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 INTERCULTURAL
COMMUNICATIVE
COMPETENCE FOR
GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP
Identifying cyberpragmatic
rules of engagement
in telecollaboration

Marina Orsini-Jones
and Fiona Lee
Intercultural Communicative Competence for
Global Citizenship
 Marina Orsini-Jones • Fiona Lee

Intercultural
Communicative
Competence for
Global Citizenship
Identifying cyberpragmatic rules of engagement in
telecollaboration
Marina Orsini-Jones Fiona Lee
School of Humanities School of Humanities
Coventry University Coventry University
Coventry, UK Coventry, UK

ISBN 978-1-137-58102-0    ISBN 978-1-137-58103-7 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58103-7

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017959335

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub-
lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the
material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institu-
tional affiliations.

Cover illustration: Pattern adapted from an Indian cotton print produced in the 19th century

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
The registered company address is: The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, United
Kingdom
To Marco, Matteo, David, Astrid, Nancy and Mark
The best times
The worst times
Our greatest joys
With love
 Foreword

In this book, Orsini-Jones and Lee offer us a master class in theorisation

and exemplification of the importance (and pitfalls) of telecollaboration
in today’s HE landscape and beyond for language learners, linguists but
more importantly towards the attributes of global citizenship. Erudite,
theoretically robust and extremely enjoyable, this work is a must read
for all teacher trainers, language teachers, educators and trainees across
the world. It clearly demonstrates how, through well-crafted telecol-
laboration activities educators—in any field of study—may and should
shape the development of a genuine Intercultural Communicative
Competence in their learners—far from the simplistic and reductive
notions of intercultural competence that are currently supposedly
woven in many HE syllabi and often ill understood by faculty and learn-
ers alike.
This book also has the unique merit of casting a light on everything
that is wrong and inept with most language teaching practice—from text-
books to formulaic applications of the communicative approach to lan-
guage teaching and it offers all practitioners an opportunity to reposition
their pedagogy in more meaningful ways.
At a time when our “globalised” world is retrenching with inevitable
and devastating violence around extremism, protectionism and exacer-
bated forms of nationalism, the need to re-conceptualise intercultural
communicative competence is central to any valid notion of global citizen-

vii
viii FOREWORD

ship. This book does so in a way that suggests genuine solutions for educa-
tors. As such it should be on every library shelf and on the reading list of
any teaching and learning form of certification.

London, UK Marion Sadoux

20th August 2017
 Preface

This work aims to report on and discuss the lessons learnt from the
engagement with an Online International Learning (OIL) project, also
known as a telecollaborative project, carried out at Coventry University
(CU) in the UK in collaboration with the Université de Haute—Alsace
(UHA) in Colmar (France).
CU is fully committed to the internationalisation of its curricula
through OIL. The authors of this work have been engaged in telecollabo-
ration aimed at enhancing the intercultural awareness of both staff and
students involved in it with various different overseas partners since 2010.
The authors believe that staff in Higher Education (HE) must prepare
students for effective online interaction and explore the linguistic compo-
nents of Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) for global citi-
zenship, including the development of students’ critical digital literacies.
Web 2.0 affordances have contributed to re-shape both telecollabora-
tion models and the conceptualisation of ICC. They have led to a hybridi-
sation and blurring of physical and digital, of online and offline personal
and academic representations of self. In these digital liminal spaces partici-
pants in OIL projects struggle to understand what communicative modus
operandi to adopt, some manage to negotiate and reconfigure their iden-
tity via language, but others are, literally, ‘lost for words’. This work aims
to provide insights on how to support students to engage effectively online
in professional and academic settings and illustrates this with the telecol-
laborative case study CoCo (Coventry/Colmar).

ix
x PREFACE

The Internationalisation of the Curriculum (IoC) is becoming a prior-

ity for all Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). This work is aimed at
academics teaching languages and linguistics, but could provide ideas on
how to internationalise the curriculum in other subjects. It is hoped that
it will provide insights on the teaching and learning of ICC in general and
cyberpragmatics in particular, defined as understanding the intended
meanings of others in online communication.
Chapter 1 introduces the main themes covered in the book: IoC, devel-
opment of global citizenship competences and ICC. Chapter 2 provides
an overview of the evolution of the concept of ICC. Chapter 3 discusses
cyberpragmatics, the main politeness and pragmatic filters used for the
CMC analysis of the CoCo asynchronous discussion exchanges and intro-
duces threshold concepts (TCs). Chapter 4 illustrates the OIL case study
CoCo and discusses the action-research-informed model of role-reversal
threshold concept pedagogy adopted for the project. In Chapter 5 the
research methodology underpinning the cyberpragmatic analysis is out-
lined. Chapter 6 discusses the issues and challenges arising from the
research data. Chapter 7 provides concluding remarks and final recom-
mendations on how to integrate telecollaboration for ICC (or possibly
ICCC—Intercultural Cyberpragmatic Communicative Competence)
development into the HE languages and linguistics curriculum.

Coventry, West Midlands, UK Marina Orsini-Jones

Coventry, West Midlands, UK  Fiona Lee
 Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all the staff and the students involved in the tele-
collaborative/Online International Learning (OIL) projects CoCo and
MexCo to date and in particular Elwyn Lloyd in Coventry and Régine
Barbier in Colmar. We would also like to thank the Higher Education
Academy for awarding us the initial funding (Teaching Collaborative
Grant, £60,000) to carry out the action-research on the OIL projects. A
big thank you to Francesca Helm and Sarah Guth for allowing us to edit
and re-use their Telecollaboration 2.0 table and to Benjamin Fröhlich,
commissioning editor at Peter Lang, for granting us permission to edit ad
re-use the table. We are also grateful to the OIL support colleagues in the
Centre for Global Engagement. Finally we would like to thank the learn-
ing technologists both in our former Faculty of Business, Environment
and Society and in the ‘cuonline’ technical support unit at Coventry
University.

xi
 Contents

1 Introduction   1

2 Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) Revisited   7

3 Cyberpragmatics  25

4 The CoCo Telecollaborative Project: Internationalisation at

Home to Foster Global Citizenship Competences  39

5 CoCo Research Questions and Answers  53

6 Emerging Online Politeness Patterns  63

7 Conclusion  93

xiii
xiv Contents

 ppendix 1: Intercultural Digital Learning Project (IDLP)—

A
Mahara Checklist  99

Appendix 2: Participant Information Form 103

Appendix 3: Sample Brown and Levinson Analysis 107

Appendix 4: Sample Leech analysis 115

Index 121
 List of Abbreviations

CC Communicative Competence
CoCo Coventry/Colmar (OIL project)
CMC Computer Mediated Communication
COIL Collaborative online international learning
CP Cooperative Principle (Grice, 1975)
CU Coventry University
ECTS European Credit Transfer System
FEA Face-enhancing Act
FLE Foreign Language Education
FTA Face-threatening Act
GCE Global Citizenship Education
GSP General Strategy of Politeness (Leech, 2014)
H Hearer = the hearer or addressee of an interaction
HE Higher Education
HEA Higher Education Academy
HEI Higher Education Institution
IC Intercultural Competence
ICC Intercultural Communicative Competence
ICCC Intercultural Cyberpragmatic Communicative Competence
IDLP Intercultural Digital Learning Project
IoC Internationalisation of the Curriculum
L1 First Language
L2 Second Language
MexCo Mexico/Coventry (OIL Project)
OIE Online International Exchange

xv
xvi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

OIL Online International Learning

PIS Participant Information Sheet
RQ Research Question
S Speaker = the speaker or addresser in an interaction
TC Threshold Concept
VLE Virtual Learning Environment
 List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Telecollaboration 2.0, Hem and Guth (2010, p. 74) 18

Fig. 3.1 Role-reversal model of threshold concept pedagogy, “through
the looking glass” of the “expert students” 33
Fig. 4.1 Screenshot of the Open Moodle CoCo course web 43
Fig. 4.2 Word cloud for “individualism” (UK responses) 45
Fig. 4.3 Word cloud for “individualisme” (French responses) 45
Fig. 4.4 Chart of strategies: positive politeness (Brown & Levinson,
1987, p. 102) 47
Fig. 4.5 Chart of strategies: negative politeness (Brown & Levinson,
1987, p. 131) 48
Fig. 4.6 Chart of strategies: off record FTA (Brown & Levinson,
1987, p. 214) 49
Fig. 4.7 The component maxims of the General Strategy of Politeness
(Leech, 2014, p. 91) 49
Fig. 4.8 The categories of constraint violation of the “General Strategy of
Impoliteness” (Leech, 2014, p. 221) 50
Fig. 6.1 Pie chart summary of Brown and Levinson analysis of all 3
exchanges66
Fig. 6.2 Pie chart summary of Leech analysis of all 3 exchanges 78

xvii
 List of Tables

Table 2.1 Byram’s ICC schema—Factors in intercultural communication

(adapted from Byram, 1997) 13
Table 5.1 Analysis of unit #61 58
Table 5.2 Analysis of unit #89 58
Table 5.3 Analysis of unit #102 59
Table 5.4 Units #3 and #12 60
Table 6.1 Forum structural details 64
Table 6.2 Units #9–10 and #30–31 67
Table 6.3 Units #35 and #82–84 68
Table 6.4 Units #61–63 and #75 68
Table 6.5 Units #54 and #62 69
Table 6.6 Units #79–80 and #95–98 70
Table 6.7 Units #13–14, #30–31 and #71–73 71
Table 6.8 Units #22–23, #46, #89 and #94 73
Table 6.9 Units #19–22 76
Table 6.10 Unit #89 76
Table 6.11 Units #39–43 79
Table 6.12 Units #6–8 80
Table 6.13 Units #56–58 80
Table 6.14 Units #6–7 81
Table 6.15 Units #13–15 82
Table 6.16 Micro-­linguistic features in the CoCo fora 84
Table 6.17 Unit #46 84
Table 6.18 Units #12, #46 and #62 85
Table 6.19 #89 and #50 86

xix
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Abstract Chapter 1 introduces the themes contained in this volume, which

is based on the CMC (Computer Mediated Communication) lessons learnt
from the engagement with a small scale telecollaborative/Online
International Learning (OIL) project, CoCo, between the UK and France,
that took place in academic year 2015–2016. It discusses how OIL projects
are supporting the internationalisation of the Higher Education (HE) cur-
riculum and the development of global citizenship competences, including
intercultural communicative competence (ICC) for the digital age.
The chapter provides some ICC insights stemming from OIL, with
particular reference to the teaching and learning of cyberpragmatics,
defined as understanding the intended meanings of others in online
communication.

Keywords Online International Learning (OIL) • Telecollaboration •

Internationalisation of the curriculum (IoC) • Intercultural communica-
tive competence (ICC) • Global citizenship • Threshold concept (TC) •
Cyberpragmatics

This work aims to report on and discuss the CMC (Computer Mediated
Communication) lessons learnt from the engagement with a small scale
telecollaborative project, CoCo, between the UK and France, that was

© The Author(s) 2018 1

M. Orsini-Jones, F. Lee, Intercultural
Communicative Competence for Global Citizenship,
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58103-7_1
2 M. ORSINI-JONES AND F. LEE

modelled on larger scale one, MexCo, between the UK and Mexico

(Orsini-Jones, Lloyd, Gazeley, Lopez-Vera, & Bescond, 2015).
Telecollaboration or OIL (Online International Learning) is also
referred to as Online Intercultural Exchange—OIE and Collaborative
Online International Learning—COIL. O’Dowd and Lewis (2016, p. 3),
refer to it as OIE and define it as “the engagement of groups of students
in online intercultural interaction and collaboration with partner classes
from other cultural contexts or geographical locations under the guidance
of educators and/or expert facilitators”. In this study telecollaboration
and OIL will be used interchangeably.
OIL has become one of the major ways of internationalising the cur-
riculum for all subjects, not just languages, as reflected in a publication
coordinated by staff who operate within the COIL fellowship at SUNY
(State University New York): Globally Networked Teaching in the
Humanities: Theories and Practices (Shulteis Moore & Simon, 2015),
which includes examples from Performing Arts, Film Studies, Literature
and Feminist theory. OIL projects aim to make the HE curriculum at each
of the partner institutions involved more intercultural and international,
in keeping with the strategic priority to encourage their students to
become digitally literate global citizens. The IoC and the acquisition of
global citizenship competences are priorities in the UK HE sector.
Internationalisation, according to literature from the Higher Education
Academy (HEA) prepares graduates to live in and contribute responsibly
to a globally interconnected society (HEA, 2016). Implementing interna-
tionalisation in HE requires not only content to be modified, “it also
requires changes in pedagogy to encourage students to develop critical
skills to understand forces shaping their discipline and challenge accepted
viewpoints” (Zimitat, 2008, p. 143). In the field of language learning
these skills include the development of Intercultural Communicative
Competence (ICC) as originally defined by Byram (1997) and further
developed by other scholars (e.g. Kramsch, 2009/2015, p. 199).
Interculturality is more than accepting linguistic and cultural diversity: it is
about interculturally competent speakers engaging in dialogues between
cultures (Byram, 2012) while at the same time acknowledging that it is
not just two cultures we are dealing with, or two languages, or two nations.
Kramsch proposes to go beyond these dualities and talks about ‘symbolic
competence’ (2006) to place ICC within a multilingual perspective
(2009/2015, p. 199). The development of ICC competences, including
the ability to critically reflect on one’s own cultural assumptions, to recog-
 INTRODUCTION 3

nise and value cultural diversity, to feel empathy for others—can be chal-
lenging for both teachers and learners (Leask, 2008, p. 128), yet it is also
transformational, leading to dynamic and reflective dialogue (Leask, 2015,
p. 114). Orsini-­Jones et al. (2015, p. 205) argue that the development of
ICC through telecollaboration is troublesome, but brings benefits that
outweigh the challenge it poses. Through telecollaboration the learner’s
identity is negotiated and reconfigured.
Thorne states that Web 2.0 (definition coined by O’Reilly in 2005)
technologies have enabled a novel “intercultural turn” in second language
education (2010, p. 139) by facilitating distant connections not previously
possible.
The work reported here reflects the shift from previous models of tele-
collaboration focusing on tandem language learning (e.g. O’Rourke,
2007), to the development of new intercultural competences for global
citizenship for both staff and students involved in exchanges that do not
necessarily involve a stress on language learning and teaching of a foreign
language as their primary focus. The emphasis is on practising the inter-
cultural competences and the digital literacies necessary to operate in an
interconnected world both when using English as the shared language of
communication online and when engaging in bilingual and/or ‘hybrid’
communication involving code-switching.
It could be argued that the polarisation of feelings towards the “others”
caused by the referendum vote for ‘Brexit’ in June 2016 in the UK makes
the raising of UK-based students’ awareness of Byram’s ICC components
relating to knowledge, skills, attitudes and values (Byram, Gribkova, &
Starkey, 2002) more urgent. There is an ethical and appealing dimension
to OIL, as there is evidence (Tcherepashenets, 2015) that it can also sup-
port the fostering of students’ awareness of social justice themes relating
to the development of the ability to operate in a difference-friendly world.
Cyberpragmatics (Yus, 2011), defined as understanding the intended
meanings of others in online communication, is one of the integral com-
ponents of ICC that can be developed through telecollaboration. Staff
involved in teaching languages in HE should support students with per-
fecting their cyberpragmatic competence with targeted curricular inter-
ventions. The engagement in telecollaboration raises students’ awareness
of the conventions of effective online engagement. In agreement with
Stroińska and Cecchetto (2013, p. 175) the pragmatics of politeness pro-
posed by Leech (1983) is being revisited here and applied to the analysis
of the CMC asynchronous written exchanges on CoCo. Politeness literacy
4 M. ORSINI-JONES AND F. LEE

for telecollaboration is an integral part of ICC. HE staff need to be aware

of the online ICC ‘rules of engagement’ and integrate cyberpragmatic
practice into their teaching.
As pointed out in various telecollaborative studies (e.g. Kramsch,
2009/2015; O’Dowd & Ritter, 2006; Ware & Kramsch, 2005) it can be
challenging to maintain communicative momentum and effective interac-
tion in online intercultural exchanges that normally require a long-term
task-based-learning approach. It would appear that even in carefully scaf-
folded telecollaboration activities breaks in communication can occur.
This study applies linguistic politeness theory frameworks (Brown &
Levinson’s, 1987; Leech’s, 2014) to the asynchronous interactions in
the telecollaborative CoCo exchanges linked to the intercultural tasks
the students engaged with. Leech’s concepts of pragmalinguistic and
sociopragmatic appropriateness are explored and the interactants’ use
of micro-linguistic features to replace contextual cues in the online set-
ting will be highlighted. It is suggested that ICC is a threshold concept
(more about this in Chap. 3) and cyberpragmatics is one of its funda-
mental components.

References
Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Byram, M. (1997). Teaching and assessing intercultural communicative compe-
tence. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Byram, M. (2012). Conceptualizing intercultural (communicative) competence
and intercultural citizenship. In J. Jackson (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of
language and intercultural communication (pp. 85–98). Abingdon: Routledge.
Byram, M., Gribkova, B., & Starkey, H. (2002). Developing the intercultural
dimension in language teaching: A practical introduction for teachers.
Strasbourg: Council of Europe.
Higher Education Academy. (2016). frameWORKS: Essential frameworks for
enhancing student success: 05. Internationalising higher education. Retrieved
April 27, 2017, from https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/system/files/down-
loads/higher_education_academy_-_internationalisation_frame-
work_-_210416.pdf
Kramsch, C. (2006). From communicative competence to symbolic competence.
Modern Language Journal, 90(2), 249–251.
Kramsch, C. (2009/2015). The multilingual subject. Oxford: OUP.
 INTRODUCTION 5

Leask, B. (2008). Teaching for learning in the transnational classroom. In L. Dunn

& M. Wallace (Eds.), Teaching in transnational higher education: Enhancing
learning for offshore international students (pp. 120–132). Abingdon:
Routledge.
Leask, B. (2015). Internationalizing the curriculum. Abingdon: Routledge.
Leech, G. (1983). Principles of politeness. Harlow: Longman.
Leech, G. (2014). The pragmatics of politeness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
O’Dowd, R., & Lewis, T. (2016). Online intercultural exchange: Policy, pedagogy,
practice. Abingdon and New York: Routledge and Taylor and Francis.
O’Dowd, R., & Ritter, M. (2006). Understanding and working with ‘failed com-
munication’ in telecollaborative exchanges. CALICO Journal, 23(3), 623–642.
O’Reilly, T. (2005). What is web 2.0? Design patterns and business models for the next
generation of software. Retrieved February 27, 2017, from http://facweb.cti.
depaul.edu/jnowotarski/se425/What%20Is%20Web%202%20point%200.pdf
O’Rourke, B. (2007). Models of telecollaboration (1): eTandem’. In R. O’Dowd
(Ed.), Online intercultural exchange: An introduction for foreign language
teachers (pp. 41–61). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Orsini-Jones, M., Lloyd, E., Gazeley, Z., Lopez-Vera, B., & Bescond, G. (2015).
Student-driven intercultural awareness raising with MexCo: Agency, autonomy
and threshold concepts in a telecollaborative project between the UK and
Mexico. In N. Tcherepashenets (Ed.), Globalizing on-line: Telecollaboration,
internationalisation, and social justice (pp. 201–234). Bern: Peter Lang.
Shulteis Moore, A., & Sunka, S. (Eds.). (2015). Globally networked teaching in the
humanities: Theories and practices. New York, NY: Routledge.
Stroińska, M., & Cecchetto, V. (2013). Facework in intercultural e-mail commu-
nication in the academic environment. In F. Sharifian & M. Jamarani (Eds.),
Language and intercultural communication in the new era (pp. 160–180).
New York, NY: Routledge.
Tcherepashenets (Ed.). (2015). Globalizing on-line: Telecollaboration, internation-
alization and social justice (pp. 199–239). New York: Peter Lang.
Thorne, S. L. (2010). The ‘intercultural turn’ and language learning in the cruci-
ble of new media. In F. Helm & S. Guth (Eds.), Telecollaboration 2.0 for lan-
guage and intercultural learning (pp. 139–164). Bern: Peter Lang.
Ware, P. D., & Kramsch, C. (2005). Toward an intercultural stance: Teaching
German and English through telecollaboration. The Modern Language Journal,
89(2), 190–205.
Yus, F. (2011). Cyberpragmatics: Internet-mediated communication in context.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Zimitat, C. (2008). Student perceptions of the internationalisation of the under-
graduate curriculum. In L. Dunn & M. Wallace (Eds.), Teaching in transna-
tional higher education: Enhancing learning for offshore international students
(pp. 135–147). Abingdon: Routledge.
 CHAPTER 2

Intercultural Communicative Competence

(ICC) Revisited

Abstract This chapter documents the evolution of the concepts of

Communicative Competence (CC) and Intercultural Communicative
Competence (ICC) and discusses how the advent of the World Wide Web
and the widespread use of Computer Mediated Communication (CMC)
are affecting the re-conceptualisation of ICC. It highlights the importance
of integrating telecollaboration into the HE curriculum for the purpose of
developing a global citizenship competences for the digital age in HE
(Higher Education). The concept and features of ICC for global citizen-
ship are explored.

Keywords CC • ICC • WWW • CMC • Cyberpragmatics

2.1   Intercultural Communicative Competence

The importance of the acquisition of Intercultural Competence (IC) in
general (Deardorff & Arasaratnam-Smith, 2017), and ICC in particular
(Byram, 1997) has been stressed by a variety of HE-related bodies (e.g.
Byram, Gribkova & Starkey, 2002; HEA, 2016). A ‘global graduate’
should be able to both recognise and value cultural difference and com-
municate effectively in a variety of contexts and through a variety of media.
There is an ethical dimension to global citizenship that is well illustrated

© The Author(s) 2018 7

M. Orsini-Jones, F. Lee, Intercultural
Communicative Competence for Global Citizenship,
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58103-7_2
8 M. ORSINI-JONES AND F. LEE

by the UNESCO Global Citizenship Education (GCE) attributes and

aims (2014, pp. 15–16):

GCE aims to empower learners to engage and assume active roles, both
locally and globally, to face and resolve global challenges and ultimately to
become proactive contributors to a more just, peaceful, tolerant, inclusive,
secure and sustainable world.

As well as the ethical dimension illustrated above, there is an employ-

ability focus on global citizenship attributes. Employers in the UK value
employees who have a global mindset and intercultural agility, according
to a report by Diamond, Walkley, Forbes, Hughes, and Sheen (2011).
Their survey of UK business professionals found that they believe that a
“global graduate” should demonstrate the ability to:

• work collaboratively;
• communicate effectively
• demonstrate drive and resilience;
• embrace multiple perspectives.

Kumaravadivelu states that we are experiencing an unprecedented inter-

cultural global context where “cultures are in closer contact now than ever
before and influencing each other in complex and complicated ways. This
development is creating a global cultural consciousness, and along with it,
creative and chaotic tensions that both unite and divide people” (2012,
p. 4).
The challenge for educators in HE is to encourage students to become
critically operational in such a complex world and to equip them with the
multimodal multiliteracies and intercultural critical awareness necessary to
decode said world (Orsini-Jones, Lloyd, Gazeley, Lopez-Vera, & Bescond,
2015). The relevant literature on the concept of culture in language learn-
ing and teaching (e.g. Jackson, 2012/2014) has on the whole either put
a stronger stress on a definition of what ‘culture’ is in multidisciplinary
contexts (e.g. Spencer-Oatey & Franklin, 2009) or highlighted the inter-
play between the linguistic features of ICC and the conceptualisation of
culture in language learning studies (Byram, 1997; Risager, 2006;
Kramsch, 2014).
In an attempt to provide an overview of the various definitions of ICC,
Timpe proposes the table “Alternative Terms for Intercultural Communicative
 INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE (ICC) REVISITED 9

Competence” (2014, p. 24), where she lists as equivalent, amongst the oth-
ers, the concept of CC by Hymes, both Intercultural Interaction and
Intercultural Interaction Competence by Spencer-Oatey and Franklin
(2009) and ICC by Byram (1997). It is argued here that these terms are not
equivalent to each other and that every definition carries different nuances
and outlines different viewpoints that are not normally interchangeable.
This study sees Byram’s ICC definition as distinct from the others and as the
fundamental starting point for a discussion of how ICC could be supported
by and developed through telecollaborative projects.

2.2   From CC to ICC

The definition of the concept of CC provides the foundations for the defi-
nition of ICC. Hymes coins the expression CC by critiquing what he sees
as the reductionist Chomskyan competence-performance dichotomy,
which he perceives to be too focused on grammar forms. He adds to com-
petence the sociolinguistic dimension, the rules of use. In his ‘SPEAKING’
model (1972), Hymes brings socio-cultural elements into the framing of
his ethnography of communication. The acronym stands for (Bell, 1981,
p. 25):

S setting—time and place—and scene—the cultural definition of the

interaction.
P participants—the sender(s) and receiver(s) of the message (s).
E ends—the outcomes—results, intended or otherwise, of the communi-
cation and the goals—aims, general and individual of the communication.
A acts—the form and sequence of the message; how the message is
communicated.
K key—the manner in which the message is delivered.
I instrumentalities—the channels—written, spoken, etc.—used for the
transmission of the message.
N norms—expectations concerning the conduct of the interaction which
govern the behaviour of the speaker(s) and hearer(s) and their interpretation
of the messages.
G genre—type of interaction readily identifiable by the language used.

In line with his SPEAKING model, Hymes creates the concept of CC that
expresses the ‘feasible’ not just the ‘possible’ in terms of competence
(1972, cited in Johnson, 2008, p. 58) and addresses these points:
10 M. ORSINI-JONES AND F. LEE

1. Whether (and to what degree) something is formally possible;

2. Whether (and to what degree) something is feasible in virtue of the
means of implementation available;
3. Whether (and to what degree) something is appropriate in relation
to a context in which it is used and evaluated;
4. Whether and (to what degree) something is in fact done, actually
performed and what its doing entails.

Hymes’s CC is normally seen as the starting point for the inclusion of

culture into the communicative approach in language learning and teach-
ing but Byram argues that the transfer of Hymes’s CC to second language
learning and teaching is “misleading” (1997, p. 8), as it was designed for
communication in the first language. According to Byram, this transfer
“implicitly suggests that foreign language learners should model them-
selves on first language speakers, ignoring the significance of the social
identities and cultural competence of the learner in any intercultural inter-
action” (1997, p. 8). Byram also argues that the 1980s see a focus on the
sociolinguistic aspects of CC, rather than its intercultural ones and that
the model of CC devised to define the Threshold Level framework for the
Council of Europe in the 1980s reflects this. One of the most influential
conceptualisation of CC to date, which also informs much of the CC
debate in the 1980s, is Canale and Swain’s (1980), stemming from
research carried out on the programmes to support bilingualism in Canada
and further expanded by Canale later (1983). Canale and Swain (1980)
propose that learners should be provided with ‘sociocultural knowledge of
the second language … that is necessary in drawing inferences about the
social meaning or values of utterances’ (Canale & Swain, 1980, p. 28).
They see CC as comprising the following elements:

• grammatical competence: mastery of the linguistic code;

• sociolinguistic competence: ability to use language appropriately in
different contexts and shift registers;
• discourse competence: ability to be cohesive and coherent;
• strategic competence: use of verbal and non-verbal strategies to com-
pensate for the gaps in knowledge.

The development of the concept of CC is also affected by the functional

grammar developed by Halliday (1985), who revolutionises the way func-
tions and structures are viewed. Halliday argues that language serves for
 INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE (ICC) REVISITED 11

the expression of content with a focus on meaning making. Both Hymes

and Halliday agree that we need to look at what people say in context
rather than at the possible linguistic production of an ideal speaker who
knows all the formal rules.
Despite the fact that contexts and pragmatics enter the theorisation of
CC in the 1970s and 1980s, it could be argued that it is only in the 1990s
that Byram and others fully integrated the intercultural dimension into its
framing (Byram, Gribkova & Starkey, 2002; Byram & Zarate, 1994).
Despite Byram’s critique of Van Ek’s model of “communicative ability”
(Van Ek, 1986, p. 35) from the 1980s, because it still refers to the ide-
alised native speaker model (1997, p. 9), Byram recognises that Van Ek’s
six competences, that must be seen in conjunction with autonomy and
social responsibility, provide a good starting point to discuss what ICC is
(Van Ek, 1986, in Byram 1997, p. 10) and they are:

• Linguistic competence: the ability to produce and interpret meaning-

ful utterances which are formed in accordance with the rules of the
grammar concerned and bear their conventional meaning […] that
meaning which native speakers would normally attach to an utter-
ance when used in isolation (1986, p. 39);
• Sociolinguistics competence: the awareness of ways in which the choice of
language forms […] is determined by such conditions as setting, rela-
tionship between communication partners, communicative intentions,
etc. […] sociolinguistic competence covers the relation between lin-
guistic signals and their contextual—or situational—meaning (p. 41);
• Discourse competence: the ability to use appropriate strategies in the
construction and interpretation of texts (p. 47);
• Strategic competence: when communication is difficult we have to
find ways of ‘getting our meaning across’ or of ‘finding out what
someone means’; these are communication strategies, such as
rephrasing, asking for clarification (p. 55);
• Socio-cultural competence: every language is situated in a sociocul-
tural context and implies the use of a particular reference frame
which is partly different from that of the foreign language learner;
socio-cultural competence presupposes a certain degree of familiarity
with that context (p. 35);
• Social competence: involves both the will and the skill to interact with
others, involving motivation, attitude, self-confidence, empathy and
the ability to handle social situations (p. 65).
12 M. ORSINI-JONES AND F. LEE

Byram concurs with Kramsch (1993), that even if the above compo-
nents add to the limitations of the previous CC definitions by including
the sociocultural dimension, there are two fundamental weaknesses in Van
Ek’s theorisation:

1. too much importance is put on the native speaker model that creates
a target that is impossible to achieve;
2. a second language learner cannot model themselves on a native
speaker because of their existing personal sociocultural and sociolin-
guistic competences, it could in fact be damaging for them to do so
and cause a ‘culture shock’ (Byram, 1997, p. 12).

Byram (1997) does not mention Agar’s languaculture concept (1994),

but his second point would appear to echo it. According to Agar (1994,
p. 28, cited in Risager, 2012/2014, p. 105):

Language, in all its varieties, in all the ways it appears in everyday life, builds
a world of meanings. When you run into different meanings, when you
become aware of your own and work to build a bridge to the others, ‘cul-
ture’ is what you’re up to. Language fills the space between us with sound;
culture forges the human connection through them. Culture is in language,
and language is loaded with culture.
Languaculture focuses on meaning in discourse. The values and beliefs of
distinct cultures exert a very strong pull on the language, influencing lan-
guage at deep levels. Languaculture is part of socialisation both when it is a
question of different languages and also within the same language.

Like Agar, Byram sees interaction as socially embedded in a specific socio-­

cultural context. In his model, he makes a distinction between intercul-
tural competence (IC) and ICC. IC represents the ability of individuals:

to interact in their own language with people from another country and
culture, drawing upon their knowledge about intercultural communication,
their attitudes of interest in otherness and their skills in interpreting, relating
and discovering, i.e. of overcoming cultural difference and enjoying inter-
cultural contact. (Byram, 1997, p. 70)

An example of this is teaching foreign literature in translation. While ICC

refers to people being:
 INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE (ICC) REVISITED 13

able to interact with people from another country and culture in a foreign
language. They are able to negotiate a mode of communication and interac-
tion which is satisfactory to themselves and the other […]. Their knowledge
of another culture is linked to their language competence through their
ability to use language appropriately—sociolinguistic and discourse compe-
tence—and their awareness of the specific meanings, values and connota-
tions of the language. (Byram, 1997, p. 71)

In the context of achieving ICC through physical mobility within Europe,

Byram (1997) introduces the distinction between the “tourist” and the
“sojourner” in an attempt to explore how an individual relates to or com-
municates with a person in different cultural contexts. The “tourist” hopes
that their own way of living will be enriched but not fundamentally
changed by the experience of seeing others, whilst the “sojourner” pro-
duces effects on a society which challenge its unquestioned and uncon-
scious beliefs, behaviours and meanings, and “whose own beliefs,
behaviours and meanings are in turn challenged and expected to change”
(Byram, 1997, p. 1). He labels the quality that the “sojourner” requires as
“Intercultural Communicative Competence” (ICC) and proposes a
“schema of the factors involved—in ICC—and the relationship among
them” (1997, p. 33), see Table 2.1.
Byram adopts several concepts for his schema, including non-linguistic
theories such as Tajfel’s social identity theory (1981), Gudykunst’s cross-­
cultural communication theory (1994) and Bourdieu’s social and cultural
capital theory (1990). Byram believes that for language learners to become
competent intercultural communicators they need to be willing to sus-
pend judgment on others’ beliefs and behaviours as well as their own and

Table 2.1 Byram’s ICC schema—Factors in intercultural communication

(adapted from Byram, 1997)

savoir comprendre
Skills: to interpret and relate
savoir être savoir s’engager savoir être
Knowledge: of self and Education: political education and Attitude: relativising self:
other; critical cultural awareness valuing the other
of interaction:
individual and societal
savoir apprendre/faire
Skills: to discover and/or interact
14 M. ORSINI-JONES AND F. LEE

that they should be open to analysing their beliefs and behaviours from the
viewpoint of the person with whom they are engaging. This could be
achieved through reflective activities. Closely linked to teaching and learn-
ing practice, Byram’s schema locates second learning in the classroom
(including both teaching and learning), in the field (could include teach-
ing but focuses on learning) and in independent settings (learning only)
(1997, p. 73).
The attitudes (“savoir être”) in the schema in Table 2.1 are those
towards people who are perceived as culturally different (Byram, 1997).
For successful intercultural interaction, they will be “attitudes of curiosity
and openness, of readiness to suspend disbelief and judgement with
respect to the others’ meanings, beliefs and behaviours” (Byram, 1997,
p. 34). It includes the ability to analyse one’s own culture from the per-
spective of another. The knowledge in the schema is the knowledge the
interactant already has about their own culture and the other’s. If the
interactant knows how their own sociocultural identity has been con-
structed, they will understand others’ better (Byram, 1997, p. 35). This
includes interpreting and relating skills (“savoir comprendre”) which stem
from existing knowledge, while the skills of discovery and interaction
(“savoir apprendre/faire”) originate from a place of having no or little
knowledge but being willing to acquire new knowledge (Byram 1997,
p. 38). Doyé (1993) cited in Byram (1997, p. 43) argues that political
education induces learners to reflect on the social norms of their own and
different societies, which contributes in the language classroom to critical
awareness, evaluation and understanding of other cultures. Byram places
education at the centre of his schema because the teaching and learning of
skills and knowledge develops political and critical awareness and contrib-
utes towards Foreign Language Education (FLE) in a holistic way (Byram,
1997, p. 46). An interculturally competent person will be able to move
beyond superficial cultural encounters , into establishing relationships by
mediating between cultural identities, languages and perspectives (Aguilar,
2010; Byram & Zarate, 1994; Godwin-Jones, 2013; Sercu, 2002).
There are some critiques of Byram’s (1997) schema. For example,
Matsuo describes it as an “individual-oriented list-type model” (2012,
p. 349) which is pedagogically difficult to apply and argues that its use for
language teachers is mainly relating to consciousness-raising rather than
being a practical tool. However, Byram (1997) provides detailed objec-
tives as “can-do” statements for the “savoirs” which demonstrate how his
model of ICC can be implemented into the curriculum and many e­ ducators
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