Culture in language teaching

Multi – Pluri – Inter

The Prefixes of Culture
Culture in language teaching
“Although some L2/FL teachers seem to think
that the presence of culture in current
writings is relatively recent, a review of the
L2/FL literature shows that this is clearly
not the case” (Lessard-Clouston, M. 1997).

Culture and Language come together in LT,

culture appearing and disappearing from
theoretical approaches regularly. Now it is
enjoying a revival.
 Culture: the prefixes
• If at first the terms “contrastive” and
“cross-cultural” were the key terms in
cultural studies, the incorporation of
multicultural and intercultural approaches
widened our perspective.
• The scope of cultural studies nowadays
includes the self, the group and the
communicative situation.
 The prefixes

Pluriculturality Interculturality
Pluriculturality

Multiculturality
 Definitions: two approaches
• Static definition • Dynamic definition
– “Inter-”: active and
– “Inter-”: critical participation in
definition of a communication
communicative – “Pluri-”: perception and
situation construction of the
multiple identifications
– “Pluri-”: definition of a person
of the identity of – “Multi-”: ackowledgement
a person and appreciation of the
– “Multi-”: coexistence of a number
of cultures in the social
definition of the context
social context
 Multiculturalism (I)
• Multiculturalism describes a general situation
(region, country, community) of “culture
contact”.
• Normally, the term comprises three visions of
diversity:
– culture as state-nation (multicultural = different
nationalities)
– culture as religion (multicultural = different
religions)
– culture as ethnic groups (multicultural = different
ethnic groups).
 Multiculturalism (II)
• However, none of these metaphoric definitions of
culture are satisfactory
– it could be argued that other “cultures” could be added:
“culture as age”, “culture as gender”, “culture as
profession”, “culture as ability/disability”, ...
• Consequently, any country, region, community or
group is multicultural by definition, as different
cultures interact simultaneously at any level.
• So, we would keep multiculturalism for the
description of contexts where cultures are in
contact, not restricted to nations, religions or
ethnic groups.
 Pluriculturalism
• Identity is the by-product of experiences
in different cultures.
• Thus, multiple identifications create our
unique personality more than a static
“identity”.
• Pluriculturalism implies an approach to the
self and the other as complex, rich beings
which act and react from the perspective
of those multiple identifications.
 Interculturality
• Interculturality is, undoubtedly, one of the
key notions in language teaching at the
moment.
• ECML projects:
– Candelier, Oomen-Welke and Perregaux (2004)
– Dupuis et al. (2003)
– Huber-Kriegler, Lázár and Strange (2003)
– Aleksandrowicz-Pędich, Draghicescu, Issaiass and
Šabec (2003), Skopinskaja (2003) and Facciol and
Kjartansson (2003)
– Zarate, Gohard-Radenkovic, Lussier and Penz (2003)
– Grima Camilleri (2002)
 Interculturality
• Interculturality is, for our perspective,
intimately related to communication: it is
the link between language and culture.
• Being intercultural is a way of participating
in communication in which interlocutors
– Are aware of the relevance of culture in
communication.
– Participate actively in communication.
– React critically to communication.
 Awareness of culture
• The language learner must be aware of
three layers of culture: multi-cultural, pluri-
cultural and inter-cultural.
• First, the language learner must be aware of
– diversity in society and
– how social groups, including nations, create, use
and manage cultures, which are intermingled in a
complex matrix of social contact.
• We will refer to it as awareness of culture
from a multicultural perspective.
 Awareness of culture
• Secondly, awareness of culture from
a pluricultural perspective implies
– to define identity as a complex, flexible,
dynamic composite which, in any
situation, can adopt an apparently
definite layout for a certain purpose
with a particular interlocutor.
• culture as product – which is static –
• culture as process – which is dynamic.
 Awareness of culture
• From an intercultural perspective, awareness
must be displayed in two directions.
– First, the learner must be aware of the pluricultural
identity of his or her interlocutor as defined above.
– Second, the language learner must be aware of the
cultural conventions of the language(s) they may use.
• Language is a culture-bound phenomenon and there are
conventions ruling any communicative act, written or spoken.
• Awareness of these cultural conventions can smooth
communication
• At the same time, a positive, cooperative attitude on the
part of the listener/reader can help overcome ignoring,
forgetting or flouting these conventions.
 The LEA Project
• To raise awareness of diversity as a
key element of society.
• To enrich language teacher education
with the potential to exploit cultural
diversity at individual and social levels
• To facilitate curricular changes aimed
at incorporating a pluricultural
dimension into language classes.