The Significance of Intercultural Communication Studies for Second Language Teaching

FIJI INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

PACIFIC CONFERENCE ON GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT

25 – 27 March 2009 FIJI INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

SUVA, FIJI ISLANDS

The Significance of Intercultural Communication Studies for Second Language Teaching

By Ms Zakia Ali Chand

3/25/2009

[Pacific Conference on Growth and Development] [2009]

[Zakia Ali Chand Fiji Institute of Technology © 2009]

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION STUDIES FOR SECOND LANGUAGE TEACHING

By Ms Zakia Ali Chand Fiji Institute of Technology

ABSTRACT This paper describes the importance of studying intercultural communication as it relates to the

teaching of English as a second language. It demonstrates that teaching a second language is

not only about teaching syntactic structures or learning vocabulary and expressions, but needs

to incorporate cultural elements because learning a language means learning a culture.

Effective communication is more than a matter of language proficiency. Apart from enhancing

and enriching communicative competence, intercultural competence can also lead to empathy

and respect toward different cultures as well as promote objectivity and cultural harmony. If

the goal of teaching and learning a second language is to enhance effective communication

with people from all walks of life, the underlying culture should not be ignored for it is the root

of one’s communicative behavior.

KEY WORDS Intercultural, communicative, competence, culture, communication, language



Introduction

The issue of intercultural communication is of prime importance because of the increasing

number of culturally diverse communities living and working together within monolingual

societies. With advanced Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and increasing

global movement of people, opportunities for greater intercultural contact have increased.

Consequently, there must be a greater emphasis on the development of intercultural

communication competence as a fundamental goal of language education.

Culture can be defined in many ways. Gibson, in his book Intercultural Business Communication

(2002), defines it as a system of shared attitudes, beliefs, values and behavior. Interculturalists

define the word to mean a whole range of different types of culture, for example, corporate

culture (those pertaining to different organizations), professional culture (for example the

culture of academics or lawyers or doctors), gender (the culture of men and women), religious

(the culture of Catholics, Protestants, Seventh Day Adventists, Muslims, Hindus) or regional

culture (for example, in the Pacific, the culture of indigenous Fijians, Maoris, Samoans, Tongans

or Solomon Islanders.)

Communication can be defined as the exchange of meaning which involves sending and

receiving of messages between a sender and receiver. This exchange occurs both through

verbal and non verbal means. At times, the intended message from the sender may be

interpreted very differently because of a wide range of factors influencing the sender and the

receiver.

According to Samovar & Porter (1982:6), “intercultural communication entails the investigation

of culture and the difficulties of communicating across cultural boundaries…. Intercultural

communication occurs whenever a message produced in one culture must be processed in

another culture.” Therefore, communication may become difficult if there is a big difference in

the cultures of the communicators. What is termed as “cultural noise” may become a barrier to



communication. Other barriers to communication are: attitude, perception, stereotypes, and

culture shock.

Importance of intercultural studies for the L2 classroom

No doubt language is the basic tool human beings use to construct and exchange meaning with

each other. This linguistic exchange takes place in a social and cultural context. Therefore, to

communicate successfully, it is vital to understand the cultural context in which a language

operates. This provides us with a tool to facilitate interaction as well gain insight into the

other’s culture and subsequently, mutual understanding. As Samovar and Porter state,

“Language gives people a means of interacting with other members of their culture and a

means of thinking. Language thus serves both as a mechanism for communication and as a

guide to social reality” (1982:17).

Teaching a second language comprises of several components, including grammatical

competence, communicative competence, language proficiency, as well as a change in attitudes

towards one’s own or another culture. For most language learners, cultural competence is,

without doubt, an integral part of second language learning. Many teachers try to incorporate

the teaching of culture into the second language curriculum. It could be maintained that the

notion of communicative competence in second language teaching, emphasizing the role of

context, and the circumstances under which language can be used accurately and

appropriately, ‘fall short of the mark when it comes to actually equipping students with the

cognitive skills they need in a second-culture environment’ (Straub, 1999: 2). That is to say that

since the wider context of language does not have clear definitions because many teachers and

students talk about it without knowing exactly what it means, the term communicative

competence is used, if for no other reason than, to make an “educational point.” In reality,

what most teachers and students seem to lose sight of is the fact that ‘knowledge of the

grammatical system of a language [grammatical competence] has to be completed by an

understanding (sic) of culture-specific meanings [communicative or rather cultural

competence]’ (Byram, Morgan et al., 1994: 4).



In Pacific cultures, values such as respect, generosity, humility, sharing and cooperation are

perceived differently to western cultures. Hence, rules in communication, communicative

behaviour, teaching and learning strategies are different from the western cultures. In the

Tongan culture, a clear distinction is made between knowledge (‘ilo) which is a learnt behaviour

and wisdom (poto), “which is the beneficial use of ‘ilo’ or knowledge”(Thaman, 1998, cited in

Taufeulungaki, 2004: 13). Therefore knowledge is learnt to be of benefit to others.

The common learning strategies that emerge from Pacific cultures are: observation, imitation,

listening, participation and asking (Taufeulungaki, 2004: 14). The preference for Pacific island

students is towards congruent learning strategies such as working with peers, and learning

through observation and imitation. This may be in direct contrast for the Pacific islanders who

learn in classrooms where learning strategies are more teacher-centred, focusing on individual

achievement in a competitive environment with expectations of greater verbal interactions.

One of the misconceptions that has permeated second language teaching is that language is a

code and, once mastered by learning all the grammatical rules and some aspects of its social

context, ‘ one language is essentially (albeit not easily) translatable into another’ (Kramsch,

1993: 1). To some extent this belief has been instrumental in promoting various approaches to

second language teaching such as pragmatic, sociolinguistic and communicative. But it has not

been able to identify and gain insights into the very fabric of society and culture in a way so that

language can be used without causing misunderstanding and cross-cultural miscommunication.

For example in the indigenous Fijian language the concept of “vanua” cannot be directly

translated into another language without fully comprehending its cultural context. The closest

meaning may be “land.” Yet “vanua” is not about possessing or being the owners of land only.

The meaning is tied to ownership and use of land by the past, present and future generations.

It is not necessarily viewed as an asset to generate an income. Hence, the issue of land

ownership is a very sensitive one. On the other hand, in western and other non-Fijian societies,

land is an asset to be used for income generation. This lack of contextual understanding gives



rise to delays in solving land problems in Fiji and ultimately takes its toll on the country’s

economic growth.

Hence, teaching a second language requires some insights into its speakers’ culture because

communication requires understanding which requires empathy with the second language

learner, while always ‘putting [the target] culture in relation with one’s own.’ (Kramsch,

1993:205). Moreover, one should be mindful of the fact that if a language is taught “without

teaching at the same time the culture in which it operates, we are teaching meaningless

symbols or symbols to which the student attaches the wrong meaning…” (Politzer, 1959: 100-

101).

The second language classroom has its own communication conventions which are controlled

and directed by the teachers. This presents a new challenge to learners who experience use of

formal language, greater teacher control of verbal exchanges, new question and answer

formats and exposure to abstract ideas. The school has its own culture which learners have to

adapt to, although the differences may not be as great as those of western cultures. Therefore

‘culture needs to be integrated into the teaching of all language skills so that learners can learn

[not only] to speak but also write in culturally appropriate ways for a myriad of specific

purposes.’ (Liddicoat, Crozet, Jansen and Schmidt, 1997 cited in Crozet, 2000: 3).

According to Kramsch (1993: 1) culture in language learning is often in the background, ready to

unsettle the good language learners when they least expect it, making evident the limitations of

their hard-won communicative competence, challenging their ability to make sense of the

world around them.

Furthermore, language is not an “autonomous construct’ (Fairclough, 1989: vi) but social

practice both creating and created by the ‘structures and forces of the social institutions within

which we live and function’ (ibid). Obviously, a language cannot exist in a vacuum; there is a

kind of “transfusion” at work between language and culture. Duranti clearly shows this

relationship:



To be part of a culture means to share the propositional knowledge and the rules of inference to

understand whether certain propositions are true (given certain premises). To the propositional

knowledge, one might add the procedural knowledge to carry out tasks such as cooking,

weaving, farming, fishing, giving a formal speech, answering the phone, asking for a favor,

writing a letter for a job application. (Duranti, 1997: 28-29).

Clearly, everyday language is “flavoured” with cultural bits and pieces - a fact most people seem

to ignore. It is impossible to identify and isolate an “English” culture that is common to all

speakers of English. The cultures of the people of Australia, USA, Scotland or England, are all

very different. By the very act of talking, we assume social and cultural roles, which are so

deeply entrenched in our thought processes that it goes unnoticed. For example, when people

listen to a foreign speaker using a foreign language, they interpret messages within the

framework of their own cultural norms. Similarly, when they speak in English, their speech

displays features of non-native varieties of English at phonological, grammatical and even

discourse levels. This happens at the level of reading and writing as well.

Therefore, it is obvious that language has a setting; the people who speak it belong to a race or

races and have certain cultural roles. In a sense, it is ‘a key to the cultural past of a society’

(Salzmann, 1998: 41), ‘a guide to “social reality”’ (Sapir, 1929: 209, cited in Salzmann, 1998:41).

Therefore, while a language must be linked to a culture, it is not necessarily tied to a particular

culture. Specific cultural identities can be represented by new varieties of English. Hence, the

meaning conveyed by both verbal and nonverbal messages is influenced by past experiences,

personal knowledge of the language and the social context in which the communicative event

occurs.

One of the cultural aspects that Goddard (2002:3) suggests can be used in the second language

classroom is the use of “semantic primes.” These are basic concepts of vocabulary, ‘the

simplest lexis of paraphrase and explanation.’ (ibid). They can be used to explain basic

concepts. For example, as stated earlier, the concept of ‘vanua’ in Fijian culture does not have



direct translation in English. “By focusing on and problematicising the “words people live by,”

i.e. the culture-specific vocabulary of values, social ideals and emotions, learners can see how

cultural discourse practices – their own, as well as those of the target language – are grounded

in cultural values and assumptions.” (Goddard, 2002: 17).

Nineteenth-century sociologists, such as Durkheim, discussed in detail the interdependence of

language and culture. Durkheim (1912 [1947]) suggested that children master their mother

tongue by making hypotheses about the possible circumstances under which it can be used,

and by learning probabilities. For example, a child sees a bird and is culturally conditioned to

associate certain features and attributes with the actual word “bird.” Most importantly, the

extent to which the child will internalize the relationship between the word “bird” and its

referent in the world is contingent upon ‘social adulation’ (Landar, 1965: 225). If he is taken for

a walk and sees a bird but says “dog,” he will be corrected, learning that ‘competence counts’

(ibid). In other words, ‘socioculturally structured associations have to be internalized’ (ibid) –

and, as often as not, these associations vary from culture to culture. Therefore, it is important

to realize that ‘language is not merely the external covering of a thought; it is also its internal

framework. It does not confine itself to expressing this thought after it has once been formed; it

also aids in making it.’ (Durkheim, 1912 [1947]).

Ethnographers such as Buttjes (1990), Ochs & Schieffelin (1984), Poyatos, (1985), and Peters &

Boggs, (1986) have attempted to show that ‘language and culture are from the start

inseparably connected’ (Buttjes, 1990: 55, cited in Lessard-Clouston, 1997). Buttjes summarises

the reasons why this should be the case: language acquisition does not follow a universal

sequence, but differs across cultures; the process of becoming a competent member of society

is realized through exchanges of language in particular social situations; every society has its

norms of the ways in which children participate in particular situations, and this, in turn, affects

the form, the function and the content of children’s utterances; caregivers’ primary concern is

not with grammatical input, but with the transmission of sociocultural knowledge ; the native

learner, in addition to language, acquires also the paralinguistic patterns and the kinesics of his

or her culture.



The implications of Buttjes’ findings for studies in intercultural competence are evident.

Language teaching is culture teaching and teachers do their students a great disservice in

placing emphasis on the former, to the detriment of the latter. As Buttjes (1990: 55-56) notes,

‘language teachers need to go beyond monitoring linguistic production in the classroom and

become aware of the complex and numerous processes of intercultural mediation that any

foreign language learner undergoes…’ To come back to the relationship between language and

culture, Samovar, Porter & Jain (1981: 24) observe:

Culture and communication are inseparable because culture not only dictates who talks to

whom, about what, and how the communication proceeds, it also helps to determine how

people encode messages, the meanings they have for messages, and the conditions and

circumstances under which various messages may or may not be sent, noticed, or

interpreted…Culture… is the foundation of communication.

Second language teachers need to bear in mind that students come with lots of cultural

baggage, which includes linguistic baggage. They could be more effective in the classrooms if

they are aware of the differences between patterns of composition in different cultures like

American, British, African, Asian or Pacific. For example, in some cultures people tend to begin

with a generalization and end with illustrations; in other cultures, they begin with illustrations

and end with a generalization.

Furthermore, given Duranti’s (1997: 24) definition of culture as ‘something learned,

transmitted, passed down from one generation to the next, through human actions, often in

the form of face-to-face interaction, and, of course, through linguistic communication,’ it

becomes obvious that language, a subset of culture, plays a crucial role.

Moreover, Bourdieu has emphasized the importance of language not as an autonomous

construct but as a system determined by various socio-political processes. For him, a language

exists as a linguistic habitus (Bourdieu, 1990: 52), as a set of practices that imply not only a



particular system of words and grammatical rules, but also an often forgotten or hidden

struggle over the symbolic power of a particular way of communicating, with particular systems

of classification, address and reference forms, specialized lexicons and metaphors (for politics,

medicine, ethics).

Hence, speaking a language means choosing a particular way of entering the world and

sustaining relationships with those we come in contact with. It is often through language use

that we, to a large extent, are, members of a community of ideas and practices (ibid.). Thus, as

a complex system of classification of experience and an ‘important window on the universe of

thoughts’ (Duranti, 1997: 49); as a link between thought and behaviour; and as ‘the

prototypical tool for interacting with the world’ (ibid.), language is intertwined with culture. In

the past, language and culture were lumped together as if they automatically implied each

other.

Wilhelm von Humboldt, an eminent diplomat and scholar, once wrote: The spiritual traits and the structure of the language of a people are so intimately blended that,

given either of the two, one should be able to derive the other from it to the fullest extent…

Language is the outward manifestation of the spirit of people: their language is their spirit, and

their spirit is their language; it is difficult to imagine any two things more identical (Humboldt,

1907, cited in Salzmann, 1998: 39).

In addition, Hall (1981: 36) agrees with Humboldt and Bourdieu in describing language as ‘one

of the dominant threads in all cultures.’ Similarly, Bruner (1996: 3) says that ‘although meanings

are “in the mind,” they have their origins and their significance in the culture in which they are

created.’

Apart from linguistic knowledge, students should also be familiar with various forms of non-

verbal communication such as gestures and facial expressions, typical in the target culture.

More specifically, learners should be mindful of the fact that nonverbal cues are also cultural



phenomena, and may as often as not lead to miscommunication and erroneous assumptions

(Wierzbicka, 1999).

As Straub (1999: 6) succinctly puts it, by ‘understanding how cultures and subcultures or co-

cultures use these signs to communicate, we can discover a person’s social status, group

membership, and approachability’. According to him, it is important to encourage learners to

‘speculate on the significance of various styles of clothing, the symbolic meanings of colours,

gestures, facial expressions, and the physical distance people unconsciously put between each

other’(ibid.), and to show in what ways these nonverbal cues are similar to, or at variance with,

those of their culture.

Conclusion

It is not sufficient to have a high level of linguistic competence, though this is fundamental for

intercultural communication. It has been observed that when non-native speakers display a

near-native level of competence in the target language, it is also expected they will behave

according to the sociocultural norms of the target culture. If this behaviour is not displayed, the

native speakers tend to consider this failure as a deliberate act of the non-native speakers,

rather than as an honest mistake (Gass & Varonis, 1991).

It seems obvious then that studies in intercultural communication will allow learners to

increase their knowledge of the target culture in terms of people’s way of life, values, attitudes,

and beliefs, and how these manifest themselves in linguistic categories and forms. Learners will

become aware of speech acts, connotations, etiquette that is appropriate or inappropriate

behaviour, as well as get an opportunity to act out being a member of the target culture.

Equipped with the knowledge that such notions as “superior” or “inferior” cultures are nothing

but generalizations stemming from lack of knowledge and disrespect to other human beings

with different world views, learners can use the target language as a tool to communicate in

the country where it is spoken and give a voice to their thoughts. Therefore language educators



should ‘not only work to dispel stereotypes [and] pockets of ignorance… but… contribute to

learners’ understanding that begins with awareness of self and leads to awareness of others’

(Singhal, 1998).

The notion that culture is “the valued artefacts of a particular society” (Crozet and Liddicoat,

2000), now seems pedagogically incorrect. Often, language educators present culture as a

series of static facts, customs and traditions that learners need to understand and appreciate in

order to become interculturally competent. The fact that culture, like language, is continuously

evolving and is a living entity is ignored and this results in a failure to develop intercultural

skills.

Finally, it becomes imperative that second language teachers should be second culture

teachers, with the ability to experience and analyze both the home and target cultures (Byram,

Morgan et al., 1994: 73). The onus is on them to convey cultural meaning and introduce

students to a kind of learning ‘which challenges and modifies their perspective on the world

and their cultural identity as members of a given social and national group’ (ibid.). Getting to

know, understand and respect norms and values observed by a different cultural group is a

fundamental step towards becoming effective intercultural communicators.

It is hoped that this paper has helped contribute towards a better understanding of

intercultural competence and its significance in the learning and teaching of a second language.



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