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Language teaching and learning involves the encountering of two languages: the target language and the language of the learners. In essence, language is more than a linguistic system of codes. As the major means for understanding a culture, language functions as more than just words and sounds. Keesing (1974) defines language as a ‘subsystem of culture” (p. 77). Spradley (1979) affirms that a language of a culture serves as “the primary symbol system that encodes cultural meaning in every society” (p.99). Damen (1987) adopts this view and extends it to the teaching of culture in foreign language classroom. He stresses that “a language reflects and reinforces the value and belief systems that form such a large part of the subjective reality shared by members of the same culture” (p.120). In defining language, Damen asserts that

…human language may be viewed as a system, as a vehicle for cultural transmission, as a formative force whose structures place their stamp upon the minds and actions of its speakers, or as only one of many modes of communication, albeit a crucial one. (p. 119).

With this definition, language is seen as cultural code, and human beings as cultural bearers. This means that, in the process of communication between people from two cultures, it is actually a battle ground of beliefs, views of value and ideology between cultures. When the FL/EFL learning is placed in the context of cross-cultural education and understanding, how, then, would a learner confront, respond, reflect, and interpret his relationship with subjects from another culture? In the following section, the question will be addressed with a discussion of the process of FL/EFL cross-cultural learning experience.

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The meaning of culture

Culture as a shared system

The definition of culture varies with different perspectives on interpreting human behaviours. In 1952 Kroeber and Kluckhohn alone came up with a list of more than 200 definitions of "culture" (Kroeber and Kluckhohn, 1952). Adaskou, Britten & Fahsi (1990) define culture on a more specific level by outlining four dimensions of meaning (senses) of culture: the aesthetic,

sociological, semantic and the pragmatic. The first dimension refers to cinema, literature, music and media, which they address as the aesthetic level of

culture; the second dimension, the sociological one, designates the

organization and nature of family, interpersonal relations, customs, material conditions, and so on. The third and the fourth dimensions include:

…the whole conceptualization system which conditions perceptions and thought processes, and their pragmatic or sociolinguistic sense refers to the background knowledge, social and paralinguistic skills, and language code which are necessary for successful communication. (Adaskou, Britten & Fahsi , 1990, pp.3-4).

These four dimensions interweave one another and constitute the complexity of the meaning of culture.

Goodenough (1963) sees culture as an “organization” in which all people behave or believe in ways that all other members of that culture accept or believe. He rightly notes that “(c)ulture…consists of standards for deciding what is,…for deciding what can be,…for deciding what one feels about it,…for deciding what to do about it, and…for deciding how to go about it”(p.259).

Geertz (1973) elaborates this view by arguing that culture is a “a historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited concepts expressed in symbolic form by means of which men communicate,

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perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life”(p. 89). When consolidated and externalized as a whole, this multi-leveled, multi-dimensional web of meaning in culture affects the behaviours, beliefs, and values of its individual member in various ways.

In Keesing’s view, this form of co-constructed knowledge, however, comes through a process of cognitive learning (Keesing, 1974), in which members of the culture learn through a recognition and interpretation of the “shared information or knowledge encoded in system of symbols” (Lafayette, 2003, p. 59). Robinson(1988) also indicates that "past experience influences meaning, which in turn affects future experience, which in turn affects subsequent meaning, and so on" (p. 11), and thus suggests that culture should be viewed as a dynamic system.

In his analysis of the interactive relationship between culture and its members, Brooks (1968) asserts that the individual is primarily moulded and

constrained by the conceptualising system of culture. Culture as a system provides numerous models and rules for its members to observe and follow, and these prescriptions for behaviours cannot be ignored without penalty. In his emphasis, “the totality of the culture is the pervading medium that gives meaning to each individual’s acts, yet his capacity for innovation, choice and rejection is never forgotten” (Brooks, 1968, pp. 21-22).

Language as representation of culture

As people mould and conceptualise the culture they mutually share, language becomes the representation for this particular cultural mode. Hall (1997) defined such representation as “using language to say something meaningful about, or to represent, the world meaningfully, to other people” (p. 15). According to Hall, it is through semiotics and discourse that this form of representation connects meaning and language to culture. This view echoes Halliday’s (1978) notion of language as “social semiotic,” an approach to

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language that hypothesizes that identity and culture are reflected in linguistic structure.

Semiotics is the primary means through which culture manifests itself. Peirce asserts this view and stresses on the interpretation of signs. Meaning and understanding, according to Peirce, are guided and limited by a triadic mode of signs: the symbolic, the iconic and the indexical, each denotes a level of perception and together they construct the complexity in signs. Peirce theorizes that these signs are interpreted according to a habitual connection, a rule with which people in that culture share and follow. “The symbol is

connected with its object by virtue of the idea of the symbol-using mind, without which no such connection would exist” (Peirce, 1998, p. 9), Peirce explains, and a sign exist mainly due to the fact that it is used and

understood.

The system of signs and the signified in a culture denotes an on-going and dynamic meaning-making process. Barthes (1972) furthers this claim by arguing that the tension between signs and the signified would be stabilized when people in culture work together with these signs and the signified to create a “myth”, which is an iconic representation of a culture phenomenon. Language as sign, in this sense, denotes two layers of perspectives:

1) the sharedness nature:

language represents the collective meaning-making practice of the culture.

2) the dynamic nature:

the negotiating process between signs and signified is a constant mediation among the language users which in turn creates the common beliefs in that culture.

Views of culture in foreign language learning

In the context of this research study in ELT, views of culture can be further explored from two perspectives: the learner’s culture, and the target culture. Atkinson (1999) indicated there are two contrasting views of culture in this

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situation. The first view is a “received view,” referring to the way one culture is seen from the perspective of another culture, which is “a notion of culture(s) that sees them in their most typical form as geographically (and quite often nationally) distinct entities, as relatively unchanging and homogeneous, and as all-encompassing systems of rules or norms that substantially determine personal behaviour” (p. 626). For instance, a “received view” on Chinese culture might see all Chinese people as an entity and behaving in similar ways. Appadurai elaborates on this view by calling our attention to fact that, even in one given culture, despite shared values and norm, there might be conflicts in power relations: people could be “marginalized or dominated” (1996, p. 12, cited in Atkinson, 1999, p. 626). Appadurai (1996) reminds that this “received view” of culture fails to address the unequal distribution of power and resources in culture.

Atkinson thus argues for an “alternative, nonstandard view of culture,” which calls into consideration “terms such as identity, hybridity, essentialism, power, difference, agency, resistance and contestation” (Atkinson, 1999, p. 627). This post-colonial view of culture addresses the contesting and fluctuating nature of culture. Levy (2007) elaborates on this view with five dimensions of culture:

1) Culture as elemental

• We are deeply embedded in our own culture.

• We have to learn about our own culture first to better understand our

frame of reference.

• Aim at "practical objectivity" and reflection, with the learner as

researcher.

2) Culture as relative

• A contrastive approach is unavoidable, but problematic.

• Generalisations have some value, as long as they are not considered

absolute.

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• Small scale interactive models/methods are helpful.

• Aim at direct engagement to develop a more nuanced perspective.

3) Culture as group membership

• Membership of groups is layered and multiple. • Membership is regulated formally and informally.

• Aim at raising awareness of the cultural groups we belong to and how

language is used to negotiate and sustain membership. 4) Culture as contested

• Culture is contested at many levels.

• Culture is contested through multiple language interactions. • Aim at raising awareness, identifying points of contestation and

managing differences.

5) Culture as individual (variable and multiple)

• Cultural knowledge varies from person to person and operates at

many levels.

• Students and teachers are selective in how they represent their culture. • Aim at sharing individual experiences and building upon them.

(p. 112)

These five dimensions help to broaden our understanding about the complexity of the relationship between language and culture in ELT. The question is, then, how do we teach culture learning in ELT practice?

Culture learning in ELT

Language is thus more than a part of a culture: language reflects culture. ELT researchers have recognized this dialectical connection between language and culture since mid-1980s (Cortazzi & Jin, 1999; Damen, 1987; Hinkel, 2005; Lessard-Clouston, 1997; Nieto, 2002; Peterson & Coltrane, 2003; Stern, 1992). Early approaches to include cultural features in the language classroom, Krasner (1999) for instance, recognized the necessity for language learners to

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develop not only linguistic competence but also an awareness of the

culturally-appropriate features of the target language. Peterson and Coltrane (2003) specified the learning objectives of culture learning as follows:

Language learners need to be aware, for example, of the culturally appropriate ways to address people, express gratitude, make requests, and agree or disagree with someone. They should know that behaviours and intonation patterns that are appropriate in their own speech

community may be perceived differently by members of the target language speech community. They have to understand that, in order for communication to be successful, language use must be associated with other culturally appropriate behaviour. (p. 1).

In approaching the cultural knowledge of the target culture, language

learners in this context need to appreciate and adopt the socially appropriate behavioural patterns of the culture. In this early approach, competence in a target language encompassed such form of cultural knowledge, and focused on cultural facts, such as geography, foods, festival celebrations and life styles, in other words, information about cultures. However, Tomlinson and

Masuhara (2004) indicate that such cultural knowledge given in the form of fact, statistics and generalisations are external, static, articulated, stereotypical, and reduced. The information thus given about the targeted culture can be misleading as it is not only dependant on other people’s (i.e., the teachers’) expertise, but also simplified, prejudiced, and fixed in time

Otherwise feasible in certain contexts, there might be two fallacies in this approach for language teaching. Firstly, teaching “external” forms of cultural knowledge fails to recognize the dynamic, fluid nature of any culture,

therefore the cultural knowledge so transmitted could be misleading for the language learners. Secondly, these objectives see language learners as neutral cultural beings in approaching another culture. As explored in 2.1.2.1,

language learners bring to the classroom cultural heritage of their own, and

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cultural confrontation inevitably arouses contestation of the different values and ideology embedded in all forms of culture. Teaching of these cultural facts addresses only the social behaviours without examining the underlying cultural values, nor does it support students’ reflection on their own culture. Recent studies in ELT (e.g., Duff, 2012; Pavlenko & Blackledge, 2004; Pavlenko & Lantolf, 2000), however, shift the focus to the process and effect in learning about another culture through learning its language. These approaches see cultural learning as a context for understanding the target language. Such views assert a cultural context that goes beyond language itself. Pavlenko and Lantolf (2000) argue that it is

…about second language learning not as the acquisition of a new set of grammatical lexical and phonological forms but as a struggle of concrete socially constituted and always situated beings to participate in the symbolically mediated lifeworld of another culture. (p.155).

The cultural context “defines the language patterns being used when

particular persons come together under certain circumstances at a particular time and place” (Paige, Jorstad, Siaya, Klein, & Colby, 2000, p. 9). Gudykunst and Kim (1992, cited in Paige et al., 2000) elaborate on this view of cultural context with the concept of external and internal contexts in cross-cultural encounter. External context refers to “the social meaning attached to the situation of interaction on the grand scale, i.e., the ways in which a particular culture group constructs the various settings for human interaction and communication” (Paige et al., 2000, p. 10). Internal context refers to the cultural meaning each learner/interlocutor brings to the encounter. This internal context might result in understanding or misunderstanding among people from different cultures. The significance in this cross-cultural

encounter, Paige et al. stress, lies in the development of a third context: a context that is created by the interaction among people from and out of the target culture. “The two interactants will continuously be scanning each

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other’s verbal and nonverbal communication (contextualization cues) for insights into the meaning of their encounter; communication is altered as meaning is constructed and reconstructed” (Paige et al., 2000, p. 11). Paige et al. (2000) define culture learning as

…the process of acquiring the culture-specific and culture-general knowledge, skills, and attitudes required for effective communication and interaction with individuals from other cultures. It is a dynamic, developmental, and ongoing process which engages the learner cognitively, behaviourally, and affectively. (p. 4).

With this definition of cultural learning in mind, Paige et al. propose a model of culture learning goals and outcomes as follows:

1) learning about the self as a cultural being,

2) learning about culture and its impact on human communication, behaviour, and identity,

3) culture-general learning, i.e., learning about universal, cross-cultural phenomena such as cultural adjustment,

4) culture-specific learning, i.e., learning about a particular culture, including its language, and,

5) learning how to learn, i.e., becoming an effective language and culture learner.

(Paige & Stringer, 1997, cited in Paige et al., 2000, p. 5).

With items 1 & 2, this model suggests a re-examination of the self-other relationship in the process of cultural encounters. For items 3 and 4, the model further provides three sub-categories of learning: knowledge, attitude, and behaviour, which indicate that the affective, the behavioural, and the cognitive domains of learning are called into operation in the culture learning process.

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The model thus suggests three significant dimensions for cultural learning: first, it denotes an involvement of internal changes in terms of attitudes and values of the learners. Secondly, effective culture learners must develop “a variety of learning strategies ranging from reflective observation to active experimentation” (Paige et al., 2000, p. 5). To this aim, Paige et al. emphasize the importance of adopting an “experiential learning” style, and “learning how to learn.” The third significance refers to the sensitivity, awareness, openness, and flexibility people develop in relation to others. This final factor is indicative of an intentional and cognitive learning process through which an outsider of the target culture becomes appreciative of the values of that culture.

The shift in understanding language and culture as discussed above lays the cornerstone for the development of intercultural language education.

Defining all language as a cultural act (Kramsch, 1993), intercultural language learning theory presupposes a fundamental interconnection between

language, culture and learning. In language learning, the learner is actually engaging in a process of developing a reflective and critical understanding through their use of languages and cultures, comparing, inferring and

negotiating both the languages and their own intercultural identity (Corbett, 2003; Liddicoat, Papademetre, Scarino & Kohler, 2003). Before we turn to a detailed discussion of the conceptual framework and practice of intercultural language education, we will explore some key factors at work in the process of intercultural communication: namely the self-other relationship and the identity formation in ELT.

Dialogicality and cultural awareness

In the previous section, I have explored the nature of language and cultural learning from socio-cultural perspectives. In this section, I will discuss the philosophical stance of the interconnectedness between language and culture.

CHEN Chapter 2: Developing a conceptual framework

I will examine this relationship with Bakhtin’s dialogic theory of language. When a foreign language learner interacts with people from the target culture, he engages the communicative act on two levels. First he will be asking how to be understood by the people from the target community. With this purpose he will take on the linguistic codes and socially appropriate manners of the target language, in this way the language learner can be said to be suspending his cultural self in order to adopt and assimilate into the target culture.

However, in the effort of making himself understood, this language learner is also calling into action his “historical understandings, contemporary realities, and future desires” (Norton & Toohey, 2002, p. 115), that is, the past, the present and the future positioning of both cultures.

In Bakhtin’s dialogic theory language is thus situated as social interaction in human consciousness. Seeing all social acts as political, following a Marxist view, Bakhtin asserts that there is a complex working in the process of a speech act. To Bakhtin, “a speech genre is not a form of language but a typical form of utterance; as such the genre also includes a certain typical kind of expression that inheres in it” (Bakhtin, 1986, p.87). Hall, Vitanova and

Marchenkova (2005) explain that there is “certain typical kind of expression” because “(a)t the moment of their use, we infuse them with our own voices” (p. 3). Bakhtin (1981) argues that the utterance is the key conceptual tool for analysis of human activity. His view of language as utterance is tied to the meaning constructed through the use of language, which in turn sees the use of language as a social process rather than production of linguistic codes. It is also a complex and conflicting process because speakers in an interaction need to struggle to “appropriate” their words in order to “appropriate” the voice of others. Iddings (2005) asserts that, in this social process, “individuals internalize language into inner speech and that, because thought is carried out by inner speech, consciousness arises from this ongoing process of social

communication” (p. 39).

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I will then examine three key concepts in Bakhtin’s theory of language: namely heteroglossia, polyphony, and dialogicality, and discuss how these concepts relate to our research context of foreign language learning. Heteroglossia

Heteroglossia refers to the coexistence of voices that an individual brings to a dialogue. It does not address the linguistic diversity or the multiplicity of linguistic genres in one particular language; what it explores is the social