Teachers as Mediators in the Foreign Language Classroom

Michelle Kohler

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781783093052
• eBook ISBN: 9781783093083
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Education Teaching Methods
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Language teachers are key figures in preparing young people for participation in an increasingly multilingual and culturally diverse world, yet little is known about how they go about this in practice. This book uses examples of classroom interaction to reveal how teachers of languages act as intercultural mediators and the implications of this for practice. To date, there has been little exploration of how teachers mediate language and culture learning from an intercultural perspective, and what underlies their mediation practices in terms of their conceptions of intercultural language teaching and learning. This book offers an account of what teachers are thinking, feeling and doing as they enact an intercultural perspective on language teaching and learning.

1 Understandings of Language and Culture in Language Teaching and Learning

Intercultural language teaching and learning has developed from a long line of theorising in the field of language teaching about the nature of, and the relationship between, language and culture. Comprehensive discussions of these concepts and their relationship are well documented (Dasli, 2011; Liddicoat, 2002, 2011; Liddicoat & Scarino, 2013; Liddicoat et al., 2003; Risager, 2006, 2011) and it is not the intention in this book to canvass such ideas in full but rather to provide a brief overview of the key understandings about language and culture in language teaching, including the emergence of intercultural language teaching and learning. The discussion will then serve as a reference point against which to consider the views of the language teachers in the case studies, including their emergent understandings of intercultural language teaching and learning, which follows in Chapter 2.

Language, Culture and Their Relationship

An intercultural perspective on language teaching and learning is premised on particular understandings of language and culture. Indeed, language and culture are the core concepts upon which more elaborated theories of intercultural language teaching and learning rest. The following section briefly outlines how these concepts, and their relationship, may be understood and how this relates to the emergence of an intercultural orientation towards language teaching and learning.

Language

Language is arguably the most fundamental concept within the field of language teaching and learning. Understandings of language vary, however, typically falling into two main categories: language as code or language as social semiotic.

Language as code

Language can be understood as a code or system for labelling the world. In this view, the code is comprised of forms: lexical and syntactical. The code is governed by rules, which are fixed and enable mastery of the code in set ways. Language exists as an entity in its own right and is largely detached from its users. This view of language is particularly associated with the field of second language acquisition. It is a view influenced by the work of Chomsky (1965) whose theory of generative grammar proposed the idea that the human brain was hardwired for language and its development was largely automatic or predetermined. Humans, therefore, have an innate capacity for language. When this position is adopted in language teaching, language development is regarded as a cognitive process first and foremost. Cognitive models of language development rely heavily on computational metaphors of acquisition involving input and output processes. Krashen (1982) argued a distinction between language acquisition and learning with the former preferred over the latter in terms of effective language development. Krashen’s notion of ‘comprehensible input’ related to the idea that the unconscious process of acquiring language required a rich language environment in which the language learner would select what was necessary for the next stage of development. While this model was devised for ‘natural’ language acquisition and did not specifically relate to second language learning in a formal learning context, it created interest in ‘input’ in approaches to language teaching. There was an emphasis on the language teacher using native-speaker-like talk to simulate the acquisition process. Work since has also focused on ‘output’ (Swain, 1985) in an effort to acknowledge the benefits of learners’ productive capacities and associated metalinguistic awareness to their language development. Following such work, knowing a language meant more than knowing how to use a language, it also meant knowing about a language, that is developing metalinguistic understandings of the specific language and awareness of language per se.

It has been argued that the view of language as code renders it ‘static’; a self-contained body of knowledge which, in the context of teaching and learning, represents one ‘code’ that becomes replaced by another (Scarino & Liddicoat, 2009). The code exists devoid of contextual or social influences; it is objectified and separated from its communicative contexts and users. What it means to know a language, in this view, is to know the structural elements of the code.

Language as social semiotic

The theory of language as social semiotic views language fundamentally as a social and functional phenomenon (Halliday, 1975). Language is a system of signs that come to represent particular meanings according to how these are attributed by those who use them. These ‘signs’ have meanings, both given and ‘potential’ (Halliday, 1978), which are used and adapted by people as they carry out particular functions in their lives. Language represents a resource that provides interactants with options for how they will construct meaning according to the social context. Language does not exist separate from its users. Indeed, it exists to enable them to participate in their community, establishing and maintaining relationships and making meanings together with other users. In a semiotic view, language is shaped by, and shapes, relationships between people and the social world. This sense of social practice means that language can be seen as organic and dynamic (Shohamy, 2001, 2006). It is open to change and evolution that originate in its daily use. Language is as distinctive and multiple in its meanings, as its many users.

In this understanding of language, context is crucial in shaping how meaning is made, by whom and for what purpose. Context is comprised of the circumstances of use, the roles and relationships of users and the ideational content of the text(s) used or created (Halliday, 1975). Language, therefore, is not only dynamic but also permeable and malleable, shaped by its environment and users. Language, however, is not passive in this process and it too shapes its users and circumstances, it is ‘energetic’ (Shohamy, 2006). In this view, language is both shaped by, and in turn shapes, the social contexts in which it is used.

Language pedagogy based on a social semiotic view focuses on both active language use and knowledge of language as a meaning-making system. It involves analysing language to understand how it is constructed and interpreting language for personal meaning. The processes of analysis and interpretation are not restricted to the target language but apply to any language system and across language systems; that is, developing learners’ metalinguistic understandings and their capacities for understanding the nature of language itself. It is the view of language as social semiotic that relates most directly to an intercultural orientation in language teaching and learning. This will be explored in more detail later in this overview.

Culture

Culture is the other major concept that, while viewed as important, has been varyingly understood in relation to language teaching. The ways in which culture is typically understood can be broadly grouped into two categories: culture as ‘facts and information’ and culture as ‘social semiotic’.

Culture as facts and information

In this view, culture is commonly understood as the shared attributes of a particular group of people, located within a particular geographical area. Culture comprises the observable products and features associated with the group. There is no recognition in this view of cultures as internally diverse or subject to change. Rather this ‘high culture’ view focuses on static aspects such as iconic artefacts, a literary canon or great artworks (Crozet & Liddicoat, 1999a, 1999b; Liddicoat, 2005). Culture then is a ‘static entity made up of accumulated, classifiable, observable…facts’ (Paige et al., 1999: 176). Aligned closely with this view is a ‘cultural studies’ view, in which culture represents the history, geography, society and institutions of a group. To know a culture, therefore, is to know about it, through observation and acquisition of factual knowledge.

A further view of culture, strongly associated with the field of anthropology (Gumperz, 1982; Hymes, 1974, 1986), is that of culture as the practices and social norms of a particular group of people. According to this view, culture constitutes the observable actions of a social group such as their customs and traditions. It involves acquiring the valued ways of behaving and acting or the associated values and beliefs that are expected within the social collective. This view suggests that cultures have particular ways of acting and particular values associated with these. This view removes any sense of personal agency or variability within a national or collective group, and does not acknowledge how cultural practices and values change over time. It also positions the ‘observer’ as an outsider who is unchanged by his/her observations.

These views of culture, particularly as they relate to language teaching, have been criticised for being ‘static’ (Liddicoat, 2002, 2005) and limited to a national paradigm (Risager, 2007) that does not sufficiently acknowledge diversity within and movement across cultures. In language teaching, these views of culture result in a focus on the familiar (similarities) or the exotic (differences), both of which are problematic on their own and both of which need to be treated at both concrete and abstract levels (Demorgon, 1989). In addition, such views lack a coherent scope in relation to what gets included or excluded as culture in language teaching (Paige et al., 1999). In viewing culture as products, behaviours or beliefs, it becomes equated with factual knowledge, which in turn distances it from the individual and from language, resulting in superficial learning (Liddicoat, 2005; Liddicoat et al., 2003). The relationship that the learner can have with the target culture is that of an observer of similarities and differences, leading to a reinforcement of the learner’s own cultural norms. The learner is not viewed as a creator and enactor of culture (Paige et al., 1999) but rather as a detached observer of it. There is little sense in this view of culture that a learner has his/her own cultural identity that is integral to his/her emerging intercultural identity (Hall & Ramirez, 1993; Houghton, 2013; Liddicoat et al., 2003).

Culture as semiotic practices

Another line of thinking about culture is that of culture as a symbolic system. In this view, culture is located in the daily lived experiences of individuals as they participate in processes of creating, communicating and making sense of their social system (Geertz, 1973). Culture represents a framework through which people communicate about, make sense of and interpret their worlds. Culture is a ‘differentiated, changing and conflictual, actual and virtual, multimodal symbolic system or social semiotic’ (Kramsch, 1993, 1998). Culture becomes associated with peoples’ actions and motivations, the variability of these and the contexts in which these occur, and the varying interpretations that can be made by individuals. To belong to a culture, therefore, is to develop the resources necessary to participate in shared meaning making.

A view of culture as social practice focuses on the ways in which people conduct themselves and participate in shared practices, constantly creating and shifting their memberships, through their interactions with others. In this view, culture is dynamic, multifaceted and dialogic; continually being created and contested through the actions of individuals in their daily lives (Bhabha, 1994). To know a culture, is to access its resources and participate in its practices in context-sensitive ways to achieve a purpose. It is this view of culture that is most closely associated with intercultural language teaching and learning.

The relationship between language and culture

In various forms, culture has long been associated with language teaching and learning, dating back to the late 19th century and gaining greater prominence in the late 20th century (Risager, 2007). Nowadays, it has become almost unthinkable in the field of language teaching and learning to consider language without culture and vice versa. Attempts abound to describe the relationship between the two with terms such as language-and-culture (Byram et al., 1994), culture-in-language (Crozet & Liddicoat, 2000), languaculture (Agar, 1994; Risager, 2006) and linguaculture (Friedrich, 1986) and expressions such as ‘language expresses cultural reality’ (Kramsch, 1998) and language and culture are ‘two sides of the same coin’ (Moran, 2001). Such efforts reflect contemporary views of language and culture as inextricably related, yet this has not always been recognised and there have been a number of key developments in language teaching in recent decades that have led to this understanding.

The emergence of ‘communicative competence’ (Hymes, 1972) was a key turning point in the acknowledgement of the role of culture in language teaching and learning. Models of communicative competence recognised culture as a dimension of language ability; it creates the context for language use and is part of the knowledge that a learner ‘needs to know’ in order to be an effective participant in a given speech community. Psycholinguistic models of communicative competence typically position cultural knowledge as secondary to the knowledge necessary to use a language. For example, Canale and Swain’s (1981) model includes ‘sociolinguistic competence’, which focuses on knowing which language to use according to the given context, including politeness and register. Van Ek’s (1986) model has six dimensions of communicative competence with three focusing on the social: sociolinguistic competence, sociocultural competence and social competence. Each is framed as knowledge about culture that assists in making suitable language choices. The model of communicative competence developed by Bachman (1990) and later Bachman and Palmer (1996) in the area of language testing, features sociocultural competence as part of an overall pragmatic competence and includes awareness of language use, particularly register, dialect and cultural references. This competence is described in terms of the knowledge necessary to select language effectively. Thus, in these models, culture is seen as providing a communicative context, about which certain types of knowledge are helpful in assisting overall communicative language ability.

The efforts of the Council of Europe during the 1980s to recognise the increasing mobility of people across the continent and therefore the imperative to prepare citizens to live, work and study abroad was a crucial factor in the move towards a more integrated view of language and culture (for a detailed account see Risager [2007]). The work of Zarate (1986) was influential in arguing that, due to a difference between acquiring a culture as a foreigner and acquiring culture as a native speaker, there must be a greater explicitness in teaching culture for the former. While significant in focusing greater attention on the connection between language and culture, Zarate’s work did not explicate how the two are related and the pedagogical implications of their interrelatedness.

Soon after, Damen (1987) advocated a move away from viewing culture as a fifth skill (that is, in addition to listening, speaking, reading and writing). She proposed ‘closing the language and culture gap’, stating that ‘to ignore the interplay between language and culture is to play the language game without knowing the rules’ (Damen, 2003: 72). She describes the relationship as follows:

In human contexts, specific languages and cultures, being mutually interacting and reinforcing, are inextricably bound. Cultural rules and values guide, mold, often control, and nurture the sense of community that defines personal identity and binds disparate individuals into families, villages, cities, and societies. In turn, these cultural givens are transmitted, articulated and practiced through language. (Damen, 1987: 72)

In this view, language and culture are coexistent and mutually influential in shaping and reflecting social memberships, values and interactions. Damen (2003) identifies a paradox about language and culture; that they are simultaneously universal and distinctive, and it is this that presents a challenge for teaching. She argues that there is difficulty caused by both the distinctive nature of language and culture and the ways of learning both that needs to be better understood in order to adequately attend to the interrelationship. Language, for example, can be isolated and studied as form. Culture, on the other hand, is changeable and highly subjective, involving stages of acculturation. Damen (2003) proposes that teachers need to develop specialised knowledge of language and culture as systems as well as ‘the stages of acculturation, their relationship to language and culture learning and their influences in the classroom context’. Thus, Damen’s work indicates that while language and culture may be understood as interconnected as a general principle, they each entail different kinds of knowledge that must be considered in language teaching and learning; a proposition taken further by Risager (2007).

Beyond declaring the interrelatedness of language and culture, Byram (1989) attempted to articulate a comprehensive theory of culture as related to language teaching. Evolving out of the British context of requiring trainee language teachers to study abroad, Byram’s work considered the role of culture in language teaching as it relates to the processes of acculturation and socialisation. He argued that the connection between language and culture is a fundamental starting point for language teaching since ‘language has no function independent of the context in which is it used, thus language always refers to something beyond itself: the cultural context’ (Byram, 1988: 180). He does, however, suggest that language and culture can be justifiably separated for some pedagogical purposes, such as the teac...

Table of contents

• Cover-Page
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Understandings of Language and Culture in Language Teaching and Learning
• 2 Teachers’ Understandings of Language and Culture and Their Relationship
• 3 Understandings of Mediation
• 4 Teachers’ Ways of Mediating
• 5 Understanding Language Teachers as Mediators and the Implications for Intercultural Language Teaching and Learning
• Appendices
• References
• Index