A Snapshot of Intercultural Communication Courses: An International Analysis

Authors: Brigit Talkington and Laura Lengel

© Brigit Talkington and Laura Lengel, Bowling Green State University, USA

Table of contents

• Key questions about intercultural communication
• Incorporating a broader conception of interculturality
• Addressing the complexity of cultural identity and hybridity
• Problematising the relationship between self and 'Other'
• Bringing in new approaches in intercultural communication and education curricula
• Bibliography

This paper was originally presented at the IALIC/Subject Centre Pedagogical Forum, which was part of the 4th Annual Conference of IALIC (International Association for Languages and Intercultural Learning).

Key questions about intercultural communication

Snapshots are powerful. They can provide a glimpse of a phenomenon’s past, illustrate its present, and intimate its potential. They can also provide a context for an academic subject area positioned within its life-history. This study attempts to take a snapshot of the current status of curriculum development in intercultural communication and education in Great Britain, Europe, and the U.S.A. and its territories. In this research, we examined themes emerging from interculturally-focused course descriptions/syllabi.

Nearly 1,000 queries were sent to course leaders to obtain a copy of their course outline/syllabus. At the time of writing, 186 syllabi have been collected and analysed to determine trends in intercultural communication, stimulating pedagogical strategies, assignments, and examples of how teachers encourage their students to engage with the material. Teachers also shared narratives about their experiences teaching intercultural communication in those specific geographical, institutional and cultural contexts within which they research and teach.

The study is guided by four key questions:

1. How do teachers and researchers of intercultural communication and education incorporate a broader conception of interculturality?
2. How do we effectively address the complexity of cultural identity, hybridity, and other aspects which impact intercultural communication?
3. How do intercultural communication and education curricula problematize the relationship between self and ‘Other’?
4. What new approaches are being incorporated into intercultural communication and education curricula?

Incorporating a broader conception of interculturality

The first key question asks: How do teachers and researchers of intercultural communication and education incorporate a broader conception of interculturality?

Michael Byram, Geof Alred and Mike Fleming (2003), aim to “extend the concept of ‘interculturality’ outside its usual frames of reference in discussions of multicultural education, foreign language, and cross-cultural training in order to explore the wider educational debate.” They suggest that “by extending the concept of ‘interculturality’ outside its usual frame of reference, we are inviting educators to examine the practical and theoretical consequences of seeing their work in new ways. However it is also our aim that those who already see themselves working within the area of ‘interculturalism’ will also be prompted to extend and deepen their understanding of what they do” (p. 1). It is exciting to be privileged as educators to do just that – extend and deepen our understanding of our pedagogical practices, and the theories and research that ground them.

Addressing the complexity of cultural identity and hybridity

The second key question guiding this work is: How do we effectively address the complexity of cultural identity, hybridity, and other aspects which impact intercultural communication?

For this question, we can reflect upon the papers presented at the 2003 IALIC conference, nearly all of which have carefully crafted analyses about the fluidity of identities, the intermixing and merging of heritage and artifacts, and the liminal embodiment of living betwixt and between cultures – what Jane Wilkinson (2003) maintains is somewhere “between our own national or local culture and a transnational culture which spreads across boundaries.”

Again we recognize Alred, Byram and Fleming. Acknowledging this complexity is part of the move to extend and deepen our understanding of ‘interculturality’. An interpretive turn in intercultural communication rejects the essentialising nature of uncritical intercultural communication research and teaching materials. It problematizes the conflation of nation-state with a single, monolithic culture. It critiques the tendency of some teachers to present tidy lists of how to interact with someone from a particular nation. It presents an interculturality that is messy, broken, unfinished, unable to be placed in an orderly box. It moves away from what Crispin Thurlow (2003) suggests is the “compulsion for unity, lulling our students with lullabies of peace and harmony.”

Judith Martin and Thomas Nakayama (2000:40, see also 1999) constitute culture “as a site of struggle, a place where multiple interpretations come together, but where there is always a dominant force…Researchers assume that by examining and writing about how power functions in cultural situations, the average person will learn how to resist forces of power and oppression.”

Problematising the relationship between self and 'Other'

One way to resist forces of power and oppression is to explore the third key question: How do intercultural communication curricula problematize the relationship between self and ‘Other’?

Alice Tomic (2002) reminds us that, as teachers of intercultural communication, “we can never fully ‘know’ the Other”? If that is so, how do teachers engage in critical pedagogy for “nearing the Other”? If “we can never fully ‘know’ the Other”, how can we “learn the language of the Other in significant detail” (Tomic 2001:7) and, at the same time, help our students to do the same?

We also problematize our constitution of the Other. Alice Pierce (2003) reports “recent theorists have moved away from the binary notions of self and other towards a blending of self and other in multicultural landscapes.” With this in mind, how do teachers guide learners to conceptualize the Other, or reconceptualise a new being altogether? One way is to tell what Thurlow (2003) calls the “little stories”, the everyday interactions and practices, in order to tell the “big stories”, or the theory-driven analyses about interculturality and lived experience. These stories were the focus of the 4th annual IALIC conference on the intercultural narrative. Delegates at the conference heard both “little” and “big stories.” Saskia Witteborn (2003) suggests students need to hear both the “happy stories” and the “sad stories” no matter how difficult they may be to hear.

Of course, in order to hear these stories, we need to understand the language of the narrators that tell them. In the analysis of the course curricula, geographical and national differences emerged, most notably the little attention paid in the U.S.A. to language as a key component of intercultural communication. Very few courses focus on language as integral to interculturality. While most courses and texts in the U.S. do address language in intercultural communication, the majority of these courses devote merely one or two class meetings to this topic, amounting to 8 – 10% of overall course content.

Bringing in new approaches in intercultural communication and education curricula

The fourth key question is: What new approaches are being incorporated into intercultural communication and education curricula?

This study examines how interpretive and critical approaches to communication, which incorporate cultural studies, critical theory, and performance studies, are increasingly evident in intercultural communication curricula. These new approaches and perspectives, called Critical Intercultural Communication Studies, are gaining recognition in several nations (see Halualani, Drzewiecka and Mendoza, forthcoming; Lengel, in press). Critical intercultural communication scholars Judith Martin and Thomas Nakayama (1999) suggest that highlighting the intersection of culture and power is at the heart of critical studies. Critical intercultural communication studies highlight critical and interpretive perspectives; cultural studies, critical theory, and critical pedagogy (see Nainby, Warren, and Bollinger, 2003); an interest in the intersection of culture and power; culture as seen as a site of struggle; intense critique of the complexity of culture and cultural identity; and finally, an activist component.

In their discussion of culture as a site of struggle, Martin and Nakayama (2000:40) argue, “The goal of the critical researcher is not only to understand human behavior but to change the lives of everyday communicators.” Our intercultural communication courses, materials, even syllabi, should seek to articulate how both teachers and learners can be transformed in our everyday communicative and lived experience.

Bibliography

Halualani, Rona, Drzewiecka, Jolanta & Mendoza, Lily (forthcoming). Mapping Out Critical Intercultural Communication Studies. New York, Peter Lang.

Lengel, Laura (in press). Intercultural Communication and Creative Practice. Westport Connecticut, Praeger.

Lengel, Laura and Talkington, Brigit (2003). A Snapshot of Intercultural Communication Courses: An International Analysis. Paper presented at the IALIC/Subject Centre Pedagogical Forum, Lancaster University, 16 December 2003.

Martin, Judith & Nakayama, Thomas (2000). Intercultural Communication in Contexts. 2nd edition. Mountain View, California, Mayfield.

Martin, Judith & Nakayama, Thomas (1999). Thinking Dialectically about Culture and Communication. Communication Theory, 9: 1-25.

Nainby, Keith, Warren, John T. and Bollinger, Christopher (2003). Articulating Contact in the Classroom: Toward a Constitutive Focus in Critical Pedagogy. Language and Intercultural Communication 3:3.

Pierce. Alice (2003). What Does It Mean to Live In-between? Paper presented at the 4th annual IALIC conference, Lancaster University, 16 December 2003.

Tomic, Alice (2001). Language and Intercultural Communication as a “New” Discipline: the Wider Epistemological Framework, in D. Killick, M. Perry and A. Phipps (eds.). Poetics and Praxis of Languages and Intercultural Communication. Glasgow, University of Glasgow French and German Publications, and Leeds, Centre for Language Study, Leeds Metropolitan University.

Thurlow, Crispin (2003). Relating to Our Work, Accounting for Our Selves: The Autobiographical Imperative in Teaching About Difference. Keynote paper presented at the 4th annual IALIC conference, Lancaster University, 16 December 2003.

Wilkinson, Jane (2003). Between the Global and the Local: German-Speaking Playwrights as Intercultural Narrators in a Globalised World. Paper presented at the 4th annual IALIC conference, Lancaster University, 16 December 2003.

Witteborn, Saskia (2003). The Intercultural Narrative and the Creation of Intercultural Scenes. Paper presented at the 4th annual IALIC conference, Lancaster University, 16 December 2003.