in the expected manner can, even at this early stage, negatively impact on one’s positioning (in the passive) before the first words are exchanged. In terms of physical contact, a handshake may be expected, or pecks on the cheek(s), an embrace, high five, elbow bump, tipping of the hat, bowing, etc. In terms of set phrases for greeting rituals, sometimes more than a simple “Good morning” or “Good afternoon” may be required, and even this may be different according to region. In many English-speaking communities, the additional “How are you?” is obligatory. However, a serious answer in terms of how one really feels (e.g., upbeat, subdued, ill, depressed, etc.) is not normally expected, as this phrase is just meant as a polite and superficial opener of potential small talk, or just a social acknowledgement of the other person. In German, however, this phrase is used in a different context, i.e., among friends, and for a different purpose, namely actually enquiring about the other’s condition. In more recently produced L2 textbooks of German, these subtle differences are explained for the L2 learner. For instance, the authors of “Deutsch? Na klar!” (Di Donato, Clyde, and Vansant 2004), a German textbook produced for the U.S. market, define the difference for the learner in a short “Kulturtipp” [cultural hint]: “German speakers will ask ‘Na, wie geht’s?’ or ‘Wie geht es Ihnen?’ only if they already know the person well. When you ask a native German speaker, be prepared for a detailed answer, particularly if the person is not feeling well” (Di Donato, Clyde, and Vansant 2004: 9). Although meant well, this “cultural hint” does refer to, but does not explain, the highly complex use of the informal “du” and the formal “Sie” which is used in German for indexing social or hierarchical distance (cf. Section 9.2). It also does not allude to the increasingly anglophone use of the phrase in the sense that a detailed answer is not always expected. Furthermore, explicit cultural tips such as the one mentioned above remain purely on a cognitive level; they are merely an add-on to the perceived main task of teaching and learning the L2, and this procedure may result in a situation where culture and language are treated separately in the L2 classroom. This constellation, however, could lend itself to the misperception on the part of the learners that language and culture are separate entities and therefore should be learned separately in the L2 classroom.

Culture is always dynamic and distributed (cf. Chapter 7). Therefore, it cannot be strictly delimited from other cultures. There are always manifold overlaps and commonalities between cultures, for instance, in the area of the universals of human existence (birth, housing, love, eating, schooling, living in a community, etc.), common traditions in the legal framework of society (for instance, in Western societies), and in reactions to the process of globalization. Although these universal constructs are not identically realized in different cultures, they can provide certain spaces of overlap which can be used to facilitate cognitive (and possibly affective) approximations to the other sociocultural constructs. These can be exploited in the L2 classroom by using forms of genre, frame, Discourse, and narrative that are similar, or in some instances even the same, across the cultures involved. The already known genres, Discourses, and narratives of the L1 speech community can be filled with voices from cultural others, and can thus be understood by the L2 learner not only in the very limited context of the actual pragmatic situation, but also in the wider context of the known social forms of constructing meaning. This can take the form of aligning oneself to a particular genre, Discourse, or narrative when positioning oneself in the L2 classroom community, or these forms can be explored in a pleasurable and creative manner by playing with words, positionings, and meanings, trying to fill the gaps that have opened up by the exploration of differential linguistic and sociocultural patterns of behavior. Furthermore, superficially similar spheres of peoples’ life-worlds (Lebenswelten) in different cultures can pave the way towards understanding aspects of the other culture and society which, at this early stage of the learning process, are mainly confined to the pragmatic level of fairly formulaic and standardized speech situations. On this basis, learners can draw meaningful comparisons between the similarities and differences of the L1 and L2-mediated constructs and configurations, for example, in relation to the pragmatic speech situations typical for situations such as In the Restaurant or At the Train Station, including inherent standardized speech roles.¹²⁰

Cooperative and interactive work in small groups “entails working responsibly together towards both individual goals (individual accountability) and group goals (positive interdependence in the group)” (Kohonen 2001: 41), thus enhancing the social, interactive, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral skills and abilities of learners in intercultural learning. In a further step of collaborative learning, pragmatic situations can be designed for the purpose of acting them out in role plays by processes of accepting or distancing oneself from certain roles. Role play allows for a temporary and ambivalent liberation from the immediate constraints of the here and now of a situation; at the same time, it facilitates a new awareness of the original situation by temporarily adopting another (cultural) perspective (cf. Krüger 1999: 32). The use of role play in the L2 classroom can also contribute to the awareness that, although superficially similar, the comparable situations to the other culture are populated with different voices and people who may act differently to what is expected from the point of view of the native culture of the learners:

The bases of this comparative procedure are, of course, the acquired patterns of construal and action of the native culture, because at this early phase of L2 learning target concepts are reduced and integrated into familiar L1-mediated constructs in the sense of a hermeneutical understanding of the Other (cf. Section 8.4). Accordingly, deeply ingrained, socioculturally generated ethnocentric attitudes, norms, and beliefs are still dominant for accessing the L2 world; they have not yet been qualified. The main purpose of this early period of L2 learning consists in the creation of an awareness on the part of the learner that members of the other cultural community act the way they do, because they are using the options provided for them by their culture in order to satisfy basic physical and psychological needs, and that these may be different from the norms the learners are used to from their native culture.

Since learners are at an early stage of learning the L2, including its pragmatic, social, and cultural context, their focus on sociocultural phenomena of the target speech community may be limited, although they are clearly an integral part of L2 usage and central to developing intercultural third spaces on the part of the learner, even at this early stage. The limited L2 competence certainly has a restraining effect on gaining an understanding of the social structures and cultural patterns of construal and behavior of the cultural others, and thus on renegotiating one’s own identity through the engagement with the Other. In order to overcome this deficiency, the linguistically-based access to the other culture can be expanded by the use of non-linguistic media, for instance, images. According to the proverb “every picture tells a story,” images can convey very complex facts, issues, and circumstances but they have to be deciphered or “read” by the viewer to attribute sense to what is depicted. Most young learners already interact with peers and friends via social media such as Facebook, mobile phones, or Skype so that it can be presumed that they are, to a certain extent, familiar (or literate) in the use of visual and other media (and sometimes more so than the L2 teacher). Given the influence of media, such as television and the Internet, on young people from early on in their lives, younger generations have become increasingly visually socialized. However, this kind of media literacy is not the same as visual literacy, even if the learners use these media to interact with people situated in other cultures, because the emphasis is on live-interaction and not on the interpretation of and reflection on what they see, for example, on TV or in the background of an image posted by a foreign friend on Facebook. Kress (2003: 1), for instance, sees a broad shift from the “centuries-long dominance of writing to the new dominance of the image.” Therefore, it seems appropriate to develop an intercultural visual literacy in the L2 classroom, tied in with and as an integral part of the overall fostering of intercultural competence. This kind of visual literacy can be developed into a broader kind of media literacy in the advanced L2 classroom (in the context of a larger framework of multiliteracies with regard to information and multimedia technologies), but in this early phase it starts off with still images taken in the other culture, leaving sufficient time for the learner to see and interpret what and how something (or someone) is depicted in the image.

Visual literacy can be defined as the ability to interpret and make sense of information which is presented in the form of an image (cf. Hallet 2010: 32).¹²¹ The term literacy makes reference to textual reading and interpretation; hence the term visual literacy insinuates that images can also be read in the sense of taking meaning from the source. Compared to texts, images can convey different kinds of information in a simultaneous manner, because the information is presented in a very compressed form which can be culturally charged and needs a competent viewer to unlock the full complexity of the information in a culturally adequate manner. The receptor thus needs to be trained in sensitive viewing, because each mode of construction (e.g., text, music, dance, gesture) “has its distinct affordances and needs to be understood in its own potentials” (Kress 2008: 99). In addition to being able to “read” the image in a modally appropriate manner, the viewer has to acquire a competence in culturally adequate forms of seeing and interpreting. Typically, most learners will already have experienced images from early childhood onwards, for instance, in picture books or coloring books. These images are an important building block for the construction of a particular aspect of cultural reality; for instance, children learn, before they begin to speak, what the roof of a house looks like, how gender roles are presented, etc. Thus, children have already acquired basic knowledge about the structures and functions of images. This knowledge can subsequently be expanded to culturally specific patterns of reception (or Sehgewohnheiten) of reading the image. In the L2 classroom, questions such as “Where is the scene located?”, “Who is involved in the scene?”, “Which theme is presented in the image?”, “Which perspective is used to depict the scene, and why?”, “Who might have taken (or produced) the picture and for what purpose?” could be used to focus the attention of learners on reading certain aspects of the (culturally different) image. Subsequent questions by the teacher or peers might expand the discussion to the actual narration of the scene depicted in the image, perhaps triggered by contrasting the scene to comparable situations and patterns from the learners’ first culture.

This form of visual literacy facilitates a critical and analytical attitude which can build bridges between the scene depicted in the other culture and in the native culture of learners; learners have to apply creative and productive efforts of interpretation and participation by reflecting upon and discussing not only the perceived message of the image, but also its relevance for the target culture – and for their own lives. Images require the visual literacy of the viewer to decode the message (as understood by the learner, and the message may, of course, be revisited and reconstructed at a later stage), particularly with respect to images from other cultures which demand a certain amount of cultural background knowledge in order to read them as intended by the person(s) who created the image. For example, L2 learners of German may struggle to read an image used for advertisement purposes by a German commercial bank which depicts sheep wearing yellow oilskin hats, complemented by the slogan that “one has to bring one’s sheep to a dry place” (cf. Bachtsevanidis 2012: 119-120). The background knowledge implied by the image refers to the fact that it often rains in Germany, and therefore it is necessary to shelter sheep from the rain. A closer reading, however, reveals that the advertisement is for an old-age pension insurance scheme offered by the bank, and introducing the linguistic play of the German slogan seine Schäfchen ins Trockene bringen (directly translated as to bring one’s sheep to a dry place, but equivalent in meaning to the English metaphor to feather one’s nest) enables students to read the image as intended, including the ironic play of words.

Another example would be the image of a German national of African origin who wears a T-shirt with the slogan Ich bin stolz ein Deutscher zu sein [I am proud to be a German]. This slogan is typically used by nationalist and right-wing parties in Germany, and the combination of the slogan and the person of African origin was intentionally used in Germany in 2000 by the anti-fascist campaign Deutsche gegen rechte Gewalt [Germans against right-wing violence] to unveil certain stereotypes held by some (many?) Germans (in terms of nationalism and racism). Altmayer (2009: 131) uses this provocative image to elicit responses from learners of German as a L2 by contrasting their internalized stereotypes of a typical German, for instance, a beer-swilling, Lederhosen (or Dirndl) wearing white person (cf. Schulz and Haerle 1996), with the person presented in the image. This intentional evocation and contrasting of presumed stereotypes with the “reality” presented in the image can provoke discussions on what it means to be proud of a national identity with reference to the recent history of Germany in the Third Reich and to the constructs of national, ethnic, racial, or other forms of identity held by the learners, including their stances on being proud of their own national, ethnic, or racial identity.

Images can not only be “read” in the L2 class, but they can also be produced, ideally in cross-disciplinary collaboration with the school-subject of arts, in order to express feelings or aspects of intercultural understanding that are difficult to verbalize at this early stage of learning the L2. Typically, drawing pictures has been practiced in early childhood before language was acquired by the infant (cf. Heath 2009), thus learners will be familiar with the techniques and purposes of composing a picture. In the L2 classroom, there are many ways of using the production of images for making learners aware of, and reflect upon, the differences and similarities between cultures, or of their own feelings and stances in relation to their development of intercultural competence; the onus here is on the learner as an embodied subject. The production of images can take the form of visually expressing the subjectively perceived location of the L1 and L2 (and other languages) in their bodies, or the impact of the L2 on their bodies (e.g., Krumm 2007); it can also be used to express the complex interrelations of the cultures and languages, as seen in the subjective perspective of the learner. A more complex form of image-production would be the construction of collages, emphasizing not only the complexity and inherent frictions of intercultural relations (as perceived by students), but also the integration of aesthetic concepts and principles. This can be done in a thematically-orientated manner, for example, with regard to schooling in the other culture (in comparison with the experiences of pupils in their own community), including the role of teachers and pupils, the look and the variety of equipment in the classrooms, the role and dress code of pupils, the ways of teaching and learning, the role of the school in the community, etc. Other guided tasks of producing images could be the construction of a poster for advertising a fictional product in the foreign culture (cf. Bachtsevanidis 2012: 123), drawing on learners’ knowledge in many regards: (1) linguistic (making up a slogan), (2) cultural (awareness of the reception of the image, including the use of colors and objects), (3) social (awareness of habits of consumption in the foreign culture), and (4) aesthetic (use of a combination of words, irony, word-play, objects, perspectives, and colors). The image could take the form of a drawn or painted image, a photograph, a collage of existing images (taken from magazines, newspapers, and the Internet), etc.

In the L2 classroom, an image from the other cultural sphere provides an authentic speech prompt for meaningful communication which combines the cultural perspectives of the reader with the perspectives inherent in the image. However, it can be extremely difficult to discuss in the foreign language the complexities depicted or insinuated in the image at this early period of L2 learning. Therefore, only simple images, such as typically presented in textbooks of the communicative and intercultural approaches, can function as L2 speech prompts for stimulating the use of related phrases; a deeper discussion and reflection on what and why something is depicted in an image can be conducted in the L1 of the learners so that even small nuances in terms of cultural difference can be verbalized and adequately discussed, thus fulfilling the purpose of this pedagogic principle in terms of creating awareness and sensitivity on the part of the learners with regard to how members of the other speech community go about their daily business and why they might act in particular ways.

 

Principle 4 – Awareness of stereotypes and attributions

The comparative engagement with pragmatic situations and simple cultural patterns is complemented in this principle by the analysis of auto- and heterostereotypes. The discussion of stereotypes is an integral part of L2 learning because learners in the age of the Internet and television, will already have heard and seen information about the target language country, its people, and culture, and this information is rarely objective and free from value judgments but can be heavily loaded with stereotypes. Stereotyping serves the function of reducing potentially complex configurations of constructs of the Other. Stereotypes are socially and discursively constructed representations of certain groups of others which, once objectified, assume an independent reality of their own (cf. Section 3.3). They alleviate the apparent identification of the others, assign alleged characteristics to a certain group of people, and on the basis of these two mechanisms, individuals can be identified with stereotypical characteristics (cf. Hinton 2000: 6-8). The danger of stereotyping is particularly evident in the space of intercultural encounters, because the internalized L1-mediatedcategories of culturally specific patterns of orientation can mislead the process of perception and construction, and lead to inappropriate judgments of the other. An example of this process is the identification of someone as German, and the stereotypical attribution of characteristics such as hard-working, humorless, and punctual (among others), although none of these characteristics may be applicable to the particular person in question. Stereotypes alleviate legitimations for actions and allow value judgments appear to be a natural phenomenon. In order to create stereotypes, “we tend to exaggerate the differences between groups and underrate the differences within groups” (Hinton 2000: 109). Exaggerated characteristics of certain groups of people then become commonly accepted knowledge within the group (ingroup favoritism vs. outgroup discrimination; cf. Section 6.4).

With regard to early L2 instruction, Byram and Morgan (1994: 3) observe with reference to the cultural knowledge of learners: “Young people acquire some information but very little knowledge of the foreign culture through language classes; the influence of extra-curricular forces such as the media is greater – and more insidious – than the intuitive and unsystematic efforts of the teacher.” However, whereas mass media such as television, newspapers, and radio only confront the consumer with information of foreign cultures and societies, the L2 classroom can provide a platform for deconstructing, reconstructing, and co-constructing not only declarative, but more importantly, procedural knowledge about the other culture and speech community. The challenge for collaborative classroom practice is to render conscious the stereotypes which can be made accessible through collaborative cognitive effort. The inclusion of auto-stereotypes in this cognitive process is essential because learners will feel themselves misrepresented (cf. Section 6.4). Consequently, a personal consternation is generated on an affective level, which can only have a positive effect on the preparedness to engage even more intensively with (mis-)representations of the learner’s own social group, as well as with hetero-stereotypes. When confronted with the stereotype of being humorless, calculating, and carrying out activities in a machine-like fashion, young German L2 learners take offence at these stereotypical characteristics which are still used in countless English and American TV productions or sports commentaries.

The fact that stereotypes always misrepresent the Other in a simplifying, insulting, and exaggerated manner provokes a critical analysis of them, which has the important heuristic function of contributing, for the learner, to making the process of constructive engagement with the target language, culture, and society more transparent, as he or she will be able to recognize configurations representing oversimplification, reduction, fossilization, or attribution. By making students aware of stereotypes in terms of content and function, some, if not most stereotypes discussed in the L2 classroom will be overcome, or at least be reduced in the sense that one is aware when using a simplifying and misrepresenting device. This is also an important goal of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, which states that “the ability to overcome stereotypical relationships” (Council of Europe 2001: 105) between the cultures involved should be developed as part of learners’ intercultural skills and know-how.

Although stereotypes can be discussed whenever they arise in the L2 classroom, a more efficient method to overcome stereotypes would be a focused and socioculturally contextualized approach. An example of this would be the large-scale research project entitled “Culture and foreign language education,” which was conducted in the 1990s over two years in Finland with second-level students of 16-17 years of age who were studying German and French. The aim of this project was to sensitize learners to foreign phenomena and compare these to their own language and their own cultural standards, before actually engaging in interaction with representatives of the foreign culture (cf. Kaikkonen 2001: 88-99). This comparative approach activated learners’ previous experiences and views; they were encouraged to make observations about the foreign culture and keep personal journals of their learning experience. Learners then collected and created their own learning materials, because “textbooks generally give a superficial and stereotypical picture of the target culture and sociocultural functions of the language,” (Kaikkonen 2001: 92; emphasis in the original). By compiling their own learning materials, learners were in a position to integrate their own subjective interests, views, and inner selves into the L2 learning process, and they considered these materials as authentic and immediately relevant for their own efforts of engagement with the linguistic and cultural Other, including the discussion of social, cultural, or national stereotypes. The materials could be arranged and shaped in a particular manner, reflecting each learner’s perspectives and approaches with regard to the other language and culture, as facilitated by the respective current state of his or her ZPD. This strand of the research project was enhanced by monthly visits from native speakers (cf. Kaikkonen 2001: 92), thus facilitating learners in discussing their observations of linguistic and cultural behavior, including mutual stereotypes or other reductive cultural attributions between the visitor and the learners.

However, regular visitors from the target speech community can be considered the exception for most institutionalized L2 classrooms. In the absence of direct face-to-face interaction with representatives of the other cultural community, electronic media can be used, because they transcend national, social, and cultural boundaries. One constructive form of electronic media use for the purpose of fostering intercultural competence in the L2 classroom is represented by e-mails which are exchanged between partners from different cultures and in different languages.¹²² E-mails are an asynchronous medium which give students space for composing their texts and reflecting upon the responses of their partner who is situated in the target speech community. Students can exchange e-mails in their respective L2 or L1, or a mixture of both, so that linguistic, communicative, and intercultural competences can be developed simultaneously. If these e-mail contacts are set up by the institution, preparatory classes are required for discussing the purposes and contents of the exchange. These may be related to the respective level of advancement of intercultural competence and range from auto- and hetero-stereotypes over perceived national traits and behaviors to subjective perspectives, all of which can be discussed with the other cultural group (or subject) during the e-mail exchange and, of course, set into the context of the current condition of third places of the learners themselves. O’Dowd (2003: 124) observes that during the e-mail exchange the viewpoints, stereotypes, and perspectives are contested, in that some students in their pairs are “correcting misrepresentations,” “fighting stereotypes,” and trying to convince their counterparts of the “rightness” of a viewpoint. These activities can heighten students’ awareness of the stereotypes and the cultural frames of reference used by each of the two groups, as well as facilitating a third space for them in the exchange in case they are prepared to, at least temporarily, suspend their cultural viewpoint and adopt that of the other cultural group. This can be an important stepping stone for enhancing intercultural competence in terms of empathy and tolerance of ambiguity which, of course, can be developed further over the period of the e-mail exchanges (e.g., located in Principle 5).

The important aspects to these forms of intercultural encounter are the authenticity and adequacy (in terms of age and interest) of the intercultural contact which may be developed into personal friendships. In contrast to the traditional mass media, e-mail contact allows for interactive contact with people of the other speech community, facilitating a very subjective and personal form of contact between learners who are typically in the same age-bracket and pursue similar (age-related) interests. The asynchronous character of the e-mail exchange allows for reflection on cultural understandings before offering one’s own (or the group’s) interpretation of and perspectives on a particular subject-matter and the ways in which it is discussed. Hence, the learners have the time to consider, with the peers in the classroom, the values, worldviews, and (communicative) traditions of their own culture and those of the partner’s. This means that they can then think about the manner, the language, and the concepts in which they represent their own understanding of their culture vis-à-vis their partners in the other culture, thus inviting similar representations to be made by them, or engaging in discussing ways and contents of representation between the two cultural groups.

Principle 5 – Intercultural borderline experiences in the L2 classroom

In this principle, selected and very limited intercultural borderline experiences are facilitated in the sense that certain cognitive constructs which are negotiated in the L2 classroom will draw, at least partially, on certain patterns of construal of the other culture.¹²³ This is a fundamental precondition for the negotiation for meaning between dominant constructs and Discourses of cultures, for the development of genuine blended mental spaces, and the potential to distance oneself, at least temporarily, from the internalized cultural frame of reference and social roles (or positionings) and assume another cultural frame of reference and a dif ferent framework for positionings.

The sphere of these cognitive efforts can be located in pragmatic situations of everyday life in the L2 speech community; however, some structural similarities of these situations could foster a tendency not to question the validity of the acquired native cultural constructs. It would, therefore, be more effective to focus on spheres of marked difference. These could be social structures explicitly bound into Discourses of the other culture, for instance, schooling in the context of the education system in the target society (cf. Principle 3). One could try to understand certain values of both systems by explicitly comparing them with reference to their D/discursive contextualization. Underlying culturally-induced and conceptual differences in customs and performances can be used as discussion-provoking material which can give rise to questions on the part of the learner as to the validity of certain internalized cultural categories and conceptualizations within the domain of formal schooling. In the course of negotiation for meaning in the two Discursive worlds, aspects of the other system can be preferred to those of the learner’s own system. The preferences can be rather trivial, for instance, with regard to the obligation of pupils to wear a school uniform (as, for example, in Great Britain or Ireland) or not (as, for instance, in Germany or Austria), but they can also refer to differences concerning underlying values, for example, the status of certain school subjects, or the socially legitimized degree of distance between the roles of teacher and pupil.

One possibility to achieve these borderline experiences, not only in the cognitive domain, but also in affective and behavioral domains, is through the use of simulations. In simulation tasks, the learners (in pairs or small groups) could be asked to plan and compose a curriculum vitae of an imagined person living in the target culture, partially based on “excerpts of a book and newspaper articles as input material on the life circumstances of different foreign people” (Kaikkonen 2001: 94). The “input material” could, of course, be extended to visual and audio materials, such as images and short films available on the Internet (e.g., on YouTube), as well as excerpts from DVDs, CDs, and radio dramas. However, the materials should be easily accessible to the students in terms of language and pragmatics; they should be short, related to the interests of learners, and authentic. A higher-level contextualized approach to understanding the Other could be facilitated in advanced L2 learning by more complex simulation games (cf. Principle 7). For the pedagogical purposes of this principle, however, the simulation task should be limited so that learners can, for example, construct a CV of and stories about their hypothetical L2 role person, inscribing into the stories their own subjective feelings, fantasies, desires, and culturally-based cognitive perspectives and approaches. Of course, their imagination is also required for hypothesizing aspects of their role person which are not explicitly mentioned in the sources. Rather than being an exercise for its own purpose, the factually-based, yet in parts imagined CVs and stories of the role persons can be creatively used in the L2 class in order to foster linguistic L2 aspects and holistic (inter-) cultural learning, as explained by Kaikkonen (2001: 94): “During the school lessons they [the students] interviewed each other about the life of their role persons, considered their cultural authenticity and developed their own role person’s curriculum vitae further. The students hence had extensive practice in writing and speaking the foreign language,” while at the same time negotiating and extending their cultural knowledge of the L2 speech community, albeit in a rather focused and limited way, as would be appropriate for the level of this principle of developing their intercultural competence. Unsurprisingly, Kaikkonen (2001: 94) writes that: “Many students indeed reported after this activity that they had worked very creatively and activated their imagination more than is usually the case in school. Moreover, they mentioned that this activity had also increased their ability for empathy,” which is an important sub-competence of the complex construct of intercultural competence. Empathy broadens the understanding for the motivations of action, emotion, and behavior of people in a certain context, particularly if this context refers to that of the target culture. Hence, these simulation tasks, albeit necessarily limited in scope, are an important instrument of holistic learning. However, in the simulation project conducted by Kaikkonen (2001), the transformative dimension of the simulation in terms of redefining one’s own role in the L1 context (or positioning) is not sufficiently integrated, thus neglecting the reciprocal element of intercultural competence.

Some L2 teaching methodologies use this form of role simulation much more extensively, for instance suggestopedia (also known as desuggestopedia, superlearning, suggestive accelerated learning and teaching, and Psychopädie). In this alternative L2 methodology, learners assume right from the first class onwards the name and identity (primarily influenced by their chosen “occupation”) of a hypothetical member of the L2 speech community which they keep for the whole L2 learning process, thus enabling them to develop a comprehensive biography about their fictional selves and holistically experience elements of the second language, culture, and society from a hypothesized insider’s point of view (cf. Larsen-Freeman 2000: 84). This particular approach to L2 learning may be insufficient for initial L2 learning, but it grows on the learners as the L2 course progresses so that their mindsets can indeed be influenced, at least partially, by L2-mediated constructs of identity.

Of course, the level of social structures and dominant Discourses is not the only sphere to facilitate certain intercultural borderline experiences. This potential is not limited to any particular aspect of the target socioculture but can include configurations from all walks of social life, cultural conceptualizations, and D/discursive positionings. For example, differences in cultural conceptualization of certain lexical elements can also be negotiated. Claire Kramsch (1993: 15-27) exemplifies this approach for the American concept of challenge, as compared to the German lexical equivalent of Herausforderung. Although presented in dictionaries as identical concepts, there are significant differences in the immanent cultural conceptualizations. Whereas the American challenge is mainly interpreted as a positive concept, because it stimulates the individual (or the group of people) to redouble their efforts in achieving a certain goal, the German cultural context does not emphasize these positive connotations; Herausforderung can also be seen as something unachievable which implies not bothering to embark on the efforts necessary to meet the challenge. Another example of the tension of conceptual differences is provided in Section 9.2 by Walter Benjamin’s notion of the inherent non-translatability of even simple and superficially crossculturally identical lexical items such as bread, pain, and Brot. Rather than simply referring to fixed dictionary entries, the cultural usage and the social implications of lexical items have to be reconstructed from within the other cultural context in a sociohistorical dimension; otherwise concepts cannot be understood in an appropriate manner, which might in turn result in cultural imperialism (cf. Section 8.3).

Another approach to facilitating borderline experiences is characterized by Kaikkonen (2001), representing the continuation of the large-scale research project entitled “Culture and foreign language education,” introduced in the previous principle. As the topics discussed in the L2 classroom became more complex, project work was used to facilitate focused cognitive and affective work on topics such as construing five plans for the use of the former Berlin Wall area by way of hypothesized citizen action groups (or Bügerinitiativen). This project provides students with the opportunity to experience the social organization of civil protest related to a very culturally specific object (Berlin Wall) at a very specific moment in time (i.e., the early 1990s when the fall of the Berlin Wall was topical for the L2 classes in German). It also has the potential to focus students’ attention on the specific interests of the relevant protagonists at the time, i.e., politicians, investors, residents, and ecologists whose perspectives they take on for the project. The adoption of differential perspectives related to solving the same problem has the potential, for learners, to identify with a particular perspective which has arisen in another cultural context, and transfer it to their own life-world context by, for example, identifying with the concerns of ecologists or the Green Party. With the (at least temporary) adoption of these perspectives, learners can look back at their own cultural constructs and speech community and see it with different eyes, and possibly even become active as ecologists.

Other project work which was designed to prepare students for a visit to the target language country (as part of a student exchange program) included “the environment (living conditions and life circumstances, living and housing); visits (being a visitor in a foreign family, preparing for a visit); the arts (painting as a group activity and its evaluation with a native artist); and planning a public area” (Kaikkonen 2001: 93). These visits actually took place, providing students with the opportunity to test their knowledge, beliefs, hypotheses, and remaining stereotypes in the relevant cultural context. Students were meticulously prepared for this visit by being given observation and interview tasks, some of which were designed for all students and others for different student groups (pair work). The three tasks for all students (to be answered in their L1) are:

The second set of questions for pair work aimed at more general social features of the host country, such as schooling, youth cultures, transport, leisure time activities, the media etc. This structured approach to the site visit in the speech community whose language is being studied focuses students’ minds on specific configurations that may be relevant for comparison to related phenomena in their native society. The procedure of keeping a personal journal by each student and recording observations (also by visual means, e.g., by using a video camera) provides the basis for deep reflective discussion during and after the visit, thus contributing to the intensive negotiation of meaning with regard to the Other but also including some L1 constructs, because they could be compared with the corresponding L2 constructs. The personal journals also provide a professional understanding on the part of teachers of what students consider important in their lives and that of their partners in the host country.

Although this project could foster an awareness of the differences and similarities of cultural construal on the part of the students, not least because of their privileged situation of having native speakers as regular visitors to their L2 classroom and the opportunity to actually visit the target language speech community, the research project seems to foster an overall approach to intercultural learning which is informed by ethnography. The students seem to act from the position of distanced ethnographers in the host culture with an interest in observing how the members of the other speech community go about their everyday life in the host families. The results of their ethnographic research efforts are then recorded in the student’s journal (thus creating a cultural meta-text; cf. Section 7.2) for a later discussion in the familiar L2 classroom setting. This procedure seems to unduly remove the subjectivity of learners from their experiences in the host culture; insufficient attention seems to have been given to the subjective expectations, fears, experiences, desires, and emotions of students and their host partners before, during, and after the visit. Hence, it appears that an important opportunity for fostering reciprocal elements of intercultural competence has been missed, that is, elements that involve the native culture of the students and the individual student as an embodied subject.

However, trying to negotiate the meaning of constructs, patterns, and habitus from an empathizing position within the Discourses, constructs, values, and beliefs of the other language, culture, and society provokes questions of validity, not only with regard to the Other, but also to internalized categories. Consequently, the conceptual framework of the acquired constructs of monolingual learners, having so far been unquestioningly assumed by them to be universally valid, can now be made explicit because they can, at least partially, refer to alternative constructs of another linguistic, cultural, and social system. The acquired L1-mediated cultural-conceptual system, therefore, becomes explicit in certain aspects. By referring to the patterns of construal of the other cultural system, the familiar system can now be consciously questioned, critiqued, and evaluated, and the L2 learner is in a position to consciously and intentionally develop intercultural places referring to the constructs of both languages and cultures involved. In other words, he or she is now in a position to subjectively integrate concepts and blend spaces between dominant cultural constructs and Discourses, while the dominance of internalized L1 conceptualizations is reduced, and for certain aspects even eliminated, as in the example of comparing issues related to schooling. Intercultural borderline experiences in terms of construing meaning from patterns, values, and attitudes inherent in the other language, culture, and society, are a precondition for the further development of subjective positionings between these differential constructs. This implies transition in the knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors of L2 learners which is not just an expansion of existing knowledge and values (as Bennett [1993] implies; cf. Section 10.1), but a fundamental transformation of the bases of cognition, emotion, and behavior, achieved by blending certain concepts and constructs as part of the process of developing intercultural competence.

 

Principle 6– Increasing awareness of linguistic and cultural relativity

In this principle, the rather limited and selective insights into the structures and patterns of foreign cultural construction and action, as addressed by the five previous principles, will be connected to more complex units of intercultural construction. In this manner, learners gain an insight into the relativity of linguistic and cultural constructs, including their own. This is facilitated by discussing the linguistic and cultural restrictions of the categories and patterns of one’s own perceptions, feelings, and attitudes, which opens up the path toward an insight into the cultural constructedness of certain categories, and ultimately achieves a basic intercultural openness of construal. The openness is characterized by the ability to not only revise some constructs of the native culture, but to negotiate the learner’s own subjective positioning between two or more cultures, based on increasing experience with and consciousness of the differential constructs. Thus, the monolingual and monocultural habitus is undermined and can be overcome in relation to certain components of construction. However, the process of acquiring knowledge about the cultural relativity of one’s own thoughts, feelings, and actions, cannot be confined to the cognitive level. It has to include the emotional and behavioral levels because of the embodied nature of meaningful intercultural learning and because constructs of personal identity will be modified in terms of L2 learners “growing more intercultural through the intensity of their cultural experiences” (Ryan 2009: 68).

For L2 classroom practice, the implications are that comprehensive, explorative, multi-perspective, and experiential methods of learning are required. In the absence of the opportunity to frequently visit the target speech community, these methods could take the form of electronically mediated communication with members of the other speech community. In an expansion of the acquisition of visual literacy which was introduced in principle 3 for the purpose of employing authentic images as speech prompts, that lead to the reflection and discussion of intercultural spaces, electronic media can be used to develop and elaborate the awareness of linguistic and cultural relativity. Electronic media provide audiovisual access to members of other speech communities in real time; they facilitate authentic intercultural communication and communication about linguistic and cultural stumbling blocks, and they provide access to disembodied virtual spaces which are filled with the voices and images of others.

Young people, for whom television, computers, mobile digital devices, and online gaming platforms such as PlayStation or Xbox have been part of their primary socialization, may be unaware that computer-mediated communication has created a virtual world which may be sometimes difficult to differentiate from the “real” physical and social worlds. The computer gives unregulated access to a world that is disembodied, mutable, and kaleidoscopic, hence being almost the opposite of the “real” social world in which the relatively autonomous subject constructs coherence for his or her experiences in the general framework of the temporally and spatially situated cultural system via its Discourses, genres, frames, conceptualizations, etc. (cf. Chapter 4). The virtual space, which can be accessed by the click of the mouse, provides unlimited opportunities for finding, retrieving, recycling, co-authoring, deleting, and sharing information. Thus, the virtual space does not favor the gradual development of culturally situated analytical modes of understanding, but it allows for immediate kaleidoscopic accumulation of isolated bits and pieces of information, including the constant shifting of perspectives, which results in a simulated reality, or virtual world. Although still rooted in the “real” world, the Internet encourages the subject to perceive his or her self as fluid, variegated, and ever-changing in the context of networked on-line communities with others, thus replacing the physical self which is firmly situated in space and time, and which relies on collective and personal memories, experiences, constructs, and fantasies, with a disembodied virtual self which is increasingly constituted by the virtual world of the Internet. The hyper-real space of the Internet knows no boundaries where texts, images, and data are the sole property of the culturally situated author; once uploaded, they are immediately and universally available for copying, pasting, or any other form of manipulation. Therefore, the hyper-real space of the Internet could be seen as the true transcultural space, detached from all cultural and subjective restraints and boundaries. Since the data available on the Internet are not integrated in a culturally facilitated framework of genres, frames, Discourses, metaphors, memories, contextualization cues, and other indicators of the subject’s positioning, stance, and intention of his or her use of the communicative force of the document, this absence of culturally stabilizing frameworks has to filled by resorting to the conventions and intents of the individual user, thus creating semantic gaps and frictions between the sphere of authorship and the sphere of consumption.

When interacting with cultural others as embodied persons through the Internet, their voices, texts, and images do not exist in isolation in virtual space (although it may appear to be the case for the user), but they are culturally embedded in respect to their inherent structures, functions, and purposes. Thus, the materials available on the Internet, as used for the purposes of in this pedagogic principle, are not culturally neutral resources, but they can be identified as being based on the specific cultural values and patterns of the L2 speech community; the users, too, are influenced by their culturally specific modes of (communicative) behavior which are not universally compatible with those of other online users. These cultural influences also touch upon multimodal literacies which include textual and image literacies (cf. Principle 3). Digital media require multimodal literacies because they operate with diverse materials such as texts, photos, music, videos, and other graphics which users upload to social networking sites. Although many young people are media literate, they tend to ignore these culturally specific influences on the Internet and other interactive media (cf. Kramsch and Thorne 2002). If L2 learners are to develop media literacy in the broader context of developing intercultural competence, emphasis has to be placed on computer-mediated communication as a cultural artifact in its own right that examines issues of identity construction through networked dialogue. Students’ fluid positionings as L1 speakers, L2 speakers, and intercultural speakers are extended by that of a digital speaker. If digital media are to be used in the L2 classroom, it is the task of the teacher to ensure that these media are used in an appropriate, sensible, and productive manner. “Teachers need to be technically literate, employ tools best suited for the task, moderate activities, provide careful scaffolding of tasks, and give detailed instructions” (Coleman et al. 2012: 173). The media-trained teacher can also highlight specific cultural influences on virtual communication if they impact on the mode or content of the interaction, positioning, and emergent construals of identity. In general, however, digital media lend themselves more to small-scale interaction between people, rather than large-scale, abstract, and generalized formula, such as culture (cf. Guest 2002: 157).

One productive form of using electronic media in fostering intercultural competence by direct exchange with the cultural other is represented by Tandem. In a typical Tandem learning partnership, two classes are linked by electronic visual media such as Skype, or by non-visual media such as email; one class is located in the L1 speech community and the other is situated in the L2 community. Both groups are studying the language and culture of the other, thereby guaranteeing a mutual interest and engagement in learning about the Other. This authentic intercultural dialogue is ideally suited to question the perspective of the other and their own cultural framework of reference, thus developing a third perspective, or blended third place, between the cultures as the locus of one’s worldview. The different perspectives can be criticized, rejected, agreed, coordinated, and aligned at any stage of their gradual development during the process of Tandem learning. In a Tandem project reported by Bechtel (2009), German learners of French engaged in a course with French exchange students of German for one semester at a German university. One of the German participants, Johanna, tells her French partner, Véronique, that she finds the French habit of using pecks (les bisous) for greeting someone very strange (vraiment bizarre), as pecks (or kisses on the cheeks) are not normally used in this context in Germany. Hence, the subsequent discussion is based on the observation of one partner who cannot understand an aspect of cultural behavior in the other speech community and asks for explanation of the authentic cultural other. In this exchange, Johanna uses her cultural frame of reference, whereas Véronique indicates that she can understand this perspective, but then explains the habit of les bisous from her French cultural point of view, first keeping it neutral by pointing out regional differences. She then highlights her own experiences with pecks, thus culturally positioning herself firmly in the French cultural tradition. Subsequently, the two Tandem partners engage in a deep comparative discussion of greeting rituals in French and German cultural traditions, realizing their personal views, not only as members of a cultural community, but also as women and students. They learn about greeting rituals in the other culture from the authentic (and subjective) point of view of the partner, taking the perspective of the other, inserting their selves into the discussion, and being able to be open to and accept the other cultural system of behavior, even if they do not necessarily adopt this particular habit for their own behavior in general. Thus, both partners appear to have achieved the sub-competences of savoir être and savoir apprendre in Byram’s model of intercultural competence.

If electronic media are not used, this aspect of developing intercultural competence can be fostered by discussions and role plays, based on open literary texts (cf. Bredella 2000),¹²⁴ short film extracts, critical incidents, or short simulation games, which transcend the cognitive level and include affective and behavioral domains. This procedure has the potential to provoke personal consternation, which in turn stimulates subjective engagement in the learning process. The critical incident method, for instance, consists of depictions of brief social episodes where a misunderstanding or conflict arises from cultural differences between the source and target cultures. Critical incidents¹²⁵ can be particularly effective because they are fraught with cultural, social, or pragmatic content. Therefore, they can stimulate engaging discussions about the reasons for and solutions to these intercultural critical experiences, or, in other words, the differential cultural, pragmatic, and linguistic structures underlying the critical incident. Ideally, critical incidents should be introduced by the learners themselves, provided they have already had direct contact with the target language and society, because the authenticity of the dilemma experience is then guaranteed.¹²⁶ Authentic critical incidents provide rich material for affective, cognitive, and experiential activities of constructing, deconstructing, and reconstructing meaning in particular contexts, as well as providing material for comparisons to similar situations in the home culture and society. This is particularly true when these situations are not only imitated in role plays, but creatively developed further (including referencing the native culture and society and fragmentary third places that so far have been developed) and transferred to other situations. Critical incidents, literature, role plays, and films provide the materials with which to widen the punctual insights gained in previous L2 classroom-mediated experiences to more complex spaces of intercultural construction.

An example of the contribution of open literary texts to discussing culture-specific concepts of the roles of man and woman in society was experienced in a German class at a West African university where Wolfgang Borchert’s short story Das Brot [The bread] (1980) was read and analyzed. This short story is an example of an open literary text which has the potential to engage learners in a holistic manner. The story is set in the immediate post-war period in Germany in which an old man, driven by hunger, gets up at night-time and sneaks downstairs into the kitchen in order to secretly eat a slice of bread (which, like all food items in the immediate post-war period in Germany, was rationed and hence extremely scarce). He is caught by his wife who pretends not to notice his clandestine meal and continues to pretend believing his explanation that he got up because of some noise. In the Western conceptualization of marriage, it is quite obvious that the wife does not want to embarrass her husband in this situation of acute food shortage because she loves him and knows that his dignity, his self-respect, and their 39-year marriage could be damaged should she bluntly accuse him of stealing.

This is the cultural backdrop of the short story; when read in a West African context, however, the cultural and conceptual backgrounds of the students reading this story are very different. They respond to signifiers in the text and complete what is left unsaid. The following sequence is a short excerpt from the authentic classroom discussion of the scene in question (cited in Witte 1996: 285):

1. Teacher (T): Why would she [wife] hurt him [husband] if she had shown that she understood him? Why would she have hurt him? Warum hätte sie ihn verletzt?
2. Student (S)1: She would have accused him of stealing the bread.
3. T: Yes, she would have told him to his face: “You are a liar. You told me a lie now.” Okay. But what of the fact that the man actually goes to work and earns the money? And the wife is at home preparing the food for him. She doesn’t earn money. Can you connect it?
4. S2: The man should have eaten the bread boldly and...
5. T: (Interrupting:) He should have eaten the bread with boldness?
6. S2: Yes.
7. T: And just should have said confidently: “I was hungry”?
8. S2: Yes, because it was his anyway. He is the man in the house.

Here, the question of why the wife pretends not to know that her husband has taken a slice of bread is neither related to the historical context of severe food shortages in Germany immediately after the Second World War nor to the Western concept of the relationship on level terms between husband and wife, although the teacher tries to assist students’ efforts in unlocking the meaning of the text and to guide them to this angle of understanding. Based on their own cultural framework of reference, the students tend to fill the gaps by trying to understand the meaning and intention of the text with regard to the behavior of the protagonists. The responses of S2 in class seems to indicate that he cannot (or is unwilling) to understand the force of the text in the historically-specific context; however, the “misunderstanding” could also be consciously constructed in the framework of the performative site of the classroom where typically new knowledge is produced through meaningful interactions. The answer could have been produced by the student in order to get a certain reaction from the teacher or to position his or her self in a certain manner vis-à-vis his or her peers; it could also be a result of the personal story of the student or the student’s family. If, however, the misunderstanding of the intended meaning and cultural force of the text is culturally induced, this points to a more general problem of reading and interpreting texts which are set in another culture and in another historical period. Either the cultural and historical context is filled in by the teacher (or the textbook, or both) or the students bracket out the author’s intended meaning and the historical context in which the story is set. The former approach must always be deficient because it can only operate on a cognitive level, and even at this level, it can only offer a very limited form of cultural and historical contextualization of the text which misses the richness of cultural and historical allusions. The latter approach to a large extent tends to ignore the intended meanings of the author and applies another cultural perspective to the reading of the text which is heavily influenced by the habitus and the cultural norms of the students’ L1 culture.

However, there is a third approach to reading and understanding foreign literary texts in the L2 classroom. This third approach of “contact pragmatics” (Gramling and Warner 2012) “shifts the focus of analysis from the ‘text itself’ to the gaps and overlaps among the ways disparate native and nonnative readerly communities may tend to ‘comprehend’ that text in various appropriate ways” (Gramling and Warner 2012: 60). Thus, the interpretation of the L2 text is neither left in the domain of the foreign culture nor imported to the domain of the L1 culturally-influenced habitus of the learners. Ideally, both domains are negotiated in the L2 classroom in terms of their overlaps and disjunctions, providing the L2 learner with rich stimulations to reflect on his or her subjective stance with regard to understanding the text, and position his or her self accordingly in the unfolding discussion. Reading the L2 literary text is an intertextual and intercultural activity on many levels, as students do not only integrate the different patterns (or scripts) of the cultures involved, but they also integrate their own stories in terms of experiences, memories, expectations, and desires. The open literary text can provoke questions with regard to the positioning of learners that can challenge their habitus, which they take for granted in terms of its limitations and shortcomings vis-à-vis the contents and aesthetics of the literary text. Gramling and Warner (2012: 64) see this as “perhaps one of the most powerful lessons at the higher levels of foreign language study: recognizing that one’s angle on the world (or a text) is not commonsensical or truthful.”

In our example of Borchert’s short story interpreted by students in Nigeria, the text is seen by students predominantly from their cultural perspective and Lebenswelt; they seem to apply the traditional West African sociocultural conceptualization of the relationship between husband and wife to their attempts of filling the gaps in understanding the scene. The teacher, cognizant of this possible application of cultural frame, tries to steer students’ interpretations in the direction of an understanding of the text which is guided by the German social, cultural and historical framework in which the text is set by emphasizing that “the man earns the money” and “the wife is at home preparing the food for him,” thus invoking an overly traditional construal of roles in a historical dimension. The answer of S1 shows that she was able to verbalize the implication that would have occurred if the wife had bluntly accused the man of having eaten the bread. The answer of S2, however, is characterized by the application of another cultural frame which does not fit in with the force of the story; from S2’s perspective, the husband’s denial seems to be unnecessarily embarrassing and humiliating. The teacher, having stumbled upon this unexpected culturally induced difficulty, then moves away from her plan of interpreting the story in a historicist manner and creates ample room for discussing of the roles of man and woman in order to facilitate a negotiation of gender roles in Nigerian and German sociocultural contexts. However, this discussion depends to a large extent on the input and the explanations of the (female) German teacher with regard to the Western constructs of equal status relationships between the two sexes in an idealist manner. At least some of the students, being conscious of such conceptualizations (e.g., through the media), become aware of their habitus-restrained stances and take positions as social actors accordingly, thus sparking off heated discussions. Here, Borchert’s short story prompts a negotiation of stances and positionings in relation to gender equality which quickly moves away from the text. Although this move away from the text misses the chance to include symbolic means of interpretation in terms of language-related implications (such as deixis, schemata, allusions, etc.), the goal of problematizing an aspect of habitus was achieved because the discussion tended to focus on the habitus domain of the learners. The discussion of the cultural frames of interpretation applied to reading the short story could have moved on to role plays, scenarios, or critical incidents on the topic in order to include affective levels more broadly because, clearly, the teaching and learning process remains largely at a cognitive level, and the purely rational explanations by the teacher for culturally induced differences included in the teaching materials are insufficient to facilitate bi- or multi-polarity of thought, affect, and behavior on the part of the learners (cf. Witte 1996: 284-286).

 

Principle 7– Challenging internalized cultural patterns of construal

The process of becoming aware of the cultural patterns of restriction and enablement, which began in the previous principles with an emphasis on the other cultural constructs, focuses in this pedagogic principle on the acquired and internalized categories of the native culture. During these processes, these cultural patterns become more explicit and therefore cognitively accessible, in that they can be compared to similar constructs in other cultures and, as a consequence, can be critiqued and qualified. Therefore, the content and the activities introduced in this principle have the potential to undermine, but also to constructively transform the monoculturally induced and unreflected self-confidence of perception, understanding, and action.

The teacher has to be aware of the psychological sensitivity of the activities proposed by this pedagogic principle and give learners as much room as possible for collaborative negotiation for meaning. As in the previous principles, this should not be confined to the cognitive level, but should include affective and behavioral planes, based on experiential learning situations. After all, the primary purpose is not to train learners to function perfectly in the target society, but, rather, to stimulate them to negotiate blended cultural spaces and apply themselves and their life-world to this process, and to reconstruct their knowledge of their own internalized life-world by examining the cultural patterns underlying the life-world of people in another culture (cf. Neuner 2000: 44). As a result, the learner’s intercultural spaces become more refined and complex, his or her constructs of identity are broadened, and the attitudes toward Other and others become more receptive.

The most meaningful manner of bringing oneself into the play of the target language and culture would be a sustained period of immersion in the other speech community.¹²⁷ However, a sojourn in the target language community is not always an integral part of the institutional L2 learning process. Therefore, complex simulation games such as Ecotonos (Saphiere 2008) or BAFA BAFA (Shirts 1973) could be used in order to achieve a similar effect. In the BAFA BAFA cultural simulation game, for example, the class is randomly divided into two groups, and each is given their own separate room. Each group is handed a list of the foundational values and norms of “their” hypothetical society and culture which have to be learned (or “internalized”) by the students. In the next stage, visitors are exchanged between the two groups so that both the perspective of visitor and host are experienced. The hosts have to verbalize their cultural norms, and the visitors have to try to understand them, not being at all familiar with that culture. The objective of this phase of the game is to try to get information about the patterns of the other culture and inform members of the hypothetical “native” culture about the different values, norms, and beliefs. Normally, this leads to a situation where the returning visitors try to explain their knowledge of the other culture with ref erence to their adopted “native” cultural norms. As a consequence, the norms and values of the other culture are perceived as being somewhat “weird.”

Through these experiences in the simulated cultural exchange, and by verbalizing and discussing them, the strong tendency towards ethnocentrism can be raised to consciousness by the participants, especially because the norms and values of the “cultures” involved are purely hypothetical and only verbally mediated (cf. Ward, Bochner, and Furnham 2001: 258-259). The artificial constructedness of these “cultural” values and norms in the game can increase the level of difference between the two cultures so that it may be more evident than in authentic cultures. However, the personal affectedness generated by the direct experience of different cultural norms, even if they are only artificial, can have a large impact on transferring these observations and experiences to the cultural constrictions of the internalized norms, values, beliefs, and attitudes of the learner’s authentic native cultural circle, and, by extension, to that of members of other cultures. It is vital to operate with holistic instruments in the teaching and learning process which facilitate explorative and experiential learning with regard to trying to reconstruct the norms and values of the native culture in comparison to those of other cultures. A restriction to cognitive engagement would be insufficient because of the complexity of the norms, values, and attitudes inherent in the other’s (and learner’s own) life-world which clearly involve emotional and behavioral dimensions. When trying to gain access to other cultural norms, one has to be prepared, at least temporarily, to intentionally suspend one’s own cultural patterns, norms, and values and to adopt those of the other culture, as one construes them. However, this change of mindset is hardly achievable in a manner which unquestioningly recognizes the values of the target culture. Normally, the learner puts these in relation to the corresponding internalized norms and values of the native culture. Only this constantly oscillating process fosters a further genuine conscious development of intercultural third places.

A much more complex and authentic form of cultural exchange than is provided by cultural simulation games can be facilitated by Internet discussion forums. The Internet forum provides a space for the discussion of certain authentic topics or threads. This is also typical for chat rooms, but in contrast to these, Internet forums archive posted messages (at least for a period of time) so that users can look up the history of a certain thread or topical discussion which might be a useful tool for L2 learners who typically require more cultural background information regarding context than native speakers. On Internet forums, anyone can post messages and asynchronously respond to the postings of others. In order to sift through posts and comments and remove those which are inappropriate or offensive, most forums employ one or more moderators. Since these forums are typically used for rigorous, sometimes even inflammatory and very emotional discussion and debate on a specific topic in a particular genre and set in a particular cultural context, no concessions are made for L2 learners. Therefore, it can be very challenging to position oneself in this milieu, as Hanna and de Nooy (2009: 189) note: “Public Internet discussion is a way of getting to know some of the locals in the global village, but it will mean doing so not only in their language but largely on their terms.”

Participants are expected to contribute to the discussions without linguistic difficulty; they are also expected to know the implicit terms and conditions of engaging in this particular form of cultural practice, D/discourse, or genre. Therefore, participation in authentic L2 Internet discussion forums is clearly linguistically and interculturally very demanding and should thus be limited to more advanced L2 learners. But even at more advanced levels, preparation for participation in Internet discussion forums set in the L2 speech community is essential. Preparation can take the form of appropriate task design, training, awareness-raising, and rehearsal (cf. Hanna and de Nooy 2003: 71). Rehearsal could take place in specially constructed learning environments which mimic the cultural practices of the real forum; the parallel forum essentially uses the same rules, hence providing a moderated and asynchronous learning environment which requires learners to conform to certain rules and cultural practices. The moderated parallel forum with its pedagogical function can also support lower proficiency level learners, but its primary aim should be the preparation of advanced learners for the sometimes unpredictable and unprotected exposure on the Internet forum in terms of the reactions of the other participants. If advanced learners have crossed some invisible behavioral or cultural line in the authentic Internet forum, they may only discover this violation of norm by the reactions conveyed by other members or the moderator of the forum. Appropriate cultural behavior can be learned in forums through “explicit commentary [by moderators] on the appropriateness of contributions,” “implicit commentary [by moderators or other users] on [linguistic and cultural] appropriateness,” “informal induction of newcomers to the forum by seasoned contributors,” “comparisons made with other genres and situations,” and “instances of protest or conflict” (Hanna and de Nooy 2009: 8). Thus, Internet forums provide students with an opportunity to join an authentic linguistic and cultural practice in the L2 on its own terms and according to its own rules, aiding them in learning to become part of the authentic D/discourse community. However, the appropriate location for discussing problems and violations in the membership of the forum, if noticed by the learner, is the pedagogical safety of the L2 classroom, and not the Internet forum, since it is typically not interested in culturally induced forms of (mis-)behavior. Furthermore, students need to be prepared for the possibility of, and ways of dealing with, negative reactions prior to entering an Internet forum community which has certain cultural expectations as to the appropriate behavior of their members.

Another form of using the Internet for learning about the cultural context of the L2 speech community and developing intercultural spaces is represented by the cross-cultural initiative entitled Cultura (cf. Furstenberg et al. 2001; Furstenberg and Levet 2010). This project is quite different in its composition from the Internet forum; it is a long-term methodologically and didactically structured project. It is also a very comprehensive project so that it cannot be restricted to a particular L2 learning sequence but must be planned on a broader basis. The original Cultura project involves a carefully designed pedagogy of culture learning between American and French university students over the course of one semester,¹²⁸ allowing students from different cultures to gradually co-construct, via a common Website and computer-mediated exchange, a deeper understanding of each other’s cultural attitudes, beliefs, and values. “The project provides a constructivist, interactive approach which allows both sets of students to gradually build, under their teachers’ skillful guidance, knowledge and understanding of each other’s values, attitudes, and beliefs, in a very concrete and dynamic way” (Furstenberg et al 2001: 59). However, when using the principles of the Cultura project, one has to bear in mind that the data and materials are deposited in a virtual space (or cyberspace) and are thus detached from the social reality of the users. Cyberspace tends to elevate the intersubjective space into infinity, and hence encourages the authorship of data which are strategically generated for use in this neutral environment, rather than a direct intersubjective face-to-face interaction.

At the center of the project are four progressive stages which are simultaneously applied in both classes and which are coordinated and discussed in on-line forums between the two groups. In stage 1, three types of questionnaires (on word associations, sentence completions, and reactions to hypothetical situations) are distributed to both groups of students who answer the questions in their L1. The questions are designed to highlight cultural differences in terms of concepts and modes of interaction between people in a variety of contexts. The answers provided are then collated and posted on the Internet side by side, facilitating easy juxtapositions and comparisons. In stage 2, the students analyze the data, first individually, and then as a group in class, with regard to the cultural similarities and differences they observe. In the process, they identify connections, contradictions, and patterns, and they write down their collective observations and comments. In stage 3, students begin to communicate their reactions and observations to their counterparts in the other culture via the online forum. Unlike authentic Internet forums, this forum is pedagogically instigated and supervised, and the dialogue is asynchronous which allows ample time for reflection and deliberate wording of the postings. Each of the items in the questionnaire leads to a specific forum which encourages students to exchange views on a wide variety of topics. The postings are not anonymous, thus facilitating a personal reaction to specific comments; the instructors do not intervene in the discussions so that students can lead the discussion in any direction they wish. Finally, in stage 4, students broaden their field of intercultural knowledge and analyze a greater range of documents representing both cultures, such as opinion polls dealing with societal issues, polling resources available on the Web, archives containing the responses to the questionnaires, films, newsstands, images, books, etc. Thus, students can check the “‘representativity’ of the current responses and forum discussions against a much broader backdrop” (Furstenberg et al. 2001: 61), but these resources also allow them to follow up on specific items of their interest and, in general, it allows them to continue developing their intercultural competence beyond the four stages.

It is worth noting that the language chosen for the questionnaires and forums is the L1 of students; the target language is reserved for the L2 classroom. The reason for this, at first glance, strange practice lies in the fact that students can portray subtle cultural nuances much better in their L1; in addition, a situation is prevented from arising where particular students may dominate discussions due to their proficiency in the L2. Using the L1 for the forums has the added advantage that the discussion will center on cultural differences and similarities (rather than linguistic problems), and students from the other culture can access the documents in the authentic language of their counterparts, thus contributing to their L2 learning process.

The Cultura project is in some aspects comparable to Tandem, but it seems to be much more rigidly structured and uses much more relevant context materials, such as films, polls, or the newsstand (where students can find relevant print materials or web-based materials related to specific issues). Thus, the tasks, techniques, and strategies are designed specifically to include as many authentic facets of the two cultures involved as possible. Some of the materials have been authored by the partners in the other culture, so that students from the respective other culture can interact directly with the authors and ask detailed questions with regard to cultural traditions and social practices. The learning partnership provides access to authentic cultural others with similar interests and ambitions; it is interactive, reciprocal, and pedagogically designed in a manner that partners will learn about each other in equitable, respectful, and balanced ways. The anonymous and asynchronous nature of the initial forum interaction allows for a data-driven and objective approach to the other culture in which possible tensions and frictions are delayed and can hence be addressed in a structured pedagogical manner. The collated responses to questionnaires support this approach of focusing the student’s attention on cultural patterns and trends rather than individual responses, thus protecting the subjectivity of students responding to questionnaires in the initial stages of the project. However, the Cultura project is focused on generating a data-driven understanding of the cultural other which neglects a methodological development of the intercultural third space of every individual learner, based on his or her subjective experiences, memories, and desires.

When students begin to engage in personal one-to-one interactions with their counterparts in the forum, they have already developed an awareness of the cultural relativity and the range of views that are generated by the discussion of particular topics. The daily logs that students keep help them to reflect on certain issues as discussed with their counterparts in more refined ways so that they keep a record of their intercultural development which they may revisit at any stage of their learning.¹²⁹ The considered mix of strategies, techniques, and technologies is a particularly noteworthy achievement of the Cultura project in facilitating progressive development of guided encounters with the other culture and, therefore, intercultural competence by the innovative use of new technologies. However, due to the text-based approach of Internet forums and, to a lesser extent, the Cultura project, some students who may have different learning preferences, such as visual, auditory, or kinesthetic styles, can easily be alienated. For instance, Hanna and de Nooy (2009: 177) caution that students are not always enthusiastic about learning through the forum assignments; they report that in one class evaluation most students stated that they preferred oral discussions to online postings. Therefore, the classroom should not be centered on just one method of mediating intercultural competence, but it should offer a variety of perspectives, methods and media in order to appeal to a range of learning styles and learning preferences.

 

Principle 8 – Developing subjective intercultural places

The processes of adopting perspectives of the other culture(s) and directing them toward native cultural constructs will now be expanded and transferred to both cultures involved. The objective is to create at least partial acceptance of culturally induced divergence of fundamental patterns of perception, construction, and (inter-)action in the sense of being able to develop elements of empathy. Empathy presupposes the ability to suspend deeply internalized values, norms, and attitudes with regard to certain constructs, situations, or experiences and to understand the values, norms, and beliefs of the other culture in their own right. Consequently, the subjectively perceived, seemingly universally valid constructs and frames of the native culture are questioned, and some frames and constructs of the other culture may be seen as more valid by the subject.¹³⁰

The purpose of this pedagogic principle is the combination of some of the learning achievements of pedagogic principles in a multi-perspective manner, as is appropriate for a multilingual person who has developed the ability to be open to other cultural constructs and configurations with an attitude of genuine interest and without prejudice, who can deal with ambiguity in a constructive manner, and who has a deep knowledge of cultural, social, and linguistic practices of at least two speech communities which he or she can make productive for his or her cognitive, emotional, and behavioral activities. The learner is now prepared to shift the frame of reference, at least temporarily, between cultures in the emerging intercultural space, to use categories of the other culture in order to understand cultural difference, and to experiment with creative approaches of problem-solving and decision-making. This form of intercultural competence includes, for example, the ability to see through the L2 (and the L1) in a sense that the genres, Discourses, plausibility structures, and narratives behind the words are recognized in terms of what is left unsaid, what could have been phrased dif ferently, and why something was said in a particular manner.

However, the goal of L2 learning is not acculturation but, along with the acquisition of linguistic and communicative competence, a broadening of the (inter-)cultural foundations of construal with regard to cognition, emotion, identity, and behavior. This process of enriching and broadening culturally-based constructs has an effect on fostering subjective intercultural places. Interculturality in this sense refers not to mere interaction between cultures by means of exchanging information, but to facilitating, expanding, and maintaining a subjective-intermediary field of genuinely new knowledge, generated by the conscious subjective engagement with cultural patterns of construal of the cultures involved. Only when this new dynamic and blended field of knowledge is established, can genuine identifications of difference be facilitated. This field of knowledge is the subjective intercultural place. Although negotiated and constructed collaboratively with the assistance of others, the intercultural place is characterized by a high degree of subjectivity, as it is ultimately the subject who constructs his or her own place in the collaboratively evolving third space for himself or herself, and who uses it as a genuinely new basis for his or her activities of construction, not only with regard to the target culture, but for all everyday real life situations and for positionings in-between cultures, influenced by subjective experiences, memories, and desires.

An example of such an interculturally negotiated third place is provided by the Swedish teacher KAP (anonymized name) who, after having completed five weeks of field work in El Salvador, did a one-semester teacher training course on “The Intercultural Teacher” at Jonkoping University in Sweden in autumn 2005. At the conclusion of this course, she writes: “In conclusion I must say that my intercultural ability has changed during this course. Within the course I have received tools for how I can step out of my own culture to evaluate why I am reacting as I do, as well as I have learned methods of evaluating other cultures” (KAP, cited in Lundgren 2009: 143–144). The use of the term “tools” may be too restrictive in this context, but this statement captures the learned ability to change the frame of mind, as well as some characteristics of the third place, including the subjective positionings between the cultures, the ability to adopt another frame of reference, and the long-lasting effects of acquired intercultural competence in terms of behavior and construction (including shifting constructs of identity). However, not all students achieved this level of intercultural competence at the conclusion of the course, as PEM notes: “I haven’t changed my mind that much and haven’t received much new thoughts but I have developed and refined my old thoughts” (PEM, cited in Lundgren 2009: 148). The phrase of not having “received much new thoughts” may point to an overall consumer attitude of intercultural education by a student teacher who is not prepared to engage in the learning experience to such a degree that the self is put at risk. These two statements relating to the outcome of the same teacher training course emphasize the relevance of personal attitudes and levels of engagement when it comes to developing intercultural competence. A one-semester course is much too short to comprehensively foster intercultural competence; it can just mediate relevant concepts (as, for example, contained in Byram’s theoretical framework of intercultural competence) and pointers as to sensitive intercultural behavior in certain situations. Therefore, the subjective engagement as to fostering intercultural competence cannot be scaffolded in a long-term, sustained, and structured manner, as proposed in the current model of pedagogical principles, which is aimed at a much more sustained period of learning the L2 and fostering intercultural competence.

As in previous principles, the learner, due to the subjective perspectives used in developing and fostering the intercultural place, has to be given as much leeway as possible to collaboratively and subjectively negotiate for meaning within the subjective third place by engaging with constructs of two (or more) cultures. Consequently, neither the teaching methods nor the learning outcomes can be defined in detail (cf. Section 10.3). The L2 classroom can only provide structured choices for learning, but the relevant effects and outcomes can only be negotiated and internalized by the subjective learner. By having reached a level of intercultural learning informed by this comprehensive and complex pedagogic principle, the learner should have developed an attitude towards the learning process that is characterized by the desire to experience more intensive encounters in relation to cultures, possibilities of construal, and positioning between cultures which is, in general, a pleasurable and transgressive experience in terms of being enabled to lead a richer life. Therefore, the learner is now in a position to increasingly pursue independent learning activities in which he or she can also make use of the media literacy and critical digital literacy alluded to in principles 3 to 7, but without the scaffolding that was previously provided. By now, the learner should also be linguistically and communicatively competent in the L2 so that he or she can freely participate in Internet forums which are located in the L2. The advanced L2 learner can bring his or her self into the Internet forum by drawing on his or her identity as a digital user which is characterized by transculturality (cf. Principle 7), yet benefit from the authentic L2 discussions on political, social, societal, ideological, topical, or cultural issues of the day in terms of partially adopting the perspective of the cultural other and integrating the L1-mediated perspective, the degree of which may vary according to the immediate requirements of the forum discussion. The subjective positionings in-between the dominant cultural Discourses are indicative of the degree of intercultural competence acquired.

Since autonomous learning activities are increasingly facilitated, by this principle which is aimed at fostering intercultural third places, it is the learner as a cultural subject who decides on the types of activities and media best suited to his or her subjective interests. The choice of the Internet discussion forum might not be everyone’s preference when it comes to independent learning activities because it is text-based and, what is more, most discussion forums require membership to sign up for accounts. This may alienate some potential users, particularly when they do not feel comfortable with formal aspects of subscribing to, or inscribing themselves into, forums which they may not know much about and which may imply certain obligations (e.g., commenting on other blog posts or reacting to responses to their own posts). Furthermore, students may have learning preferences that go beyond purely text-based media, such as visual, auditory, or kinesthetic styles. These are not provided for in Internet discussion forums; they typically do not allow users to design their own pages, add photos, videos, or a blogroll (a list of the user’s favorite websites). By contrast, Blogger and Wordpress blogs are free and customizable, and users can effortlessly post photos, audio files, and videos so learners may turn to these media. Even Internet-based gaming platforms, such as Xbox or PlayStation, can be used because they provide for visual, auditory, and kinesthetic styles, although the focus of interaction is concentrated on the demands of the game itself and on the visual, auditory, and kinesthetic effects created by the producers. This aspect enormously reduces the potential for intercultural encounters which may be explicitly explored only in exceptional cases, for instance, when both players have a mutual interest in discussing certain ways of approaching the game, or particular ways of expressing thoughts online. However, if the L2 classroom uses electronic media, a large range of options has to be introduced by the teacher (and the peers) which appeal to dif ferent learning styles and strategies so that learners can make informed choices as to which media best suit their subjective interest in independently exploring their third space between cultures. This may, at least initially, also include gaming platforms, if learners are comfortable and familiar with these and see intercultural potential in them.

These options also have to include the most popular social media such as Facebook and Twitter which learners may have privately used before starting to learn the L2. While the uses of most media introduced so far in this section, for instance e-mail or Tandem, are scaffolded by a pedagogical framework in the sense that learners are supervised and protected in a learning environment that is designed to be sympathetic to the non-native speaker, the role of other media, such as the Internet forum, Facebook, or Twitter, is truly authentic and does not serve a pedagogical function. These media may frequently be used privately by learners, albeit not necessarily in the context of their L2 learning activities. However, using Facebook or Twitter privately for improving language skills and intercultural competence can be very productive. By using Twitter for second language learning purposes, learners can follow a prominent person (or persons) of their interest in the L2. Tweets are confined in length to a maximum of 140 characters, hence avoiding long and winding texts. This fact may also be advantageous for cultural learning purposes, as L2 learners would mainly be interested in following friends and idols in their daily lives, thus having access through short texts, but also images, to authentic social, personal, and cultural phenomena of people who live in other speech communities. Through Twitter, students have also the opportunity to ask questions about cultural and other issues that are of interest to them. Students themselves can, of course, use Twitter to share not only their own routines and views, but they can also have access to many relevant news items, blog posts, and other materials so that they can benefit enormously from other people sharing such information. Through Facebook, personal contact with cultural others can be established if students have sufficient and adequate L2 linguistic and cultural knowledge.

Both Facebook and Twitter also allow users to share and access visual and audio information on topics being discussed so that communication is not limited to the written word. However, subject positioning is very important in social networks because the use of written and other materials is frequently strategically motivated. Positioning activities on Facebook can create “a compulsion to constantly reinvent oneself” (Kramsch 2009a: 183), and therefore have to be taken with a grain of salt. By now, learners should have developed a degree of visual, media, digital, and (inter-)cultural literacy that enables them to look through the positioning activities, even if based in a different cultural context. However, the L2 classroom should always be available to serve as a forum to reflect upon and discuss inconsistencies if learners privately stumble across them in cyberspace and feel that the learning efforts of the class can benefit from them.

Since the activities suggested in this principle are centered on very subjective construals and constructs which are in the process of developing between dominant cultural voices, narratives, Discourses, and plausibility structures, the learner cannot be left to his or her own devices when dealing with these interculturally based constructs. The L2 classroom can only provide a limited space for discussion because it has to focus on the ZPD of all learners and cannot always provide the detailed scaffolding that may be required by each learner as an emerging intercultural subject (although every effort should be made to accommodate the ZPD of each learner). In this situation, the “Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters” (Byram 2009: 227-234; Council of Europe 2009a; cf. Section 10.3), or AIE, could provide a useful instrument to assist learners in analyzing their respective current state of their very own intercultural encounter with otherness. The AIE focuses on only one particular event and experience with otherness at a time and encourages students to deeply reflect upon and describe their authentic experience of otherness.¹³¹ The AIE aims at the analysis of authentic experiences of otherness in terms of an encounter the learner had with someone of a different ethnic, religious, linguistic, social, or cultural background, be it in the one’s own speech community or abroad (cf. Council of Europe 2009a: 3). This definition of intercultural encounter seems to center on direct face-to-face encounters; however, at this advanced level of fostering intercultural competence, hypothetical cultural encounters, for example, mediated by complex cultural role plays or simulation games (such as BAFA BAFA or Econtos), can also give rise to subjective experiences of difference that include cultural misunderstandings in the sense that one may be taken aback by the reaction of the cultural other. Hypothetical intercultural encounters do, of course, suffer from the lack of linguistic, pragmatic, communicative, and cultural authenticity; however, they reflect the different degrees of cultural literacy in filling the gaps that have opened up in the intercultural space, as displayed in the game by the participants, and can therefore require deeper reflection on and analysis of specific issues, as perceived by the subjective intercultural learner, particularly when guided by a more knowledgeable other (e.g., the teacher).

Another form of intercultural encounter that is not considered by the AIE is the direct, authentic, and unprotected communication with the cultural other through electronic media in cyberspace, for instance, Internet discussion forums, Facebook, Twitter, etc. These media certainly facilitate “authentic” cultural experiences which can be likened to those made in face-to-face encounters. Therefore, the AIE should be expanded to include electronically mediated intercultural encounters which can be no less authentic than direct physical encounters, although the electronic medium poses additional opportunities and threats with regard to the nature of the encounter, digital identities, representation of cultures, traditions of Discourse, genre, narrative, and plausibility structures, etc. (cf. Principle 7).

This adaptation of AIE with respect to electronic media could easily be implemented, as the existing analysis is guided by a series of questions which take the user through the chosen subjective intercultural experience. As the self-analysis is carried out, the sequence of questions also encourages the users to evaluate their very subjective responses to the encounter and consider how, as a consequence, they would act in the future in similar situations. As the series of questions is based on Byram’s (1997) model of intercultural competence and action, an informed facilitator (e.g., the teacher or a member of the L2 speech community) could guide and support the learner in analyzing and evaluating the intercultural experience in terms of guiding him or her to become aware of underlying cultural patterns and socially expected behavior. However, the figure of the facilitator is not an absolute necessity for the analysis of experience or behavior with cultural others; the series of questions invites the learner “to describe and analyze the encounter reflecting on their own experience and how they imagine the ‘others’ involved understood the experience” (Byram 2009: 224), thus drawing on the ability to assume another cultural frame of reference for the purpose of analyzing one’s own actions and behavior with respect to the significant or memorable intercultural encounter which is examined. Such an encounter may include one’s actions and behavior in the context of interacting with cultural others and which, only by the reactions of these others, may be flagged as inappropriate or problematic. For example, when invited to dinner at a restaurant in England to celebrate the postgraduate degree achieved by a friend, a visiting student might be surprised to discover that the other students invited whom she has known before only in informal dress in many different situations, suddenly all show up in formal dress, whereas she had assumed that the traditional informal dress order was applicable here, too. The reason for wearing formal dress, however, is the social importance attached to this kind of more formal celebration in England (especially when the supervising professor is also present), a visit to a restaurant (and not he pub), and the courtesy one is showing to the professor who, of course, also wears formal dress. This may be different in other European traditions, and the visiting student had naturally based her dress code on what she was used to from many previous meetings with these friends and on the less formal dress conventions of her own culture in this context.

The AIE provides a number of questions to stimulate reflection which center on the learner as a cultural subject. The learner does not have to answer every single question; he or she can focus on those which he or she considers particularly relevant for his or her chosen intercultural encounter. The subjectivity of the learner is brought into the play of cultural patterns right from the start, as the very first question of the AIE is: “How would you define yourself? Think about things that are especially important to you in how you think about yourself and how you like others to see you” (Council of Europe 2009a: 5). By trying to respond to this introductory question, the learner has to reflect upon his or her positioning vis-à-vis self and other, as well as his or her desired identity vis-à-vis others (and, by implication, their positioning of the learner). The first group of questions then focuses on the description of the particular intercultural encounter in terms of its nature and other people involved (Council of Europe 2009a: 6-8), i.e., the cognitive dimension, or savoir. The next group of questions deals with the emotions and attitudes of the learner and others with respect to the encounter, as perceived by the learner, (cf. Council of Europe 2009a: 9-11), i.e., the emotional and attitudinal dimension, or savoir s’engager. These are followed by questions about similarities and differences of knowledge, attitudes, and emotions at the time of the encounter and at the time of the retrospective AIE analysis of the encounter, for instance: “Looking back at the situation, are you aware now of any other similarities, and if so, what are they?” (Council of Europe 2009a: 12; emphasis in the original). The final set of questions is aimed at the reflective evaluation of the encounter by the subjective learner, without any interference from a facilitator:

These questions are not in any way leading because they do not want to interfere with the highly subjective intercultural place the learner has developed as a result of analyzing and reflecting on this encounter. They provide the subject with deep personal insights that have been gained as a result of the guided analysis of a particular encounter, thus raising to awareness the present state of intercultural competence with respect to the encounter. The learner can connect these insights to the present state of intercultural competence and is prompted to further reflect on the insights he or she has gained by analysis and reflection with regard to the intercultural encounter. When completing different AIEs, the learner can put together a portfolio of evaluations of very specific and subjective intercultural encounters which, on the one hand, can serve as a personal documentation of fostering intercultural competence at advanced levels, and, on the other hand, it can prompt the learner to look at previous particular intercultural encounters with the aim of retrospectively re-evaluating the analysis and reflection made at the time of completing this AIE from the basis of a more comprehensive and advanced level of intercultural competence. However, the evaluation of the AIE should not be used as a tool for the quantitative assessment of the intercultural competence of the individual learner, for instance, in the sense of awarding marks in an institutional school context. The purpose of the AIE is to aid the subject in providing him or her with a guided analysis of and reflection on subjective intercultural encounters of the inner self, as Byram (2009: 225) suggests: “[T]he [AIE] document could remain entirely confidential and not open[ed] to be read by a teacher or anyone else.” It is exactly this focus on the subjectivity of the learner, the noninterference of outsiders (unless explicitly called for by the learner) in analyzing and evaluating the intercultural encounter in the context of the degree of intercultural competence achieved by the learner, and the potential of development in the ZPD which makes the AIE such a valuable and appropriate instrument for the learner at this very advanced level of negotiating highly subjective intercultural places between the cultures and their dominant patterns, attitudes, and Discourses.

 

Principle 9 – Integrating intercultural competence into everyday life

As has been evident throughout the characterization of the different principles of fostering intercultural competence, the L2 classroom provides methodologically and didactically structured spaces for discussion, reflection, creativity, action, and positioning in an overall progressive curricular framework from the simpler to the more complex. Thus, it initiates, coordinates, and aids the collaborative and subjective negotiation for meaning in intercultural spaces. In the course of the L2 learning process, the possibilities and options that the L2 classroom can offer are increasingly transgressed and the intercultural place is brought into focus for all subjective activities of thinking, feeling, and (inter-)acting in all spheres of life. Intercultural competence can also be fostered by consciously living and engaging in a foreign society and culture for a sustained period of time, i.e., by a myriad of processes of (inter-)acting in this society, language, and culture, or by closely and frequently interacting with cultural others in the L1 speech community, be it in direct face-to-face interaction or by interaction through digital (or other) media. Whatever the setting, fostering intercultural competence to a high degree is not an automatic outcome of these encounters; often, the learner will stop developing interlanguage and intercultural spaces at an early stage of L2 learning. This may be the result of the loss of ambition to integrate further, or a feeling of losing one’s cultural identity in the intercultural space, cyberspace, or the L2 and its socioculture (cf. Chapter 6).

By contrast, processes of institutionally facilitated and coordinated second language learning foster the constant development of intercultural competence in a methodical fashion, of which the learner is acutely aware. Once developed and internalized at the more complex levels of L2 learning, intercultural places, which are located in spaces on a continuum between the constructs and D/discourses of the two (or more) cultures involved, gradually replace monocultural bases for construction in such a fundamental manner that they are subconsciously used for all subjective activities of thought, emotion, and behavior. Very advanced L2 learners who have reached this level of intercultural competence have acquired an innate knowledge of cultural relativity of constructs, skills, behaviors, and attitudes, which monolingual individuals typically cannot achieve, as they have not experienced differential constructs in such an intentional, intensive, and reflective manner through a different medium of thought.

Learners are now not just mere intercultural speakers, but they are also intercultural actors with cognitive, emotional, and behavioral positionings between cultures, languages, and communities. They have reached a level of linguistic, social, pragmatic, emotional, and cultural skills and abilities which enable them to constantly renegotiate their subjective intercultural and intermediary third place on the basis of permanent exchange between the cultural patterns, values, beliefs, norms, attitudes, and plausibility structures. This ability includes the skills to deal constructively with differences induced by linguistic and cultural constructs, to consciously negotiate the ambiguities of constructs and positionings, and apply them productively and creatively in their everyday activities. The learner is now no longer dependent on the scaffolding provided by more knowledgeable others; he or she can now continue to develop his or her intercultural places (understood as a succession of positionings within the complex interplay of languages and cultures) in a self-determined fashion. With regard to the linguistic level of intercultural competence, the process of translating, typical of the initial periods of L2 learning, has given way to the ability to effortlessly think in the L2 and use the L2 for inner speech in the self-regulation of one’s mental activities.

Intercultural competence on this very advanced level includes the ability not only to understand and respect, but also to actively use the internalized cultural factors and conditions in processes of perception, construction, feeling, and (inter-)action in a productive manner. This productive element can be reflected in the display of empathy with the situation of the (cultural) other, i.e., trying to understand his or her behavior from his or her native cultural framework of (inter-) action, while at the same time suspending premature attributions. The Swedish student KAP (cf. Principle 8), for example, is able to change her attitude towards arranged marriages in India (though not adopting the other’s point of view): “The first time I talked with Poo, the woman student from India, we talked about arranged marriages. From my point of view it was totally incomprehensible, but after she described it for me several times I got to understand her arguments. It is when I put myself into her culture and listen to her values that I can understand how arranged marriages can be suitable” (KAP, cited in Lundgren 2009: 144). Here, the two students, KAP and Poo, gained an understanding of the cultural values of their own culture and the culture of their counterpart, including the way they can influence the views of other people. The temporary adoption of the other cultural frame of reference can lead to an understanding of other sociocultural configurations which one would intuitively reject if one applies the internalized cultural values. This understanding, however, does not mean that one supports the culturally legitimized actions of others (such as arranged marriage), as another student from the same class writes: “To be intercultural is for me to respect all individuals but not always agree with the other. On the contrary; I think it’s better to take part, have an own opinion, and of course be prepared to change opinion in interaction with other opinions” (PIK, cited in Lundgren 2009: 145). In this view, intercultural competence includes a genuine openness for alternative cultural constructs which is reflected in the ability to recognize, appreciate, and sometimes adopt another cultural frame of reference, if it seems appropriate. The other cultural frame of mind, however, is not adopted in a completely identical manner because the subject has undergone a different cultural, social, and linguistic socialization, and therefore is more likely to blend the divergent cultural patterns and constructs with those internalized during primary socialization. Thus, the interculturally competent learner subjectively transforms transient interculturality to culturality for himself or herself, as far as his or her own cultural view is concerned. This occurs because the intercultural place is no longer characterized by deliberate conscious effort, but by the stance of “normality” taken for granted which is used without further reflection as the basis for one’s participation in all forms of social (inter-)action and subjective processes of feeling and negotiation for meaning. Having reached this level, the intercultural learner does not view his or her achievements in this sense as the end of the learning process, even if it would coincide (in exceptional circumstances) with the end of formal schooling. On the contrary, he or she is acutely aware of the fundamental fragmentariness of cultural knowledge which, as a matter of principle, requires constant revision in terms of de- and reconstruction. This kind of intercultural awareness also includes the knowledge of the fundamental dependence of patterns of thinking, feeling, constructing, and behaving (particularly in interactions) on culturally specific concepts, schemata, values, norms, and frames. This intercultural awareness can be applied to intercultural communication in many different ways in terms of behavior; these include:

1. Looking for a common ground of interaction;
2. being sensitive to culturally induced patterns of communicative behavior (such as [im-]politeness or [in-]directness);
3. signaling one’s preparedness to empathize with the other;
4. paying attention to cues for misunderstandings and trying to analyze the reasons for these;
5. evaluating the effect of one’s own contribution to the interaction on the other (and vice versa);
6. applying one’s knowledge of the socioculture of the L2 speech community in terms of trying to hypothesize the intended meaning by the other (by being able to adopt divergent views);
7. clarifying the communicative conventions one is using, and, if necessary, rephrasing and simplifying one’s own utterances;
8. suspending premature interpretations of the verbal and nonverbal utterances of the cultural other;
9. clarifying social and cultural expectations relating to genres, D/discourses, narratives, and positionings within these;
10. suspending premature positionings of the other in terms of social background, voices used, breadth of knowledge, preparedness of engaging with the other (linguistic competence may play an important role here, depending on which language is used);
11. using nonverbal, paraverbal, and metacognitive communicative strategies in terms of keeping the interaction going;
12. initiating the negotiation of common ground and rules for the interaction, and
13. applying strategies for expanding and differentiating one’s knowledge of the cultural Other and others (and, by implication, one’s intercultural third place).

These elements of intercultural competence have to be applied on the spot in a selective, appropriate, and sensitive manner through methods that they must have been internalized during the process of fostering intercultural competence to such an extent that they have become second nature to the learner.

If the learner has achieved this high standard of intercultural competence where the intercultural place has become the internalized genuine new basis of all intuitive thought, feeling, and behavior, the identity of the learner will also have changed. Identity is constantly under construction, as it is dependent on the sociocultural context, language, genre, narrative, ascription, and voice (cf. Chapter 6); all of these elements are constantly evolving in the long and sustained process of fostering interctultural competence. Constructs of identity are now informed not only by one dominant language and culture, but by a subjective blend of concepts, patterns, structures, values, and norms of two (or more) languages and cultures. Interculturally-based identity is characterized by cultural hybridity, which is not just a blend of existing cultural and linguistic configurations but, because the subjective mind is centrally involved in the blending process, the result of blending is more than the sum of the combination of cultural elements. Yoshikawa (1978: 220, cited in Kim 2009: 59) describes this intercultural surplus value as a unique subjective synergy which always results, for the subject, in more than the objectively authorized sum: “[W]hen one adds 1 to 1, one gets three, or a little more.” This intercultural surplus value can be defined as the subjective hybrid third place between languages and cultures in its generative effect on cognition, emotion, and behavior. New Discourses, genres, courses of action, concepts, and cultural patterns have become available to the subject in the process of developing intercultural competence, and these have been blended in a uniquely subjective manner with existing knowledge, emotions, and behavior so that the subjective intercultural place, although clearly informed by the languages and cultures involved, is at the same time somewhat detached from the dominant cultural Discourses. These have, of course, an impact on the individual’s stock of options for construal, but it is in the mind of the subject that these options are combined and modified in a unique manner, based on the subject’s memories, experiences, and desires which in turn have been informed by the individual’s participation in and exposure to the social life-world. It is this subjective blend of partially idealized elements of languages and cultures in the subjective mind of the learner which produces the subjective cultural surplus so characteristic of intercultural places.

Another example of successfully negotiating a dynamic intercultural identity facilitated by immersion in another language and culture is Eva Hoffman’s detailed narrative of developing subjective third places between her native Polish and the American English language as a result of moving to Canada (and subsequently to the USA) at the age of 13 years; it provides many examples of how the English language gradually becomes the medium of her inner speech (cf. Section 2.2.3). This long process starts with the unfamiliarity of sounds and signifiers of the L2; the signifiers are detached from the signified, and consequently new spaces are opening up in her mind because the sign is dislocated from its perceived natural relationship with objects, social habitus, and cultural patterns of construction: “The words I learn now don’t stand for things in the same unquestioned way they did in my native language. (...) [T]his radical disjoining between word and thing is a desiccating alchemy, draining the world not only of significance but also of its colors, striations, nuances – its very existence. It is the loss of a living connection” (Hoffman 1989: 106-107). Here, Hoffman first refers to the rich connotations that have subjectively been attached to the sounds, words, and expressions of the L1 over the course of many years. Unlike subsequent languages, the L1 is the mother tongue in its true sense, given to the infant by others from birth onwards, because its subjective development is deeply intertwined with the growth of body, habitus, cognition, fantasy, and emotion (cf. Chapter 2 & Section 9.6). The mother tongue always holds a special and very personal place in the individual’s life because of the intimate interrelation between the conceptualizations, grammar, pragmatics, and sounds of the native language and the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral development of the individual. Learning a second language and its sociocultural context has the potential to dislocate these very subjective associations; however, new connotations and associations can arise from the process of learning of new sounds, words, and expressions which form part and parcel of the very subjective intercultural third place. When living in the host culture for a very long time and having interacted in the L2 as the main tool for everyday intersubjective communication, thus having developed intercultural competence to a very high degree, the L2 and its subjective connotations can ultimately replace the L1 as a medium of intersubjective interaction but also of inner speech. By the end of her book, Hoffman (1989: 272) concedes that English has become the language of her inner speech: “[A]t those moments when I am alone, walking or letting thoughts meander before falling asleep, the internal dialogue proceeds in English. I no longer triangulate back to Polish as to an authentic criterion, no longer refer back to it as to point of origin.” Hoffman seems to imply here that she has left the intercultural third place behind and has fully adopted the L2 as the natural medium of thought and interaction in its authentic sociocultural context. This may be seen as the long-term result of having successfully adapted to life in the new society and culture, thus having reconceptionalized one’s self through the new linguistic medium, including its underlying cultural patterns which may have been facilitated by Hoffman’s young age when she entered the world of the L2. The mother tongue may have been replaced by the L2 in many respects but some L1-related elements are still present, indicating that the third place is still relevant, even if the L2 has mostly replaced the L1 on the cognitive level. For instance, the close interrelations between the sounds, structures, conceptualizations and the growth of cognitive, emotional, psychological, and biological domains in infancy and early childhood is very difficult to duplicate in the L2 after the conclusion of adolescence. In particular, the age of 13 years (in the case of Hoffman) is a time in phonological development which some see as being beyond the sensitive period for the learning of authentic L2 sound production (cf. Section 3.5.1) so that, even if the learner has an excellent command of lexical, grammatical, syntactic, pragmatic, and semantic domains of the second language to a degree that the L2 has become the tool for inner speech, the accent may still be less than authentic for the L2 speech community. Thus, the perceived foreign accent may trigger positionings of this individual by members of the L2 language community as someone who has not been a member of the speech community from birth. These positionings in the passive may influence positionings in the active; however, the subject has at his or her disposal a range of options to position the self in a particular context.