Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-02T22:59:16.064Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The symbolic dimensions of the intercultural

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 December 2010

Claire Kramsch
Claire Kramsch*
Affiliation:
UC Berkeley, [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

While communicative competence is characterized by the negotiation of intended meanings in authentic contexts of language use, intercultural competence has to do with far less negotiable discourse worlds, the ‘circulation of values and identities across cultures, the inversions, even inventions of meaning, often hidden behind a common illusion of effective communication’ (Kramsch, Lévy & Zarate 2008: 15). The self that is engaged in intercultural communication is a symbolic self that is constituted by symbolic systems like language as well as by systems of thought and their symbolic power. This symbolic self is the most sacred part of our personal and social identity; it demands for its well-being careful positioning, delicate facework, and the ability to frame and re-frame events. The symbolic dimension of intercultural competence calls for an approach to research and teaching that is discourse-based, historically grounded, aesthetically sensitive, and that takes into account the actual, the imagined and the virtual worlds in which we live. With the help of concrete examples from the real world and foreign language classrooms, the paper attempts to redefine the notion of third place (Kramsch 1993) as symbolic competence.

Type
Plenary Speeches
Information
Language Teaching , Volume 44 , Issue 3 , July 2011 , pp. 354 - 367
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do things with words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Benveniste, E. (1966). Problèmes de linguistique générale. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
Blommaert, J. (2005). Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and symbolic power. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Butler, J. (1997). Excitable speech. A politics of the performative. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Byram, M. (2000). Assessing intercultural competence in language teaching. Sprogforum 18.6, 8–13. Retrieved on 22 August 2010 from: http://inet.dpb.dpu.dk/infodok/sprogforum/Espr18/byram.htmlGoogle Scholar
Byram, K. & Kramsch, C. (2008). Why is it so difficult to teach language as culture? The German Quarterly 81.1, 20–34.Google Scholar
Fairclough, N. (1989). Language and power. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Fauconnier, G. & Turner, M. (2002). The way we think. Conceptual blending and the mind's hidden complexities. New York: Basic Books.
Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction ritual. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Holquist, M. (2007). ‘The brain is just the weight of God’: Another argument for the importance of language study. MLA Newsletter Fall 2007. New York: Modern Language Association.Google Scholar
Johnstone, B. (2008). Discourse analysis (2nd edn). Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
King, Martin Luther (1963). I have a dream speech. Retrieved at: www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/PFFFiles/MartinLutherKing-IHaveaDream.pdfGoogle Scholar
Kramsch, C. (1993). Context and culture in language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kramsch, C. (1998). Language and culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kramsch, C. (2006). From communicative competence to symbolic competence. The Modern Language Journal 90.2, 249–252.Google Scholar
Kramsch, C. (2009a). Discourse, the symbolic dimension of intercultural competence. In Hu, A. & Byram, M. (eds.) Interkulturelle Kompetenz und fremdsprachliches Lernen. Modelle, Empirie, Evaluation. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 107–121.Google Scholar
Kramsch, C. (2009b). The multilingual subject. What foreign language learners say about their experience and why it matters. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kramsch, C., Lévy, D. & Zarate, G. (2008). Introduction générale. In Zarate, G., Lévy, D. & Kramsch, C. (eds.) Précis du plurilinguisme et du pluriculturalisme. Paris: Editions des archives contemporaines, 15–23.Google Scholar
Lakoff, G. (1987). Women, fire and dangerous things. What categories reveal about the mind. Chicago: Chicago University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ochs, E. (2002). Becoming a speaker of culture. In Kramsch, C. (ed.) Language acquisition and language socialization. Ecological perspectives. London: Continuum, 99–120.Google Scholar
Pennycook, A. (1994). Incommensurable discourses? Applied Linguistics 15.2, 115–138.Google Scholar
Pennycook, A. (2010). Language as local practice. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saussure, F. de (1916/1959). Course in general linguistics. Bally, C. & Sechehaye, A. (eds.) Translation and Introduction by Baskin, W.. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
van Lier, L. (2004). The ecology and semiotics of language learning. A sociocultural perspective. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.Google Scholar
Weedon, C. (1987). Feminist practice and poststructuralist theory. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Young, R. (2009). Discursive practice in language learning and teaching. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar