INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION: ELEMENTS FOR A CURRICULAR APPROACH

Martine Abdallah-Pretceille
Professeur des Universités (Paris VIII et Paris III Sorbonne Nouvelle)
 
 

1. Introduction

It could hardly be overemphasised that the status of languages, as well as the conditions under which they are taught and learnt, are largely dependent on their historical, economic, social and political context. Accordingly, it is of vital importance to address the issue of teaching language and culture in relation to the fundamental changes that occur in the fabric of today's society, in particular the globalisation process and the increasing social complexity. The act of teaching involves at least two worlds, that of the person teaching and that of the person taught. One of the questions currently posed is how appropriate the act of teaching is for a public that is perceived and labelled as culturally "different". How should the act of teaching be adapted, on what methods should it be based, and what is the impact of cultural data on the act of learning and of teaching?

Yet, even though the issue of openness to others has regained importance, it is still pictured against a background of crisis, ethnic identity, fundamentalism and nationalism. Educating to promote tolerance, fight racism and acquire cultural knowledge and recognition became important priorities already at the end of the Second World War. That was a time of renewed utopias based on ideas of international openness, dialogue between cultures, exchange and mutual understanding, a ‘culture for peace’, and the like. That was also the time when studies on stereotypes were carried out, such as the work of Otto Klineberg  (see e.g. Klineberg 1951). These elements must thus be taken into account wherever language learning is at issue.

Learning a foreign language is above all a means of learning otherness. By emphasising the purely linguistic dimension of language learning and the view of language as merely a tool, however justified this view may be, are we not gradually turning away from the true humanistic dimension of learning? The focus on functional aspects of language, to the detriment of its ontological value, has given rise to a form of education where language ? and communication ? are seen not only as an instrument but also, and increasingly, as a technically definable construction. The shift from "teaching civilisation" to "teaching culture", and the notion of intercultural communication ? often used, it should be admitted, in an undifferentiated and  poorly grasped sense ? can be seen not only as a progression but also as a need to move beyond the stance from which languages are considered purely as linguistic tools.
 

2.  What curricula for what objectives?

The question of aims in language learning has been raised once again because the social and historical context has changed. Why do we learn languages? To know the language or to understand the Other? Is it a matter of knowing other languages and cultures, or of understanding other people through their language use and their culture (or cultures)? Is there not a risk that knowledge of cultures, in the academic sense of the term, will obscure communication by acting as a filter or - even worse - as a screen? Seen in this light, meeting and communicating with Antonio or Jean would mean communicating with the image or even stereotype developed from partial, selective and temporary information about the Italians, the Spanish, or the French. Acquiring knowledge and meeting others are quite distinct social and communicative aims, and this clearly raises the question of defining educational objectives, especially with regard to primary education. One should learn not only to speak, but also to speak for oneself and, above all, to speak with other people. Any definition of a teacher training curriculum implies resolving conflicts of aims and objectives. A second obligation consists in choosing an adequate theoretical frame of reference that relates to the objectives and also to societal and scientific evolution.

The project of building Europe has increasingly turned multilingualism into a method, and even a condition, for recognising and respecting identities. On the other hand, it can no longer be ignored that languages, once seen as mere tools for exchange and communication, play a crucial role in defining the idea of citizenship. Intercultural communication covers both these aspects.

Multilingualism in itself, however, is no guarantee of openness towards others. Knowledge of languages and cultures does not systematically imply better mutual recognition. Depending on which educational aims are given priority, two kinds of responses can be foreseen. One response is to add new content matter by extending language learning to cultural learning. Here, there is a risk that the cultural learning is reduced to a simple endeavour to increase emotional understanding, and that educational programmes are promoted which are based on the idea of differences ? a controversial and widely criticised view as far as the perception of diversity is concerned. The second response entails a change in perspective, which means including cultural diversity as the structural backbone of learning ? 'structural' being understood both in a methodological and an ontological sense.

The Council of Europe has been a precursor in the field of teacher training. It should be acknowledged that it was with reference to migration that their first recommendation, no. (84) 18 on "training teachers for intercultural understanding", was voted in 1984. This recommendation followed on a programme (1977-1981) for training teachers in intercultural education, where it was stated that "an intercultural perspective can allow teachers to acquire a new profile by training them in diversity and giving them the opportunity to contribute
to the drive for human rights and peace which is represented by the recognition of mutual enrichment and solidarity by different cultures."

The Commission of European Communities, in a report from 1994, addresses teacher training for intercultural education with reference not only to migration but also to language teaching (COM (94) 80 ). Under the pressure of social change, teacher training, which is generally  - and above all in France - conceived as "training to teach", i.e. from a functional perspective, would have to be fundamentally modified so as to take into account not only the act of teaching in itself, but also the teacher in his/her capacity as a social agent committed in time and place. A full acknowledgement of the impact of culture impliesmeans recognising that training teachers in an intercultural perspective implies their commitment as social beings and as citizens. It is not merely an introduction to intercultural education defined as specialised teaching skills intended for a specific public. Just as teachers cannot ignore the philosophical system on which teaching practices are founded, neither can they be unaware of the cultural structures which create and confirm the educational system. Thus, teachers will be encouraged to learn to define themselves culturally, and to become conscious of their individual and collective choices. This is actually an invitation to rid them of a sort of anthropological amnesia. The intercultural approach means making this move towards the Other, but also towards oneself. Taking this step will be the more difficult the later it happens in a teacher’s career, since the force of prejudice and stereotypes will obscure a person’s view. Within the framework of intercultural communication training, the teacher is, in essence, invited to participate in a project of exploring identities.

It should be underscored that modern society is no longer characterised by a state of affairs but by a rapidly changing succession of states, alterations and cross-breeding. The current cultural plurality is not identical to that of yesterday and does not foreshadow that of tomorrow. Phenomena such as the European perspective, migration movements, the internationalisation of economies and globalisation of daily life, particularly through the media, are producing an increasingly heterogeneous structuring of the social fabric, whose meaning and sociological weight fluctuate according to the various settings and trends. In order to recognise that this heterogeneity and complexity are not just additional effects or disturbances with regard to a former order of things, we have to move away from abstract models and reality-obscuring theories concerning, say, the French, the English or the Germans.

To ensure that training is rooted in social and educational pragmatism, while avoiding the pitfall of setting up models based on abstractions, it is necessary to base it on a generative theory. Otherwise, it is likely to be limited to a series of recipes or a collection of reflex-responses, which are of no help in coming to grips with the problems. As regards cultural questions, theoretical choices are important because they lead to good practice. It is not simply a question of producing behaviour but also of teaching people to act and not just react to social and educational situations. Consequently, it is advisable to give teachers conceptual and methodological tools in order to prevent them from speaking without taking reality into account, or from making claims which have more to do with words than with things. From now on it will be important for teachers not only to master a discipline and how to teach it, but also to be able to find their way in complex, contradictory and sometimes conflicting situations. Linguistic knowledge as well as cultural knowledge are no longer confined to a strictly technical and functional framework but also have an ontological dimension. In this perspective, the objective of teacher training will no longer be to amass information and knowledge (including cultural data) but to propose methods of questioning, and to further the understanding of the psycho-social and anthropological mechanisms that are part of the increasingly heterogeneous cultural situations we live in.
 

3. Communicating in which culture(s)?

Languages and communication between individuals and groups are now part of a process of extreme social differentiation, characterised by improvisation, cross-breeding and acculturation, the measure of which is exponential to the amount of direct or indirect contacts occurring between individuals or groups. Groups can no longer escape cultural diversity. European unity, immigration, travel and globalisation all mean opportunities for people to meet other people. Although otherness has no doubt become banal, it is nonetheless becoming increasingly complex, due to the fact that diversification is ever more pronounced within each group ? whether defined by age, sex, profession, region etc. Individuals are more and more autonomous with regard to their group of origin or, more precisely, to their groups of membership, whether temporary or permanent. Encouraging autonomy and personality development, together with the development of the democratic spirit, has led to a stronger personalisation of behaviours and conduct. Ties of dependence and the need to resemble the other members of one’s own reference group are increasingly weakened.

This individualisation represents a very strong counterweight to what is perhaps too easily and too hastily referred to as cultural globalisation. Nobody lives in a unique cultural context anymore. Loans, temporary or not, transgressions and creativity lead to a sort of "cultural zapping" that is worth taking into account when the question of intercultural communication is raised. We can see that cultural identities are no longer defined by group membership but, on the contrary, are created and personalised; we are being confronted with social and cultural realities that are polychromatic, variable and unstable. For this reason it is becoming more and more difficult to define an individual according to his/her cultural, ethnic or even national belonging. It is becoming increasingly difficult to label the Other, to categorise it according to criteria which made identification possible in the past, such as name, nationality, age, culture, social and economic status. Identity markers are elusive, and since they no longer mean anything by themselves, they have lost their relevance as far as objective categorisation is concerned. Emmanuel Lévinas’  maxim, "to meet a man is to be kept awake by an enigma", takes on its full meaning .

As a consequence, not only do expressions such as "cultural identity", "cultural membership" or even the concept of culture itself no longer correspond to any objective reality, but, on the contrary, give rise to some confusion. The term "culturality" marks the end of an approach based on the principles of causality, determinism and categorisation. Instead, it favours the notion of networking and gives primacy to relationships and communication to the detriment of the spirit of systems and structures. Culture is "an open work", to use Umberto Eco’s expression (Eco  1965), a "work" open to several readings and interpretations. A culture is only the expression of a point of view, a point of view that is likely to be confirmed or countered by other points of view. In other words, culture is just the result of linguistic and communicative activity. Therefore the emphasis placed first on civilisations, then on cultures, should be placed on the individuals themselves, that is, on otherness itself. The mosaic model, whereby various ethnic and cultural groups ? each of which is perceived and represented as homogeneous ? are seen as simply juxtaposed, no longer has any validity. It is not enough with this increasing complexity of the social fabric, which is structural and not simply the result of circumstances, to adopt a view of the Other based on cultural knowledge, evidence or implication. The prevailing tendency today, however, is to enhance studies based on recognising distinct, homogeneous cultural entities, rather than taking into consideration today's mestizo culture, a culture of split origins, which apparently, as it has developed, has become too commonplace even to be perceived.

Because it is anchored in history, in contexts and in its own relations, culture is a stage for enacting onself and the Other, and is given voice through behaviour, talk and action. It makes light of confinements and categorisations and expresses inter-individual or inter-group relations. For this reason, the way to describe a cultural fact varies depending on the interlocutors, their intentions and the circumstances. There is no autonomy of culture with regard to the conditions in which it is produced. Fictional and subjective registers are essentially used to express culture. The term "culturality" tends to account for these various changes, while "culturalism", which systematically emphasises cultural variation, gives rise to a form of cultural "scientism" and dogmatism. There is a considerable gap between theoretical cultural models and daily cultural practice, communication and relations. It is within this gap that an educational programme for otherness and diversity finds its place, where learning intercultural communication is just one of the options. The question is therefore how to introduce a cultural dimension into training while avoiding the pitfalls of culturalism and relativism.

This continuous refraction of cultures through time, place, subjectivity and situations poses the problem of how relevant an introduction to cultures is. The notion of "cultural baroque" constitutes an invitation to elude the identity trap, the tale of roots and origins. Distinguishing between culture and culturality is not merely a semantic game. It means moving from an analysis in terms of structures and states to one of complex and random processes. Training in intercultural communication is to be part of a renewed paradigm of culture and to escape conceptual and methodological drifting.
 

4.  Which anthropology?

Cultural knowledge does not necessarily translate into identifying cultural phenomena as technical constructions. Although introducing computers undoubtedly means learning to handle computers, for cultures it is not enough to learn about cultures. It is, above all, essential to retain their multiple values and complexity. Any training response based on cultural knowledge is likely not only to be void and ineffective but may also lead to the build-up of a series of mutual barriers. As an example, all ethnographical data that shows a tendency to drift towards the exotic is incapable of accounting for the blending of cultures which characterises modern society. Learning cultural otherness is not synonymous, and must not be confused, with knowledge of the culture of the Other. One can no longer speak of English, French or German culture without addressing the extreme diversity of their situations, outward signs and agents as a result of immigration and the globalisation of daily life. Descriptive information of the ethnographical sort is inadequate in accounting for cultural changes. Most studies in the area proceed by refusing rejecting the principle of otherness and by favouring the description of culture, i.e. creating knowledge by means of categorisation (what the Americans, the Germans, the French, the British etc. are like). In cultural terms, the Other is perceived according to a logic of differentiation. Culture is not seen as one variable among others, but as a supposedly homogeneous entity to which behaviours are ascribed. Awareness of others and knowledge of others are mistaken for one another ? a mistake which can be harmful both on a scientific and ethical level, due to the fact that knowledge does not fully capture the subject and is only capable of grasping static objects. In other words, knowledge and recognition of cultures should not be based on the study of characteristics and definitions of cultural phenomena, but rather on a study of relations. While cultural "grammars", "encyclopaedias" and "cartography" flourish, it would be more relevant to base studies on a generative grammar of behaviours and means of communication, according to the principle of variation.

As far as teachers are concerned, it is a question of anthropology as a means of elaborating general cultural theories and cultural processes. Anthropology, like all disciplinary fields, contains a multiplicity of schools of thought and covers various perspectives and orientations. As a consequence, the question is what anthropology the teacher can refer to and in response to what objectives and necessities. In 1985, Jacques Berque  proposed an answer in a report sent to the French Minister of Education. In his view, teacher training "should include consideration of the roles, objectives and sociocultural constraints of an educational system which could lead, responsibly and involving as little risk as possible, to cultural pluralism. It should also cover the following fields: cultural areas, civilisations and heritage; migration phenomena; the future in France of imported cultures, their transformation and the creation of new cultural practices" (Berque 1985).Ten years later, an awareness of the anthropology of modernity could be added to this list.

Far from turning teachers into anthropologists, let alone ethnologists, it is a matter of offering them an analysis enriched by anthropology, which is by definition a science of diversity and otherness. From the perspective of vocational training, it is advisable to resort mainly to a problem-formulating kind of anthropology, rather than to descriptive ethnology. In this context, Georges Balandier  refers to generative social sciences which tend towards interpretations defined in terms of actions and complex interactions (Balandier 1985).

The diversity of cultures represented in schools and society in general makes it impossible to grasp reality on the simple basis of knowledge of cultural characteristics. This impossibility is aggravated by the development of identity and culture as an instrumental function which favours the notions of strategy, manipulation and cultural improvisation. Preference will be given to relational and interpretive anthropology rather than to ethnology centred on the Other, that is, to the interpretation and analysis of interaction and of reciprocal definitions of individuals and groups. This entails a shifting of emphasis from a system of cultural models to the capacity for grasping cultural mechanisms and change. Such an understanding cannot be obtained through the observation of the characteristics of cultural systems or of individuals but should be based on problem-formulating with regard to contacts, interaction, acculturation and dysfunctions, all of which require permanent interpretation and reinterpretation.

It is no longer a question of knowing cultures in order to predict behaviours and, in particular, means of communication, but of understanding others in all their uniqueness and also in their inescapable universality. What counts is not so much the knowledge as the experience of otherness, which must be founded on ethics. If the recognition of languages and cultures has led, in the first instance, to a demand for ethnographical training and for particular knowledge about cultural specificity, the future lies more in the recognition of the individual and thus of a philosophy of the individual based on ethics.

References to culture are based not on certainties but rather on incompleteness and hypotheses. The aim is therefore to learn to interpret - and to understand - cultural information which is ambiguous because it is manipulated by the speakers. In terms of training, this means passing from the descriptive stage to that of understanding processes by making use of a mixed bag of knowledge. Rather than a mixture of cultures, it is a culture of the mixing which remains to be elaborated.

Coding and decoding cultures and identifying the cultural marks of language behaviour are still to be initiated within the domain of factual knowledge, although this does not inevitably lead to a better understanding of others. Factual knowledge  - and ethnographical knowledge belongs in this category - does not favour communication, that is, encountering the Other. On the contrary, it is defined as discourse about the Other, because it is based on a descriptive approach which endeavours to be objective (it being impossible to guarantee objectivity) and which remains separate from individuals. In effect, it is advisable to reconsider the initial question: what do we need to know about others or about their culture in order to communicate effectively with them? The question proves to be null and void and in fact is of scant interest with regard to human communication. In the same way as it is wrong to assume that words are what make speech possible, it is a mistake to believe that cultural elements are what allow us to understand other people.

We could rephrase the question in the following way: how do individuals use culture - theirs and that of their interlocutors - or, more precisely, how do they use fragments of these cultures in order to communicate? The main thing is not to know facts and cultural characteristics but to understand how these are handled for the purposes of communication, that is, in talk and in action. This is quite a different way of  "catching culture in the act". A culturalist's analysis of cultural items does not take into account the processes of cultural over-coding, especially in connection with the multiplication of frames of reference and belonging, while it does take into account the unequal relations that exist among individuals and groups. The underlying assumption is that linguistic exchange only constitutes the visible part of the iceberg and that the most important part of the communication frequently lies beyond the verbal signalling, which often functions as a barrier hiding other meanings.

The shift from teaching civilisation to teaching cultures, and the passage from cultural competence to intercultural competence as a means of analysing what might be referred to as the cultural "stage management", are factors that, far from representing a simple linear progression of cultural didactics, entail an epistemological and methodological transformation by focusing on the individual (i.e. not just on the learner and the speaker) and the communication process, and by resorting to the humanities and social sciences, in particular anthropology. In this perspective, the central concept is not so much culture as otherness. If the teaching of culture is set up as an objective for training, there is a fear that culture itself will become an obstacle to the discovery of otherness and of diversity.
 
 
 
 

ORIENTATION BIBLIOGRAPHIQUE

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