11 Conclusion
Primary socialization into a speech community by a myriad of processes of incidental and spontaneous learning, mimicking, copying, and taking on the roles of others, be it in play or in social (inter-)action, has a formative effect on the mind of the subject (cf. Chapters 2 & 3). The infant increasingly experiences notions of self, Other, and others through direct interaction with relevant others, such as the mother, father, older siblings, playmates, relatives, neighbors, etc. This interaction, which can be verbal, visual, emotional, kinesic, and/or olfactory, stimulates the infant’s desire to interact more broadly and more efficiently, which results in him or her becoming an increasingly active, effective, and conscious member of the initially small community he or she has been interacting with. In this process, the semiotic tool of language is the main medium through which the meanings, beliefs, frames, and values of social and cultural life are communicated to the infant for him or her to appropriate, and through which he or she learns to become an full member of initially the small group, and subsequently the wider community and society (cf. Chapters 2 & 3). For the infant, in this early developmental phase, language is directly tied to activities, experiences, and objects.
The acquisition of language implies the lingualization, socialization, and enculturation of the subject’s mind. Language as a semiotic tool is gradually internalised and used to regulate subjective mental activities, just as it regulates and co-ordinates the mental activities of all members of the speech community. The first language plays a fundamental role in structuring processes of voluntary thought and patterns of intersubjective communication; it transforms unmediated thought to egocentric speech and, finally, by about seven years of age, results in inner speech (cf. Chapter 2).135 In this perspective, language is a social instrument which has to be adapted and internalized by the subject, including its inherent linguistic structures and sociocultural conceptualizations. Internalization operates with mimicry, imitation, but also appropriation, combination, and testing of hypotheses. Thereby, language has a transformative influence on the infant’s mind in that it facilitates volitional, decontextualized, categorical, and abstract thought; it is also intimately interwoven with the child’s social, emotional, cultural, and biological development. Unlike subsequently learned languages, the L1 is the mother tongue in its true sense, given to the infant by others from birth onwards; its subjective development is deeply intertwined with the growth of the body, of cognition and emotion. Despite this intimate connection between language and the subjective faculties of thought, action, and emotion, language cannot be used in a completely subjective or private manner. Rather, it is a sociocultural repertoire which the subject can adapt to his or her specific needs, purposes, and intentions. Therefore, the linguistic sign only exists as a carrier of meaning in a space between individuals:
The word in language is half someone else’s. It becomes “one’s own” only when the speaker populates it with his own intention, his own accent, when he appropriates the word, adapting it to his own semantic and expressive intention. Prior to this moment of appropriation, the word does not exist in a neutral and impersonal language (it is not, after all, out of a dictionary that the speaker gets his words!), but rather it exists in other people’s mouths, in other people’s contexts, serving other people’s intentions: it is from there that one must take the word, and make it one’s own. (Bakhtin 1981: 293-294)
With this observation, Bakhtin emphasizes the embodied character of language; there can be no linguistic sign separate from meaning, emotion, intention, and other dynamic aspects of the mind (and communication). Like all other cognitive and emotional processes, linguistic concepts arise from the embodied nature of human existence and through subjective and collective experience. Bakhtin also emphasizes the role of language as an instrument for social cohesion and communicative coherence in everyday life. Language, in this view, cannot be disembodied or neutralized, neither in dictionaries (which, of course, can be consulted for semantic and lexical clarification) nor in grammars or abstract theoretical analyses which focus on language as a system; language is not “a dead product (ein Erzeugtes), but instead (...) a generative process (eine Erzeugung)” (Shpet 1996: 55, cited in Wertsch 2009: 249). The social and generative quality of language eludes systematic analysis in terms of imposing rigorous structure and rules on language in intersubjective use (cf. Chapter 5). The subject can only produce an utterance by drawing on previous voices which have emerged within a particular speech community for particular purposes in a historical dimension, and tailor the utterance in such a way that it serves his or her particular communicative purposes at a given moment in time. Simultaneously, the potential reactions of the interlocutors have to be anticipated and observed; they also have to be woven into the utterance (cf. Bakhtin’s notion of addressivity, Section 4.1) which makes the utterance in its construction immediately responsive to anticipated or perceived reactions of others. This, in turn, can have an effect on the subject’s construals in terms of communicative intentions and goals, all playing into the actual realization of the utterance itself. The utterance has relevance only in the performative context where it is spread out in a space between the interactants; in this intersubjective space it is participatory in and informed by a particular Discourse and speech genre, open to modification and transformation by the interactants. However, as Gadamer (1975: 345) points out, the interaction often assumes “a spirit of own” and may reveal a new truth for the interlocutors (cf. Section 4.6). In order to achieve full membership of a speech community, the subject has to not only internalize the language and its inherent structures, conceptualizations, and mapping-potential, but also the underlying patterns of construal of the cultural community, its modes of thought and action, its beliefs, norms, plausibility structures, and its values (cf. Chapters 2 &3), so that he or she can act, interact, and react immediately and appropriately in an automated and subconscious manner. In the early stages of childhood, the medium of internalization is mimicry and imitation, not in a purely repetitive way, but in a manner that absorbs what has been experienced, taking it from others and making it one’s own, according to one’s own genius. Thus, the child moves from the initial stage of other-mediation to that of self-mediation in the process of socialization, although self-mediation always retains a strong social and cultural imprint.
In the process of L1 acquisition, language is not deliberately accessed as an abstract and isolated semiotic system per se (ein Erzeugtes), but is experienced by the child through participation in a variety of social activities so that the inherent conceptualizations, frames, schemata, mappings, stereotypes, plausibility structures, prototypes, genres, and Discourses are spontaneously and monothetically internalized in a specifically subjective manner, including the resulting subjective potential for construction and positioning. Language is internalized as a dynamic and versatile sociocultural artifact (ein Erzeugendes) and used to regulate subjective mental activities, just as it basically regulates and co-ordinates the mental activities of all members of the speech community (cf. Section 3.5.1). Thus, a language contributes not only to the social cohesion of the speech community, but also to the structural coherence of intersubjective thought processes, due to the generating and transformative effects of language on voluntary subjective thought (cf. Vygotsky 1986: 218; Chapter 2). Furthermore, acts of meaning are reinforced in everyday life by people acting out “the social structure, affirming their own statuses and roles, and establishing and transmitting the shared systems of value and knowledge” (Halliday 1978: 2). These social structures are developed and affirmed by symbolic interaction between people, based on internalized cultural patterns of interpretation; they may form a relatively normative habitus on social and individual planes (cf. Section 7.3).
Culture in this context can be defined as distributed tacit (and to a lesser extent explicit) knowledge that provides a generative matrix for its members for cognitive and emotional behavior, which serves as a template for subjective and social existence. Thus, culture is not a static given, but is constantly constructed and reconstructed by its members through processes of dissension and inherent cultural difference. Culture is not an object (although it produces tangible manifestations such as buildings, books, paintings, technical apparatus, etc.); rather, it is a matrix that does something to the human mind (cf. Street 1993) by providing it with certain choices of action and construal, while at the same time excluding others. These choices amount to a life-world and a worldview which influence subjective and collective efforts of construction to such an extent that they are taken for granted and are typically not questioned at all by the members of a cultural community; Humboldt (1971: 40; cf. Section 3.5) refers to these dispositions as the “cosmic viewpoint” applied by the subject to all activities of thought and (inter-)action.
The massive impact of cultural patterns, social structures, and linguistic conceptualizations on the mind, emotion, and behavior of the subject also affects constructs of identity, because: “People operate with the meaning available to them in discourse and fashion a psychological life by organizing their behavior in the light of these meanings and integrating them over time. The result of this integrative project is a personality or character that is, to the extent permitted by the discursive skills of the subject/agent, coherent and creative” (Harré and Gillet 1994: 143). Notions of self, constructs of identity, and discursive positionings (in the active) are all facilitated by the internalized linguistic categories, social structures, and cultural patterns of construal. Language, appropriated by subjects to different standards, provides the tool for reflective and narrative construals of personal and social identities and is thus also the nucleus for dynamic change of these constructs. The linguistic and D/discursive spaces for facilitating these constructs are not restricted to the “real world”, but also include socioculturally woven “webs of significance” (Geertz) and imagined possible worlds. However, within the Discourses and genres available to the subject, his or her constructs of identity have to be socially performed so that others can react to them in a meaningful way (e.g., by assigning certain positionings to the subject; cf. Chapter 6).
In this seemingly comfortable monolingual and monocultural situation (which is a construct in itself; cf. Principle 1 of Section 10.2), the L2 classroom provides a hugely important space for the subjective reconstruction of deeply internalized native values and beliefs, because it is in this plurilingual space that learners, often for the first time, become acutely aware of the relationship between their language and their thoughts (cf. Kramsch 2009a: 4-5). The process of L2 acquisition makes learners aware of some elements of the tacit knowledge that has been monothetically internalized in primary socialization, thereby increasingly rendering conscious the linguistic and cultural relativity of these constructs. This growing socio-linguistic and cultural awareness and, by implication, self awareness, can have an unsettling effect on subjective constructs of identity, in that the center of construction is becoming increasingly de-centered in terms of linguistic, social, and cultural affirmation of the self. Therefore, sensitive intercultural learning has to be constructively cognizant of the sociocultural imprint of constructs of socially agreed “reality” and the subjectively construed identity of the L2 learner (cf. Chapters 6 & 9).
L2-mediated, Discursive, social, and cultural constructs function as a catalyst for activating and negotiating subjective intercultural third spaces of construal. The intentional and deliberate engagement with cultural patterns, values, norms, and beliefs in the L2 classroom as a community of practice marks the cultural transformation of the learner’s immanent mental dominance of L1-mediated constructs in the direction of dynamic intercultural places in a continuum of spaces in-between cultures (cf. Chapter 9). This process has been likened to that of a tertiary socialization because of its transformative effect on the self (cf. Byram 2008: 31; Section 9.6). At first, the L1 provides the semiotic means and the opportunity to consciously gain access to and reflect upon the meanings of a second language and its sociocultural context, but in the course of L2 learning the semiotic power moves in the direction of the L2. As a result, the space of semiotic negotiation for meaning becomes increasingly located in a continuum between the L2 and the L1 and their respective sociocultural contexts which are also part of the wider intercultural language game in the subjective mind, due to the structuring influence of cultural frames on conceptualizations and plausibility structures (cf. Chapter 3). In the process of learning the L2, semiotic gaps begin to open up with regard to the L2 and the L1 which have to be filled by the learner, structurally scaffolded by the teacher and other relevant others (such as peers). In the early phase of L2 learning, due to the fundamental lack of access to L2-mediated constructs, these gaps tend to be filled by the L1 and L1-mediated constructs and configurations; processes of translating L2-mediated phenomena are predominantly based on these internalized L1-mediated constructs. However, this procedure is insufficient and for the L2 learner unsatisfactory, because it distorts contextual L2 meaning to a significant degree (cf. Sections 8.3 & 9.2). By contrast, the advanced L2 learner tends to fill these gaps by subjectively negotiated constructs sourced in both languages and cultures involved in the learning process, influenced by personal memories, experiences, and desires, and negotiated within the cultural and intercultural matrixes available to him or her. This process involves the first language and culture of the learner and the L2 in its cultural context; therefore the gaps which open up are defined in this book as intercultural and not transcultural because the latter approach, in its ambition to overcome traditional boundaries, seems to position itself above existing cultures, thus detaching itself from existing cultural systems of meaning and values and creating its own original lifestyle beyond the constraints of any historically evolved human culture (cf. Chapters 1 & 8).
In verbal interaction, the gaps which open up for the subject between the languages and cultures in intercultural communication have to be filled on the spot in order to keep the communicative flow alive, be it in the L2 classroom or in an immersion situation. However, there is always more than just one option available to fill the gap (cf. Bakhtin’s [1981: 276] notion of the “elastic environment of other, alien words about the same object,” as discussed in Section 4.1), taking into consideration the requirements of the history and force of the interaction, expectations of the interlocutors, and the requirements of the genre and Discourse. The level of access to both L1 and L2-related linguistic, semiotic, Discursive, and cultural knowledge, influenced by affective states, has an effect on how the gaps are filled by the learner. However, the L2 classroom provides a pedagogical framework in which the stream of L2 communication can be interrupted in order to discuss the reasons for the (in-)adequate and (in-)appropriate use of certain linguistic, cultural, emotional, or behavioral aspects. Furthermore, the L2 classroom provides a space for communal and subjective reflection, verbalization, and discussion of one’s momentary subjective understandings of the gaps and how they ought to be filled in terms of a range of potential solutions, depending on the differential construals of context (including genre, plausibility structure, frame and D/discourse). As outlined in the pedagogic principles presented in Section 10.2, reflection on and autobiographical narration of one’s positioning within the dynamic third space contributes significantly to the awareness of one’s present level of intercultural competence in terms of achievement and further potential. Like Bennett’s (1993) DMIS, the set of principles presented in Section 10.2 assume a gradual shift of cultural frames from ethnocentric to ethnorelative stances, as facilitated by sensitive intercultural learning experiences that transcend the cognitive realm. In contrast to Bennett, this complex process is not just presumed to be an expansion of existing knowledge and values but a fundamental subjective transformation of cognition, emotion, and behavior, centered on the dynamic subjective intercultural third place, and achieved by blending concepts and constructs between languages and cultures as part of the process of mediating and fostering intercultural competence. The development of intercultural competence does not follow a linear progression, but can be cyclical, circular, and sometimes even regressive. This may make the mediation of intercultural competence in classroom settings more difficult and complex, but it provides no rationale for the often rather superficial treatment of cultural traits in the early and intermediate stages of L2 learning (cf. Chapter 1). On the contrary, the deliberate and meaningful consideration of how our perceptions of self, Other and others are shaped by both our embodied experience in the world and culturally based ontologies (what is there) and epistemologies (how we know) should be given much more emphasis, even in early and intermediary L2 learning, with the purpose of making us aware of the linguistic and cultural relativity of our conscious being and of the gradual changes in our cultural frames of construction.
Narration and constant reflection on one’s momentary positioning with regard to the dynamic intercultural third space is an integral part of fostering intercultural competence in the L2 classroom, be it in writing (which provides learners with a more reflective space to indulge and cultivate their experience of difference and otherness),136 imaging (cf. Section 10.2, Principle 3), or in direct interaction with peers (within the classroom and beyond, for example, by using digital media; cf. Section 10.2, Principles 4-9). It has at its center subjective processes of blending spaces between the constructs of languages, societies, and cultures in the mind of the learner. Narration reduces the complexity of “reality” in a subjective view and can therefore provide deep insights into even minute subjective changes in cognition, emotion, and behavior of the learner. Stimuli for reflective narration of one’s changing positioning include negotiation for meaning through active and holistic engagement in role plays, critical incidents, project work, cultural simulation games, and electronically-mediated reflective interaction with authentic cultural others; all of these activities transcend the cognitive dimension. Activity theory, for example, provides a useful framework for collaborative L2 learning in terms of planning and conducting actions and operations, thus involving emotional, cognitive, social, behavioral, and metacognitive dimensions (cf. Section 5.3).
Intentional and reflective L2 learning in a holistic manner, as proposed here, has an impact on learners’ constructs of identity in terms of decentering and hybridizing, to a far greater degree than normally occurs intraculturally. Some academics are of the opinion that for L2 learners who have become interculturally de-centered in the course of learning a L2 and developing intercultural competence, “the real problem is not how to build identity, but how to preserve it” (Bauman 1995: 88). However, the problem of preserving one’s identity when engaging with the constructs of another cultural community is unsolvable for several reasons: firstly, identity is a process, not a condition (cf. Chapter 6); therefore it makes little sense to “preserve” it (even within the L1 and L1-mediated Discourses and constructs). Secondly, when negotiating for alternative potentials of construals of self, Other, and world, as offered by the other culture, language, and society, it is impossible to remain immune from their influences in terms of attitudes, behaviors, norms, plausibility structures, values, and beliefs. Thus, the learner develops increasingly hybrid constructs of identity and positionings which oscillate between the languages and cultures involved. The advanced L2 learner constantly mediates between the linguistic, cultural, and social systems, “belonging” neither to the one nor to the other, hence positioning himself or herself in-between these configurations. These processes of linguistic and sociocultural translation and blending take place on cognitive, affective, and behavioral levels, facilitated by “participatory appropriation” (Rogoff 1995: 142; cf. Section 7.4.) in an experientially-based L2 classroom (or, for unstructured L2 acquisition by migrants, by conscious and deliberate immersion in all relevant aspects of the L2 community).
The experience of living in another speech community for a long time and actively engaging with its people and their internalized sociocultural constructs, or learning a second language and culture to an advanced level in an educational context, situated in the native socioculture, ultimately has, therefore, an enriching and liberating effect on the mind of the L2 learner, in that situations of ambiguity can be dealt with more consciously and confidently, and cultural difference is perceived, not as a threat, but as a means of enhancing and broadening one’s constructs of identity.137 Hybrid identities may even tend to become deterritorialized in the sense that one no longer predominantly feels to be a member of the native cultural community, which does not mean, however, that one can choose one’s identity freely and on the spot. An interculturally-based hybrid identity emerges from the ongoing subjective interaction with manifestations, constructs, and patterns of the L2-culture, while still owing loyalty to the first language culture (albeit decreasingly). Identity in this sense is the result of attempting to resolve subjective experiences of the Other. Coffey (2010), for instance, provides experiences of Britons who have been living abroad for a long time; most of these individuals felt the necessity of deliberately detaching themselves from national constructs of British identity, for example, the archetypal British bulldog spirit (Coffey 2010: 72; cf. Section 6.6). One person interviewed by Coffey (2010: 72) goes a step further by stating: “I don’t have much of an identity. I am internationalist through and through.” This individual seems to have lost his subjective attachment to simple constructs of national identity and sees himself as “internationalist,” or transcultural. This may be a result of having experienced other national Discourses of identity which tend to erect barriers between nationalities; when living in another “nation,” the attention of the subject may be drawn to these constructs in a more urgent way, compared to a situation of living in the home nation where one is not normally confronted with the need to reflect on these issues.138 The perceived loss of national identity, described in the above citation as “not having much of an identity,” is more than compensated by the broader-based, more flexible, dynamic, and hybrid intercultural constructs of identity which may be more differentiated, consequential, and generative in terms of personal development than definitions of mere “national” identities; this is a result of having gained deep access to more than one system of meaning and positioning. The characterization of this condition as “not having much of an identity” is too one-dimensionally orientated around simplistic constructs of national identity while not paying sufficient attention to the more succinct strands of personal, D/discursive, narrative, and hybrid identities.
However, as was shown in Chapter 6, identity is always a dynamic and multilayered process (and not a state), even within the framework of one language, culture, and society. If the monocultural pluralization of identities “disrupts the social ontology of the subject itself (...) as the internal impossibility of the subject as a discrete and unitary kind of being” (Butler 1995: 446), then second language acquisition fundamentally extends this process by opening up genuinely new and differential spaces for intercultural subjective positioning, crosscultural conceptual blending, and culturally discursive constructions of self, Other, and world. In order to gain entry to the consequential intercultural third space, the L2 learner has to break with taken-for-granted attitudes and look through the lenses of various ways of knowing, seeing, hearing, and feeling in a conscious endeavor to impose different orders on experience. The goal of L2 learning is not to replace the familiar categories of the first language and culture with the categories of the L2 and its sociocultural context, but “to de-familiarize and de-centre, so that questions can be raised about one’s own culturally-determined assumptions and about the society in which one lives” (Byram 2008: 31). The purpose of L2 learning in this context, then, is to develop a conscious intercultural third place of construal which “belongs” neither to the native nor to the foreign culture, but is grounded in a transitional space in-between these cultures, as, for example, the people interviewed by Coffey (2010) and, more eloquently, professional academics in intercultural communication such as Kaplan (1993; cf. Section 10.2), Yoshikawa (1978; cf. Chapter 9), and Hoffman (1989; cf. Section 10.2) have convincingly illustrated. Hoffman characterizes the process of developing third places in rather negative terms as a process of losing the authentic voice, as previously facilitated by the mother tongue, with all its subjective connotations and automatisms for private and social language use, and the violent replacement of this original voice by that of cultural others: “Since I lack a voice of my own, the voices of others invade me as if I were a silent ventriloquist. (...) Eventually, the voices enter me. I am being remade, fragment by fragment, like a patchwork quilt” (Hoffman 1989: 219-220; emphasis added). This process of adopting the voices of others seems to be akin to the process of acquiring the first language from others (cf. Chapter 2); however, these are voices of cultural others who are interacting in a different language, with different conceptualizations, plausibility structures, values, beliefs, and frames of mind, and they are being adapted by someone who, at of 13 years of age (when Hoffman arrived in Canada), already has a firm linguistic and conceptual grounding in another language (Polish). In her statement, Hoffman points to mental blending processes in which the elements of her subjectively internalized Polish culture (“voice of my own”) are slowly overshadowed, minimized, blended, and ultimately replaced by the L2 and its cultural frames to an extent that she feels she does not have a voice of her own any more. Hoffman depicts this process in a manner that leaves her in a passive role, while it is the other cultural and linguistic voices that assume the active roles and do something to her mind and to her positioning (both in the active and in the passive), even if she may not agree with these transformations. While this may be the case in an immersion situation, the intercultural L2 classroom puts much more emphasis on the deliberate, scaffolded, and reflective co-construction of knowledge and intercultural spaces so that the L2 learner is always aware of his or her learning efforts and the consequences in terms of positioning, as well as mental and psychological developments within the third space (cf. Section 10.2).
The autobiographical narratives presented by Kaplan, Yoshikawa, and Hoffman clearly demonstrate that the mere physical presence in another community is insufficient to stimulate the fostering of the third place; they constantly reflect upon the cognitive (and emotional) changes and their present position between the languages, D/discourses, frames, narratives, and cultures, constantly reconceptualizing their selves in the initially new semiotic medium of the L2. This leads to a process of developing dynamic intercultural spaces, which can, at times, be an unsettling experience, seen by Hoffman as the invasion of voices of cultural others. The invasion (with its connotation of military force) is depicted as being akin to a natural force; however, the subject does not have to surrender to this process since he or she can play an active part in it, allowing for the level and scope of this invasion, based on his or her exposure to the linguistic and cultural systems of meaning, guided by personal circumstances and intentions. By constant reflection on one’s situation in the new cultural community, fossilization and resignation are avoided, and the resulting intercultural positionings are perceived as a principally liberating and personally enriching experience.139 Even if the three protagonists have reached the very advanced level where the L2 has become the medium of inner speech in many contexts, they have not completely lost their native languages (English, Japanese, and Polish respectively) as a medium for inner speech (cf. Section 2.2.3) and their native cultural frames of reference for construction (due to the deep imprint left on the mind and psyche of the subject during the fundamental interaction of L1 acquisition and mental development in the process of primary socialization; cf. Chapters 1-4). Their subjective intercultural third places can be characterized as typical for those of very advanced L2 learners (cf. Section 10.2), as something unique in terms of intercultural surplus value in a subjective dimension that transcends culture-specificity and facilitates the emergence of a new quality of self-awareness which is “born out of an awareness of the relative nature of values and of the universal aspect of human nature” (Yoshikawa 1978: 220, cited in Kim 2009: 59).
The relativity of linguistic and cultural constructs facilitates processes of blending and fusing concepts across languages and cultures. The mind of the learner is not a passive pawn in this interplay (as Hoffman seems to insinuate), but it can willfully direct activities of negotiating and blending to certain configurations (rather than others) and emphasize particular aspects in the blends, such as certain subjective experiences or particular cultural frames. The generic space in the intercultural blends is, therefore, characterized by a gradual shift of semiotic power from the L1 and its cultural contexts to the L2 and its cultural contexts. However, in this dynamic and evolving situation, universal aspects of human living (such as birth, death, housing, eating, sleeping, interacting, loving, etc.) can also have an important stabilizing and structuring influence on the subjective intercultural blending processes; this is an aspect that Fauconnier and Turner (2002) neglected in their construct of the generic space within the blend.
Fauconnier’s (1997) and Fauconnier and Turner’s (2002; 2008; cf. Section 4.7) model of blending mental spaces has been transferred in this book from the purely cognitive domain (for which it was originally developed) to other domains, such as emotions, attitudes, activities, and cultural frames (albeit in a more metaphorical manner). In their model of blends, the generic space scaffolds the blending process of the different input spaces by using the structuring forces of culturally generated and maintained frames, concepts, prototypes, schemata, plausibility structures, and conceptual metaphors of the cultural community (cf. Chapter 3). When the blending process takes place across cultures, as is the norm in intercultural settings, the generic space loses much of its cultural framing power which in turn tends to be shifted to subjective elements of integrating personal experiences, memories, fantasies, and perceptions. The processes of blending spaces between languages and cultures initially have the tendency to draw mainly upon the input spaces of the first language, culture, and society. However, in the course of learning the L2, the dominance of L1-mediated input spaces decreases, as the structures and patterns of the other language, society, and culture are increasingly better understood in their complexity, and integrated into the subjective potential for blending and construal.
The gradual shift of semiotic power from cultural to intercultural frames is not completely arbitrary; the level of intercultural subjective knowledge is based on the subject’s access to and understanding of the cultural frames (in the plural). Therefore, the generic space still has a structuring influence on the blending process, albeit subjectively filtered in an intercultural constellation, thus putting more emphasis on subjective bearings on the blending process (e.g., memories, experiences, fantasies, and desires). The learners do not just blend “the” existing elements of cultures and languages, but they blend blends of blends (or “idealized representations;” Kramsch 2009a: 75) they have constructed (consciously or not) for themselves over time within a larger network of blends; these are then appropriated to their momentary understandings and specific needs in a particular situation. Hence, the process of blending also includes processes of idealizing, appropriating, adopting, and aligning cultural, conceptual, and linguistic elements in a subjective fashion. The most important contributor to this process is the mind of the subjective learner, as it is the agent undertaking the blending processes within the cultural frameworks of reference involved and his or her subjective realm of experiences, memories, fantasies, and desires. However, affective states of the learner also influence the cognitive blending processes (cf. Section 4.7); both the subjective mind and emotional elements are very dynamic configurations, and in the process of L2 learning they will gradually shift from predominantly monocultural to intercultural spaces.
The integration of the partial structures of the two separate input spaces into a single blended structure, scaffolded by the generic space, creates a third domain with its own emergent structures. The difference between intracultural and intercultural blending of spaces consists of the different cultural organizations of subjectively filtered background knowledge for the generic space (but also for the input spaces), in addition to the culturally diverse content of at least one of the input spaces. Typically, tacit cultural knowledge is effortlessly (and normally subconsciously) applied in intracultural mental space-blending, which is generated without deliberate cognitive effort, or, as Fauconnier and Turner (2002: 49) put it, it is generated “on the fly.” By contrast, intercultural blending requires, at least for the ab initio and intermediate levels of L2 learning (i.e., Principles 1-4; cf. Section 10.2), deliberate effort in terms of “a quasi-total reconstruction of the cognitive configurations prompted by one language and a determination of how another language would set up a similar configuration with a radically different prompting system and prestructured background” (Fauconnier 1997: 189). These processes of almost complete reconstruction have to be deliberately learned and acquired by L2 students in a reflective manner over a sustained period of time. In the context of exploring and experiencing differential constructs of the L2 cultural community, the differences can be put in words or images, which can be narrated and discussed in the L2 classroom, not in a distanced and formal manner, but in a way that focuses on the respective subjective understandings and interpretations (or blends) of these configurations. Reflective narration and discussion can provide ideas, perspectives, and angles of understandings of (inter-)cultural spaces for each member of the classroom community, which may have eluded the individual learner when left to his or her own devices.
When processes of blending are explicitly introduced to classroom discussions, even marginal shifts in the generic space, but also in the input spaces and the resulting blend, can be dissected in their combinations and their creative potentials from subjective and collective points of view. This procedure has the function to make learners aware, not only of the similarities and differences in the cultural patterns of construal between the cultural communities, but also of the detailed cognitive architecture of construing novel meaning by blending mental spaces in intra- and intercultural contexts. In this context it is important to construe all the elements of the blend, that is, the generic space, the two (or more) input spaces, and the resulting blend, as flexible and dynamic configurations which are firmly (yet transiently) rooted on the borderline between subjective memories, experiences, feeling, and desires and sociocultural semiotic and framing devices, such as linguistic concepts, plausibility structures, prototypes, frames, schemata, stereotypes, and conceptual metaphors. Therefore, it becomes apparent to the L2 learners that there cannot be an objective “reality” with the same validity for all members of the community, but only an intersubjectively negotiated and agreed “reality,” be it in the L2 classroom community, the home of L2 learners, other communities of practice, or the speech community at large. The levels of agreement of “reality” can vary and sometimes do not overlap at all with regard to the same configuration, as Fauconnier and Turner (2002) exemplified with the different blends of protagonists in the Japanese “image club” (cf. Section 4.7).
Therefore, the explorative learning process itself has to be left to the group of L2 learners as much as possible and, ultimately, to the subjective learner, because they actively blend cultural and linguistic concepts, based on their very subjective experiences, memories, fantasies, and level of access to the L2 and the L1 and their respective cultural contexts. It should also leave sufficient leeway for imagination, creativity, and fantasy, for instance, in terms of constructing counterfactual situations or possible worlds so that the momentum of subjective engagement will not be lost. If language can be understood in terms of language games (Wittgenstein 1953; cf. Section 5.1.1), the element of game, 140in the sense of creatively trying out (or playing with) new constellations and constructs on the basis of rules acquired by the L2 language game, must be emphasized in early and intermediate L2 learning; this includes the spontaneous construction of possible scenarios or imaginative situations. Consequently, the learning environment has to be adequately tailored to each learner’s subjective ZPD; it must be characterized by the facilitation of rich learning experiences so that the learners can, collaboratively and subjectively, make their own discoveries with regard to developing subjective blends with the other linguistic, conceptual, and (inter-)cultural spaces, but also with regard to the relativity of their deeply internalized cultural constructs of self, Other, and others:
Successful learning environments allow participants to see themselves as responsible contributors in a dynamic language environment that allows them to question the status quo, give answers in areas where they feel a sense of accomplishment and achievement, respond without censure, absorb new knowledge through experience, and disseminate knowledge among accepting adults and peers. (Ball 1998: 243-244)
Thus, the L2 classroom has to stimulate all features of the learner’s self so that he or she is prepared to engage in the learning process as an embodied subject in order to put the self at risk; fostering subjective intercultural places is impossible to achieve from a mentally and emotionally detached position. The development of intercultural competence gradually transforms different layers of knowledge (e.g., cultural self-awareness, culture-specific knowledge, sociolinguistic awareness), attitudes (respect, openness, curiosity, and discovery), and skills (observation, listening, evaluating, analyzing, interpreting, and relating). When negotiated in the L2 classroom (or in reflective immersion situations), the existing subjective attitudes, knowledge, and skills (not understood as fixed and stable entities, but as dynamic and flexible configurations) are developed in terms of flexibility, adaptability, ethnorelativity, and empathy (cf. Section 10.2). These intercultural traits are not only exhibited in the L2 classroom, but are also ideally applied in the ordinary everyday behavior of the advanced learner, thus constituting what Yoshikawa (1978: 220, cited in Kim 2009: 59; cf. Section 10.2, Principle 9) defines as the intercultural surplus value of having achieved a high level of intercultural competence in terms of a uniquely subjective synergy which always results in more than the sum of the interculturally blended parts for the subjective mind, but also for subjective emotion and behavior.
In the process of mediating this high degree of intercultural competence, it is important to occasionally step back and reflect on the learning process and the progress achieved in order to create and maintain learners’ awareness of their current level of subjective intercultural development. From this platform, the next immediate level of fostering intercultural competence in the learner’s ZPD can be consciously tackled; in this regard, the proposed model of pedagogical principles for mediating intercultural competence (cf. Section 10.2) can provide a useful framework. Language-rich and varied exercises can also contribute to the intentional development of L2 private and inner speech. For very advanced L2 learners with this high degree of intercultural competence, the blending of spaces within and between languages and cultures, and the ability to use L2 for inner speech, has ideally become an internalized habitus that is tacitly employed and performed in all situations of everyday life. Thus, the gaps that opened up in early and intermediate L2 learning have now subjectively been closed; they have turned into creative places of construction and enunciation for the subject, located in a continuum between symbolic systems and cultural frames.