4

Conceptualising intercultural
(communicative) competence and
intercultural citizenship
Michael Byram and Irina Golubeva

Defining terms
As any literature and internet search will show, terms such as ‘interculturality’, ‘cross-​cultural’,
‘transcultural’ , and ‘intercultural competence’ abound and are used in confusing ways.The phrase
‘intercultural citizenship’ is less widespread but being used increasingly, especially in the field of
foreign language education (cf., Byram et al. 2017).
Definitions are best seen in the light of usage, and this chapter will not attempt to present
definitive dictionary-​like definitions but to consider the questions which arise in the relationship
between ‘intercultural (communicative) competence’1 and ‘intercultural citizenship’ in theory
and practice. The first stage will be to consider the notion of ‘interculturality’ before moving
to matters of ‘competence’ as a means of analysing the difference between a state of being
intercultural and behaving as an intercultural citizen.

Being and acting interculturally

A useful starting point is to consider linguistic competence and, in particular, bilingualism, not
least because research on and analysis of bilingualism has a much longer history, but also because
linguistic competence and cultural competence are often assumed to be related.
Definitions of being bilingual have ranged from a minimum ability to say something in
two or more languages2 to the ability to be accepted, or ‘pass’, as a native speaker in two or
more languages. Passing as a native speaker linguistically implies, however, also being seen
or identified as someone who ‘fits in’ in a group of native speakers in terms of behaviour,
appearance, opinions, and beliefs; in short, of culture. Being a bilingual in this way implies
being bicultural, being accepted as a ‘native’ of two language groups, and of identifying
with them.
This way of thinking about bilingualism has however been challenged. Rather than separate
languages, people are thought to have a ‘repertoire’ of languages as one ‘plurilingual compe-
tence’ (Council of Europe 2001: 3ff). Another term used is ‘emergent bilinguals’ (García 2009)
which has arisen in the analysis of the rapid increase in migration and globalisation. Thus, the

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understanding of how bilinguals and plurilinguals function has changed (see also García and Wei
2014; Golubeva and Csillik 2018). People are said to ‘translanguage’ –​a theory which does not
consider different languages used by an individual as isolated systems, but rather as being in a
horizontal continuum (Vogel and García 2017; see also Chapter 14, this volume).

Bilinguals do not function as two monolinguals shutting off one language while using the
other, but as an integrated individual with two active languages affecting each other and
serving as efficient resources for communication.
Brisk and Harrington 2000: 7

Bilingual or plurilingual people have a choice and may use a combination of two or more
languages when interacting with others. They may simply switch from one language to the
other according to the circumstances and the group in which they find themselves, thus keeping
their languages and identifications with the two groups separate. They may also combine their
languages through exploiting their plurilingual and pluricultural repertoire when speaking
with others who have a similar competence (see Council of Europe 2018a on plurilingual and
pluricultural competence).
On the other hand, they may also act as interpreters and translators between the groups whose
languages they speak. At this point, bi-​/​plurilingual people find themselves ‘between’ languages,
and ‘between’ the cultures of the people for whom they are interpreting or translating. If they
do this on an occasional basis, they often assume that what one person says and the behaviours
and beliefs they express, can be transferred whole and in a simple one-​to-​one relationship to the
language and behaviour and belief systems of the Other. Professional interpreters and translators
are aware that this is not the case, that sometimes they cannot transfer the whole, or that they
have to give some further explanation if they are to do so.
The ability to act between languages and cultures in this way, or  –​in other words  –​
the ability to mediate between languages and cultures, is a competence to which we shall
return. The consequences –​let us call it the state of ‘being intercultural’ –​for the individual
concerned are also important. For it may be the case that being positioned between two
individuals or groups gives a perspective on the languages and cultures of each which is
different from identifying with one or switching between two. If we think taking a third per-
spective –​or, as Kramsch (1993; see also Chapter 12, this volume) calls it, a ‘third place’ –​in
this way is worthwhile, perhaps because it allows deeper understanding, then we might wish
to encourage people who are bi-​/​plurilingual and bi-​/​pluricultural, even to only a minimal
degree, to become intercultural. We might then include this as one of the purposes of the
teaching of languages as an educational endeavour. In short, we might then embrace the
notion of ‘interculturalism’, i.e., a belief in the value of being and acting as an intercultural
person.
Like other ‘-​isms’, interculturalism is an ideology or belief system. It has, in the European
context at least, been contrasted with ‘multiculturalism’ which is seen, negatively, as a belief in
encouraging different social groups with different languages and cultures to live side-​by-​side in
a spirit of mutual acceptance, each nonetheless remaining within their own language and culture
and essentially monolingual.The ideology of multiculturalism is thought to have led to problems
because groups living side-​by-​side cannot simply ignore each other and, particularly when
resources such as housing and jobs are scarce, they compete with each other, often in aggressive
ways. Interculturalism, on the other hand, encourages ‘dialogue’ among groups, and this became
the basis for the promotion from 2008, in the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue, of an

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interpretation of interculturality which specifically builds on dialogue. The Council of Europe’s

White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue argues that:

[I]‌ntercultural dialogue [. . .] allows us to prevent ethnic, religious, linguistic and cultural
divides. It enables us to move forward together, to deal with our different identities con-
structively and democratically on the basis of shared universal values.
Council of Europe 2008: 2

However, dialogue presupposes some degree of bi-​/​plurilingualism and bi-​/​pluriculturalism in

at least some members of each group, and preferably in all, and this is not fully recognised in the
White Paper. Dialogue also implies that bilingual and bicultural people act in intercultural ways
as interpreters or translators –​or even as ‘mediators’ –​and thereby become intercultural people.
The notion of ‘mediator’ becomes relevant particularly when there is a potential conflict among
groups, but it is also a more accurate term in most ‘in-​between’ situations because there are often
linguistic and cultural differences or conflicting perspectives which the intercultural person has
to explain to each group from his/​her ‘third place’ perspective.
Ultimately, however, the intercultural person depends on those for whom they are mediating
to resolve the ‘conflict’ themselves, whether this is a matter of misunderstanding of meanings
or an actual physical conflict. The intercultural person’s action is limited to the act of mediating
as neutral agent, unless they take a different but related role of intercultural citizen, as we shall
see below.

Intercultural (communicative) competence

As Fleming (2009) says, the term ‘competence’ has had a chequered history but can usefully be
adopted to refer to observable behaviours as well as to the implicit understandings within them.
His example demonstrates the flexibility of the concept:

For example, a dental nurse who has been declared competent in being “able to sterilise
equipment” must know the technical procedures but he must also know that if he drops
the implement in the dirt after sterilisation he must begin the process all over again. This
implies understanding of process and purpose which is not necessarily made explicit in the
performance statement itself [. . .]. The need for understanding may not always be spelled
out, but the assumption is that it can be unpacked from the performance statement.
Fleming 2009: 7

The emphasis on behaviours as indicators of understanding and as performance skills would, in

the same vein, allow us to observe and to measure people’s interculturality as a state of mind,
as well as their ability to act interculturally. Intercultural competence is increasingly used as a
concept to plan and evaluate learning and teaching as part of the more general change to using
competences that has taken place throughout formal education.
Thus far, we have focused on people acting as mediators among groups with different
languages and cultures. A fine-​g rained analysis would show that different groups apparently
speaking the same language also have different discourses, and that intercultural mediation is
just as relevant here as when languages and cultures are visibly and obviously different. Families,
for example, have their own family language –​often with specific words or expressions –​in
which they refer to their shared knowledge and past. In this sense a mediator between two
families might have to explain the one to the other. The fact that they believe they speak ‘the

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same’ language, where there is indeed much in common, would make the task of the mediator
in fact more difficult than when languages are obviously different, because mediation would
require sensitivity to fine-​g rained differences. Indeed sometimes, the capacity to speak two
varieties of ‘the same’ language is referred to as being bilingual, and this adds a dimension to
bilinguality which needs to be recognised just as this kind of example adds a dimension to
interculturality.
Where two groups have languages and cultures which are mutually incomprehensible,3
the linguistic competences of the mediator are of a different kind. The mediator needs to
be bilingual (and bicultural), and it is to emphasise the significance of language competence
that the distinction is made between ‘intercultural competence’ and ‘intercultural (commu-
nicative) competence’, the latter referring to mediation between mutually incomprehensible
languages. The phrase ‘intercultural communicative competence’ combines the use in recent
decades of the concept of ‘communicative competence’ in another language –​with emphasis
on the ability to use a language not only with correct application of knowledge of its grammar
but also in socially appropriate ways (Savignon 2004)  –​with ‘intercultural competence’ as
discussed above.
This phrase also recognises the importance of the relationship between language and cul-
ture, a relationship which is, however, not simple. It has been much debated since the first
part of the nineteenth century when Humboldt drew specific attention to it. Risager’s (2006;
see also Chapter  6, this volume) authoritative analysis, starting from Agar’s (1994) notion of
‘languaculture’, has shown that a language spoken by a specific group of people –​be they ‘native
speakers’ or not –​is not necessarily tied to a specific set of beliefs, values, and behaviours (a spe-
cific culture). Furthermore, in foreign language use, the relationship between a language and a
culture it embodies may be highly complex, as Risager shows in her example:

The language in question is used with contributions from the languacultures of other
languages. So there is a kind of language mix in the linguistic resources that, for example,
makes use of the expression side of the one language (the target language) and of the con-
tent side of the other language (the first language). When one migrates to another country,
one takes this particular, more or less individual, language mix with one. [. . .] If I, with
Danish as my first language, travel round the world, I take my Danish idiolect with me, with
the personal languaculture I have developed during my life. But I also take my special forms
of English, French and German with me –​the languages I have learnt as foreign languages.
My foreign language resources are, without a doubt, influenced to a great extent by my
Danish languaculture.
Risager 2006: 134

However, this complexity is difficult to handle in pedagogical terms, and since teaching requires
a gradual development from initial simplification to increasing complexity, it is best to focus on
one languaculture and to help learners develop their linguistic and cultural competences with
one focus. In this way, learners can acquire bilingual and bicultural competences in a system-
atic way, even though the constant interplay between languacultures which Risager describes
will be the inevitable experience of language in use. Learners also acquire a systematic way of
developing intercultural competences by concentrating on the relationships between their own
languaculture and one other. At the same time, they develop competences that are transferable to
other languacultures they may encounter subsequently.
Before we can develop further what the components of intercultural competence are, it is
relevant to clarify the relationship of the person with intercultural competence to the native

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speaker4.The aim that learners of another language should become, or attempt to become, native
speakers, has long dominated language teaching and been implanted in the minds of most lan-
guage teachers and language learners. Whatever the merits of this aim with respect to mastery
of the grammar and phonetics of a language, having native speaker competence is not suffi-
cient for the mediator with the third perspective on two or more languacultures. It is not even
necessary. A mediator can be successful without native speaker language competence. It is for
this reason that the phrase ‘intercultural speaker’ was coined (Byram 2008: 57–​77), to indicate
that intercultural competence is worthwhile in itself and should not be considered a poor imi-
tation of native speaker competence. The intercultural speaker needs intercultural communica-
tive competence, i.e., both intercultural competence and linguistic/​communicative competence,
in any task of mediation where two distinct languacultures are present, and this is something
different from and not comparable with the competence of the native speaker. The Companion
Volume (Council of Europe 2018a) to the CEFR (Council of Europe 2001) explicitly states that
the new descriptors ‘do not take an idealised native speaker as a reference point for the compe-
tence of a user/​learner’ (Council of Europe 2018a: 45; italics added), and describes mediation
as: (1) ‘the process of establishing and managing interpersonal relationships in order to create a
positive, collaborative environment’, and (2) ‘the process of facilitating access to knowledge and
concepts, particularly when an individual may be unable to access this directly on his/​her own,
due perhaps to the novelty and unfamiliarity of the concepts and/​or to a linguistic or cultural bar-
rier’ (ibid.: 175; italics added).
It is therefore surprising that many attempts to conceptualise and model the competences
needed by those who wish to be and act interculturally do not take account of linguistic
competence. In a major review of models of intercultural competence, Spitzberg and
Changnon (2009: 10) decided to classify models as ‘compositional, co-​orientational, develop-
mental, adaptational, and causal process’. It is only in the ‘co-​orientational’ models ‘devoted to
conceptualising the interactional achievement of intercultural understanding’ (and they cite
Byram’s (1997) ICC model) that linguistic competences are found. Other types of models
are primarily concerned with psychological traits and with the success of adaptation to new
circumstances or to change over time, and are often focused on describing the processes involved
in longer or shorter sojourns in an environment which is experienced as culturally and per-
haps linguistically different and challenging, not on the competences needed. Furthermore in
most models, including some they categorise as ‘co-​orientational’, the relationships described
are between two people or groups. The notion of a third party with a third perspective –​the
intercultural speaker –​is not included.

Citizenship
Contrary to many of the models Spitzberg and Changnon (2009) analyse, the concept of the
intercultural speaker was developed in the context of specifying competences for planning
learning and teaching in a general education system, rather than for the specific preparation of
people to live in a new environment. In the latter case, preparation may include acquiring the
knowledge and other competences expected of residents in another country. Indeed, in the face
of contemporary migration, many states require this, and include linguistic competence as a sine
qua non of permission to stay and reside. There is also often an assumption, implicit or explicit,
that new residents should attempt to imitate the denizens of the state in a way parallel to the
expectations of language learners: that they imitate native speakers. On the other hand, just as
it is useful to acknowledge that people can be bilingual and bicultural in ways that are different
from being and acting as if they were two native speakers of two languacultures within the same

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person, it is also possible to conceive competence and identification with citizenship in two
different states as being different from being two different citizens within the same person.5 In an
educational context, where citizenship is systematically learnt both as competence and identifi-
cation, this would mean teaching citizenship of two or more states, parallel to the teaching of the
national language and foreign languages. At the moment, this is unlikely to happen in most states
where historically and contemporarily, ‘our’ schooling is seen as necessarily focused on creating
citizenship of ‘our’ state. This has been the case since the inception of state-​supported schools in
Europe and North America in the nineteenth century, and is evident in the contemporary world,
sometimes in virulent forms, wherever new states appear. As Heater (2004:152) points out, the
phrase ‘totalitarian citizenship education’ may appear to be an oxymoron but nonetheless exists
in the world. Heater discusses Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Contemporary cases do not
yet appear except in travel literature, such as the description of nation-​building in Turkmenistan
around the personality-​cult of the president and his literary works on which students take com-
pulsory tests (Brummell 2005: 13).
Any attempt to develop citizenship competences for other states would be seen, even in
less virulent cases, as subversive to the ‘nation state’, which provides and depends on schooling
for the development of future citizens. The teaching of another language, although compar-
able in principle, has never been seen as subversive, except in times of (hot or cold) war, when
the language of the enemy is often removed from schools. Even when the teaching of another
language involves taking seriously the notion of a languaculture and learning (about) different
values, beliefs, and behaviours, the threat to identification with the dominant values, beliefs, and
behaviours purveyed by schooling is not felt to be significant. In fact, it is often stated, with hope
rather than evidence, that learning (about) other cultures will strengthen commitment to the
culture of the state, as this statement from the Norwegian curriculum claims:

Competence in language and culture shall give the individual the opportunity to under-
stand, live into and value other societies’ social and working life, living conditions and way
of life, mindset, history, art and literature. The program subject [i.e., language and culture
learning] can also help to develop interest and tolerance, promote insight into one’s own
living conditions and one’s own identity.
Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training 2017 [our translation]

The significance of ‘learning about’ rather than simply ‘learning’ in all this is that the former
does not involve any sense of identification with the values, beliefs, and behaviours of other
languacultures. Furthermore, ‘learning about’ continues to be the dominant mode of engage-
ment with other cultures in schools, whereas ‘learning’ other values, beliefs, and behaviours
would involve some degree of identification. Where this experience introduces learners to phe-
nomena which conflict with existing values, beliefs, and behaviours already acquired in their
home and wider social environment, it could be the basis of reappraisal of ‘the familiar’ in the
light of ‘the strange’.6
Parallel to the misconceived image of ‘the’ native speaker of language, the concept of ‘the’
citizen of the state implies a unitary and uniform set of expectations of what each is, and can do.
However, there is increasing recognition by the vast majority of states that though they have one
dominant social group on which expectations are based and which is the model for education
and citizenship, they also have within their borders many other groups with their own vision of
what citizenship entails.This recognition has been formalised in some countries where the rights
of minorities to be different whilst continuing to be full citizens are acknowledged in law and
international convention. In these circumstances the relationships among groups are crucial and

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the ability of individuals and groups to live and dialogue with individuals and groups of other
identifications has been described as ‘intercultural citizenship’:

[T]‌he idea of intercultural citizenship points to the building of political and social institutions
by which culturally diverse communities within a multiethnic and multilingual nation can
solve their differences democratically by consensus without tearing apart the common
structures and values or having to abandon their particular cultural identities, such as lan-
guage, culture and ethnicity. Moreover, it also suggests that such communities have a role to
play in truly democratic governance.
Stavenhagen 2008: 176

The notion is developed from the UNESCO definition of interculturality, i.e., ‘the existence
and equitable interaction of diverse cultures and the possibility of generating shared cultural
expressions through dialogue and mutual respect’ (quoted in Stavenhagen 2008:  175)  –​but
the focus in the definition of intercultural citizenship limits the scope of the definition to
interculturality within the limits of the state. Crucially, there is an assumption, as with some
discussions of intercultural competence, that all those engaging in intercultural citizenship will
speak the same language.

Intercultural (communicative) competence and intercultural citizenship

The concept of intercultural citizenship is not confined to dialogue and action with other
groups within a state. It takes into account the permeability of state borders, whether it is
formalised, as in the European Union, or not.Within the EU, the right to reside and work in any
member state for citizens of the states of the EU reduces the significance of borders, although
the presence of many languages –​and the experience citizens have of other languacultures as
they move from country to country –​is a constant reminder that there are many groups within
Europe just as there are many groups within every member state. The concept of intercultural
citizenship within a state can thus be extended to the whole European Union, but only if the
significance of communicative competence is recognised.
In other cases there is no formal recognition of the permeability of borders. Nonetheless,
mobility across borders, both physical and virtual, is constant. Individuals may identify with
their national (state) group but also with transnational groups to which they belong. They
may even identify with the whole of humanity and see themselves as ‘global’, or ‘world’
or ‘cosmopolitan’ citizens (Osler and Starkey 2005); the notion of cosmopolitanism has a
long pedigree (Carter 2001; Heater 2004). These other concepts of supranational citizen-
ship, unlike European citizenship, are not legal concepts but aspirations to identification with
transnational communities.
The question then arises as to the concept of (transnational) citizenship itself and the role
of schooling. For, just as in the early stages of schooling for citizenship in a state, the role of
schooling in creating or developing citizenship beyond the state is crucial. Just as the people
in nineteenth century France, for example, did not know they were French until they went to
school (and, for men, served in the army), similarly today schooling can –​and perhaps should –​
create a sense of citizenship beyond the state.
How this might be done can be seen from current education for citizenship. As
Himmelmann (2006) has shown, there is much coincidence in citizenship education in
different countries, at least in those which are democratic. There is some focus on knowledge
about the society and its elements and processes.7 There is also some focus on attitudes and

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identification which again may be more or less explicit.8 Thirdly, this emphasis on ‘active’ citi-
zenship and activity implies certain competences in living and dialoguing together to achieve
the development of a democratic society. This is encapsulated, for example, in the Crick
Report (1998: 40–​1) which formulated three strands of citizenship education:

1 Social and moral responsibility: Children learning from the very beginning self-​confidence and
socially and morally responsible behaviour both in and beyond the classroom, both towards
those in authority and towards each other (this is an essential precondition for citizenship).
2 Community involvement: Pupils learning about and becoming helpfully involved in the life
and concerns of their communities, including learning through community involvement
and service to the community.
3 Political literacy: Pupils learning about and how to make themselves effective in public life
through knowledge, skills and values.

It was symptomatic that the third strand was interpreted in the English national curriculum
to mean:

Pupils learning about the institutions, problems and practices of our democracy and how to
make themselves effective in the life of the nation, locally, regionally and nationally through
skills and values as well as knowledge –​a concept wider than political knowledge alone.
Hertfordshire Grid for Learning (nd)

What is particularly noticeable here is the limitation of activity to levels of society, to sense of
community, which are within the state borders, with a minimal reference to ‘the wider world’.
Yet it is precisely in this wider world that people today live. In a subsequent formulation, the
reference became more open, that young people should be prepared ‘to play a full and active
part in society’ (Department for Education 2014). However, for a more ambitious vision, recent
changes in the Norwegian curriculum are important. Here the statement for language learning
is unambiguous:

Good competence in languages will also lay the ground for participation in activities which
build democracy beyond country borders and differences in culture.
Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training 2017 [our translation, italics added]

There is much here which coincides with ‘intercultural citizenship’.

There are many similarities among the elements of citizenship and those of the intercultural
speaker, as we have shown in detail elsewhere (Byram 2008). There are also differences. Models
of citizenship often tacitly assume that communication with fellow citizens is linguistically
and culturally unproblematic. And, as we discussed earlier, models of intercultural competence
and the concept of the intercultural speaker limit the activity of the individual to mediation.
Intercultural citizenship goes beyond this, involving both activity with other people in the world,
and the competences required for dialogue with people of other languacultures.
Education for active citizenship beyond the constraints of the state requires competences
for interaction with people of other languacultures. Intercultural citizenship involves not only
the competences of citizenship itself but also the competences of intercultural communica-
tion. Ideally, education for intercultural citizenship should be a combination of taking ‘activity
in the here and now’ (as in citizenship education) with ‘criticality’ and ‘internationalism’
from foreign language education (Byram et al. 2017: xxiii). Such an approach –​among other

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characteristics –​includes: a critical questioning of assumptions ‘through the process of juxta-

position’; creation of a supranational community of action and communication ‘composed of
people of different beliefs, values and behaviours’; emphasis on ‘becoming aware of one’s existing
identities and opening options for social identities additional to the national etc.’; ‘paying equal
attention to cognition/​knowledge, affect/​attitude, behaviours/​skill’; and ‘being aware that values
sometimes conflict and are differently interpreted’, but in spite of this remaining ‘committed to
cooperation’ (ibid.: xxv).

Theory and practice

Acting together with other people can, historically, take two forms, at least in the European
tradition. Gellner (1998) refers to Tönnies’ well-​established distinction between an organic
togetherness of the Gemeinschaft (community) and the tendency to rationalist individualism of
the Gesellschaft (society). He argues that we need a middle way between the conservatism and
the tendency to fascism of the Gemeinschaft and the individualism of the Gesellschaft which
ignores the human tendency to fascism which is again evident in contemporary populism which
can be exploited by a wide range of parties from the left to the right (Bonikowski 2016).
Gellner’s suggestion that we need ‘cultural pluralist nationalism and [. . .] political internation-
alism’ (1998:187) is an attempt to combine a sense of belonging and identification with the
promotion of political activity both nationally and internationally. An intercultural citizen would
meet this intention since he/​she is someone who can identify with a group of people who are of
different languacultures but wish to act together. An intercultural citizen furthermore would not
fall under the influence of populism because criticality (Byram et al. 2017) represents the central
element in intercultural citizenship, and engages him/​her in critical action.
Action can take two forms nationally: within the political system of the state, or within civil
society. The question then arises how action may take place internationally, as civil societies are
often constrained by the borders of the state, working in parallel with the state. However, trans-
national communities are evolving that take on the functions of civil society organisms, and
simultaneously offer the possibility of identifying with social groups which are transnational.
Such groups may be permanent, but need not be so. They may form around a specific issue
in order to promote activity to resolve a problem. Teachers may, for example, encourage their
learners to form a transnational group to discuss and take action on topics of mutual interest (see
examples of such international telecollaborations in Byram et al. 2017; O’Dowd 2017; O’Dowd
and Lewis 2016; see also Chapter 22, this volume). Modern technologies allow individuals to
form networks across national boundaries with great ease.
Networks remain alive only as long as communications pass along their connections and this
again brings us to the question of intercultural communicative competence. Language choices
are crucial. Shall there be one or many? Are the network members bi-​/​plurilingual and bi-​/​
pluricultural? Are they able to build on the intercomprehension of the languages they speak?
Do they need a lingua franca where nobody claims to be a native speaker? Which lingua franca
shall be used?
Whatever the choices made, our earlier argument suggests that intercultural competence
will be important. Risager (2006; see also Chapter 6, this volume) argues that ‘linguistic practice
in a foreign language will typically show a blend of languacultures from both the [target] lan-
guage and the learners’ first language’ (Risager 2006: 187). Where two or more people are using
the target language as a lingua franca this implies that there will be a common ground in the
lingua franca to which each participant brings their own languaculture from their first language,
and will need their intercultural competence to tease out their mutual understanding of their

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original languacultures on the basis of their shared understanding of the lingua franca. This is to
assume that all have learnt about a languaculture from which the lingua franca has been derived;
for example that all have learnt the languaculture of France if French is the lingua franca. The
fact that French is the languaculture of other native speaker countries complicates matters in
principle but, in practice, the dominance of France in la francophonie probably means that France
is the target languaculture for all learners of French.
The same cannot be said of English where several countries –​the UK, the USA, Australia,
and so on –​might be the reference point, the target languaculture. Empirical research where
lingua franca speakers of English from Thailand and Malaysia discussed topics of mutual interest
shows that ‘successful intercultural communication [. . .] cannot take place without a similarity in
connotative meaning between interlocutors in relation to key words and phrases’ (Taylor 2006: 257;
italics added). Unfortunately, the acquisition of connotative meaning is haphazard and therefore
unlikely to be shared, leading to a stronger risk of misunderstanding in any civil society network.
Therefore, Baker (2009: 567) argues that English as a lingua franca ‘needs to move beyond the
traditionally conceived target language–​target culture relationship to incorporate an awareness
of dynamic hybrid cultures and the skills to successfully negotiate them’. Jenkins and colleagues
(2017) also stress the importance of English as a lingua franca in the context of electronically
mediated intercultural communication, which according to Internet World Stats (2017), is the
dominant language of internet users who are in the majority non-​native speakers of English.
The practical implications of intercultural citizenship may be handled by individuals par-
ticipating in international civil society activities as they arise. On the other hand, the teaching
and learning process in formal education has the potential to prepare learners systematically
for practical matters:  to ensure for example that lingua franca users are aware of the poten-
tial misunderstandings and develop strategies suitable to the media they are using to overcome
problems which arise. Second, and crucially, teachers may encourage learners to become active
as intercultural citizens. This means that educators of all kinds take the responsibility of stimu-
lating activity in the community and society around them, whether at local, regional, national, or
international level. The principles of education for citizenship require this, as can be seen in the
curriculum documents from many national education systems, although they usually encourage
activity only within the borders of the state. The concept of transnational civil society is not
yet found in most national curricula, although the Norwegian example quoted above suggests
that change is beginning. As pointed out earlier, in the context of education for citizenship,
there is little or no attention to differences and potential difficulties of diverse languacultures.
The practical solution might be for cooperation between teachers of citizenship and teachers of
languacultures (i.e., foreign and second language teachers).
A proposal to facilitate such cooperation has been made in Byram (2008) with a ‘frame-
work for political and language education’ where the complementarity of the orientations and
objectives of citizenship and language education is identified as a basis for planning teaching and
learning. This is summarised in four axioms of education for intercultural citizenship, especially
in the two final points quoted:

• causing/​facilitating intercultural citizenship experience, and analysis and reflection on it

and on the possibility of further social and/​or political activity, i.e., activity which involves
working with others to achieve an agreed end;
• creating learning/​change in the individual:  cognitive, attitudinal, behavioural change;
change in self-​perception; change in relationships with others (i.e., people of different
social groups); change that is based in the particular but is related to the universal.
Byram 2008: 187

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It is clear from this and in particular from the notion of ‘causing/​facilitating [. . .] reflec-
tion [. . .] on the possibility of further social and/​or political activity’ that teachers’ respon-
sibilities are complex and involve commitment beyond the traditions and conventions
of many  education systems hitherto. Some teachers may find this too demanding; others
may wish to ‘cause activity’ in more direct ways than simply stimulating reflection on its
possibility.
The training for teachers of intercultural citizenship has yet to be developed, as have the
teaching materials to support them. The readiness of teachers to be involved in intercultural
citizenship education was investigated in the Interact Project (2007). The conclusions include
analysis of which ‘are widespread and noticeable’ because the great majority of the teachers
consulted ‘had not received academic or pre-​ service education programmes focused on
intercultural citizenship education’ (p.  101). The development of the OECD global com-
petence framework is likely to bring these matters onto the agenda for teacher education
(OECD 2018).
As for the development of materials for teaching and assessment of intercultural citi-
zenship competences, there is clearly a need to create materials which are founded on a
thorough theoretical basis combining intercultural competence and a focus upon active
citizenship. The Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters (Byram et  al. 2009) is an attempt
to do this. It is based on a model of intercultural citizenship which defines and describes
competences required to be successful as an active citizen, as a social agent in an intercultural
context. It is an instrument for self-​analysis and evaluation by individuals who have had
intercultural experiences which have been significant for them. It may be used by indi-
viduals autonomously but can also be introduced and used as a pedagogical instrument by
teachers and other educators.
Users of the Autobiography are led through a series of questions and stimuli to help them ana-
lyse their intercultural experience from a number of perspectives, to reflect on its meaning for
them, and to consider what action to take as a consequence. The main headings of Attitudes and
Feelings, Behaviour, Knowledge and Skills, are similar to other descriptions of intercultural com-
petence but the final heading, Action, is crucial. It refers to the competences of active citizenship.
Action may be simply informing someone else about the encounter, but it may also be more
complex and involve, for example, a decision to become involved in civil society organisations.
It encourages activity in the world but it leaves open the question of whether that activity
should be together with others in an international network, acting at a level which ignores the
limitations of national borders.
The Autobiography has been successfully used for intercultural citizenship education in the
context of foreign language classrooms (e.g., Porto and Byram 2015; Porto 2018; 2019). Indeed,
the approach taken in the Autobiography has been further developed in the European Reference
Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (RFCDC) (Council of Europe 2018b), which
has a model of 20 competences distilled from an analysis of many previous models. They are
presented as four groups of competences (see Figure 4.1).
The RFCDC model notably includes values competences, derived explicitly from a
European tradition. It also includes elements of intercultural (communicative) competence
and adds competences which are needed within the context of democratic culture and
intercultural dialogue, when an individual ‘meets the demands, challenges and opportunities
that are presented by democratic and intercultural situations appropriately and effectively by
mobilising and deploying some or all of these 20 competences’ (Council of Europe 2018b,
vol. 1: 38).

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 Conceptualising intercultural competence

Figure 4.1  Competences for democratic culture

Source: Council of Europe, 2018b, vol. 1, p. 38. Reproduced with permission.

A shift towards an internationalist morality

We have so far discussed how the combination of the aims and purposes of citizenship education
with those of foreign language education is needed to prepare young people for ‘intercultural
citizenship’, i.e., not only for being intercultural but also for acting interculturally.
It is not surprising that intercultural citizenship education is on the agenda today. In an era
of social tensions –​exploited by populism –​in the wake of global migration and mobility across
borders, strong national (and nationalistic) feelings are emerging. Yet, neglecting the rights of
minorities (e.g., the use of their native languages) and promoting nationalistic and even jingo-
istic values, is contrary to the promotion of liberal and democratic values of freedom, tolerance,
diversity, and individual rights.9
The first strand of citizenship education quoted earlier from the Crick Report (1998)
emphasises socially and morally responsible behaviour. A  shift toward internationalism can
bring this morality to education, in general, and to foreign language education, in particular.
This shift also broadens the value of intercultural (communicative) competence from instru-
mental (that permits, e.g., more effective working in the global economy) to humanistic (that
prepares people for living in a multicultural environment and acting as intercultural citizens)
(Byram 2018).

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Michael Byram, Irina Golubeva

The concept of internationalism is complex, and it is important to understand that inter-

nationalism does not deny national borders. Instead, it binds people through communication,
facilitates the permeation of, and collaborations across, national borders; and promotes mutual
understanding, solidarity, peace, equality, freedom, human rights, and democracy (Byram 2018).
For example, Elvin (1960: 16) defined internationalism as:

[A]‌readiness to act on the assumption that mankind as a whole is the proper society to
have in mind for matters that cannot with safety or with such good effect be left exclusively
within the domain of smaller social groups such as nations.

Intercultural citizenship is one way in which Elvin’s emphasis on issues too important to be
left to nations has been articulated and realised. It is consciously normative and can give direc-
tion to teachers and learners, as is also evident in the Norwegian document quoted above, and
illustrated in Byram and colleagues (2017). Internationalism involves the implementation of
democratic processes and democratic humanism, which gives ‘equal voice to all involved and a
rational, democratic approach to solving problems’ (Byram 2018: 70). Internationalism is ‘aspir-
ational’ (Halliday 1988) and may never be attained, but provides education with much needed
moral direction.

Related topics
Bi-​/​
plurilingualism; citizenship; intercultural (communicative) competence; intercultural
speaker; interculturality; intercultural citizenship; internationalism; languaculture; third place,
translanguaging.

Notes
1 We refer to ‘intercultural (communicative) competence’ as defined in Byram (1997).
2 Those who speak more than two languages are variously called multilingual or plurilingual, or the term
‘bilingual’ is used to cover all cases, on the grounds that the phenomenon is the same irrespective of the
number of languages. Here, for the sake of clarity, we shall refer to individuals who speak and understand
two languages at some level of competence.
3 The fact that some languages are intercomprehensible because they are related, and speakers of one can
to some degree, and especially with training, understand speakers of another introduces a complicating
factor to the discussion. For clarity’s sake, we will not pursue this dimension in any detail here.
4 The concept of native speaker is itself complex as Davies (2003) has reported. It is used here, as Davies
argues, as a necessary if somewhat mythical concept which is widely used in both professional and
everyday discourse.
5 Many states, although not all, allow their citizens to have two or more citizenships and passports, but this
implies that they keep their citizenships as separate entities in their lives.
6 The special case of education for European citizenship which is expected to develop identification with
another entity than the state, in addition to and not in conflict with, national identity, cannot be explored
in detail here.
7 Although what is to be learnt may not be fully specified in curricula, the tests which new citizens have
to pass are an indication of what is expected by the authorities.
8 An example of explicit statements of attitude and identification can be found in Singaporean documents
for citizenship education (or, as they call the subject, ‘Character and Citizenship Education’), which
articulate several aspects of ‘character-​building’ that lead to education of ‘a person with a national and
cultural identity’, who ‘possesses a sense of responsibility to the nation; and has a shared commitment to
the ideals of the nation and its culture’ (Ministry of Education Singapore 2016: 7), and at the same time
emphasise as ‘key tenets of 21st century citizenship’ such attributes of citizenship as ‘identity, culture, and
active and responsible engagement as a member of society’ (ibid.: 10):

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• Take pride in our national identity, have a sense of belonging to Singapore and be committed to
nation-​building;
• Value Singapore’s socio-​cultural diversity, and promote social cohesion and harmony;
• Care for others and contribute actively to the progress of our community and nation;
• Reflect on and respond to community, national and global issues, as an informed and responsible
citizen.
9 A good illustration for such threatening trends is the Euromaidan (literally: ‘Euro[pean] Square’), a wave
of public protests and civil unrest in Ukraine, which began on 21 November 2013 and later culminated
in a series of violent riots, and events and ongoing processes related to it. As a result, nationalism has
become a part of everyday life in the Ukraine, and the willingness of Ukrainians to feel national pride and
geopolitical independence is misused by some politicians with the purpose of mobilising the electorate.
All this has become so obvious that even the European Union has to put pressure on Ukrainian author-
ities to strengthen the imperative of tolerance in Ukraine. Furthermore, the 2017 Law ‘On Education’
was condemned by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), by calling this Law ‘a
major impediment to the teaching of national minorities’ mother tongues’ (see PACE 2017).

Further reading
Alred, G., Byram, M. and Fleming, M. (eds) (2006) Education for Intercultural Citizenship:  Concepts and
Comparisons, Clevedon:  Multilingual Matters. (A definition of intercultural citizenship and analyses
of curricula in several countries using the definition as a criterion for determining the presence of
intercultural citizenship as an educational aim.)
Byram, M. (2008) From Foreign Language Education to Education for Intercultural Citizenship, Clevedon:
Multilingual Matters. (A presentation of the relationship of intercultural competences in foreign lan-
guage teaching and in citizenship education.)
Byram, M., Golubeva, I., Han, H. and Wagner, M. (eds) (2017) From Principles to Practice in Education for
Intercultural Citizenship, Bristol: Multilingual Matters. (Discussion of theory and practice of intercultural
citizenship education within the context of foreign language education.)
Carter, A. (2001) The Political Theory of Global Citizenship, London: Routledge. (A theoretical and philo-
sophical analysis of concepts of citizenship.)
Heater, D. (2004) A History of Education for Citizenship, London: Routledge. (An introduction to the con-
cept of citizenship education and its evolution.)

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