Table Of ContentIntercultural Language Use and Language Learning
Intercultural Language Use
and Language Learning
Edited by
Eva Alcón Soler
Universitat Jaume I,
Spain
and
Maria Pilar Safont Jordà
Universitat Jaume I,
Spain
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Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction 1
Eva Alcón Soler and Maria Pilar Safont Jordà
1. What Is an ‘Intercultural Speaker’? 7
Juliane House
2. Linguistic Unity and Cultural Diversity in Europe: Implications
for Research on English Language and Learning 23
Eva Alcón Soler
3. Rethinking the Role of Communicative Competence
in Language Teaching 41
Marianne Celce-Murcia
4. Dealing with Intercultural Communicative Competence
in the Foreign Language Classroom 59
Maria José Coperías Aguilar
5. A Role for English as Lingua Franca in the Foreign
Language Classroom? 79
Anne Ife
6. Writing-to-learn in Instructed Language Learning Contexts 101
Rosa M. Manchón and Julio Roca de Larios
7. The Acquisition of Pragmatic Competence and Multilingualism
in Foreign Language Contexts 123
Jasone Cenoz
8. Interindividual Variation in Self-perceived Oral Proficiency
of English L2 Users 141
Jean Marc Dewaele
v
vi Contents
9. Pragmatic Production of Third Language Learners: A Focus
on Request External Modification Items 167
Maria Pilar Safont Jordà
10. North Korean Schools in Japan: An Observation
of Quasi-Native Heritage Language Use in Teaching
English as a Third Language 191
Robert J. Fouser
11. Examining Mitigation in Requests: A Focus on Transcripts
in ELT Coursebooks 207
Patricia Salazar Campillo
12. The Presentation and Practice of the Communicative Act
of Requesting in Textbooks: Focusing on Modifiers 223
Esther Usó-Juan
13. Analysing Request Modification Devices in Films:
Implications for Pragmatic Learning in Instructed Foreign
Language Contexts 245
Alicia Martínez-Flor
Index 281
Acknowledgements
First and foremost, we would like to thank all contributors in the volume
for accepting to take part in this project. We are also very grateful to the
reviewers of preliminary versions of some chapters for their comments and
thoughtful suggestions.
Special thanks to Elina Vilar, and also particularly to Otilia Martí, for
their help regarding the format and layout of the volume. Our gratitude to
the members of the LAELA (Lingüística Aplicada a l’Ensenyament de la
Llengua Anglesa) research group at Universitat Jaume I for their involve-
ment in this project.
We would like to state that parts of the volume and some studies
included in it have been conducted within the framework of a research
project funded by (a) the Spanish Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia
(HUM2004-04435/FILO), co-funded by FEDER, and by (b) Fundació
Universitat Jaume I and Caixa Castelló-Bancaixa.
vii
Introduction
Eva Alcón Soler
Maria Pilar Safont Jordà
Universitat Jaume I, Spain
The main purpose of the present book is to broaden the scope of research on
the development of intercultural communicative competence. Bearing this
purpose in mind, English learners are considered as intercultural speakers
who share their interest for engaging in real life communication. According
to Byram and Fleming (1998), the intercultural speaker is someone with
knowledge of one or more cultures and social identities, and who enjoys
discovering and maintaining relationships with people from other cultural
backgrounds, although s/he has not been formally trained for that purpose.
Besides, possessing knowledge of at least two cultures is the case of
many learners in bilingual or multilingual communities. In these contexts,
the objective of language learning should then focus on developing
intercultural competence, which in turn may involve promoting language
diversity while encouraging English as both a means and an end of
instruction (see Alcón, this volume). This is the idea underlying the
volume, which further sustains Kramsch’s argument (1998) against the
native/ non-native dichotomy. Following that author, we also believe that
in a multilingual world where learners may belong to more than one
speech community, their main goal is not to become a native speaker of
English, but to use this language as a tool for interaction among many
other languages and cultures. Hence, pedagogical norms should adjust to
that reality (Kramsch 2002) by accounting for diversity and variation in the
English classroom (Valdman 1992). In this respect the establishment of
such norms should be research-based (Bardovi-Harlig and Gass 2002), and
it should also account for existing and ongoing studies in applied
linguistics. From this perspective, the present book deals with research on
English acquisition and use with a special focus on the development of
communicative competence by intercultural speakers. Proposals deriving
from the theoretical accounts and studies presented here may help cover the
need for establishing variable pedagogical norms in English language
teaching and learning. Furthermore, we believe that revisions of key notions
1
E. Alcón Soler and M.P. Safont Jordà (eds.), Intercultural Language Use and Language Learning, 1–6.
© 2007 Springer.
2 Alcón Soler and Safont Jordà
like those of communicative competence and intercultural speakers (see
chapters 1 and 3) may facilitate the adoption of a more realistic perspective
in the study of language learning and teaching, that of multilingualism.
As the title suggests, our focus will be that of the intercultural language
use and language learning. In so doing, the volume may be subdivided into
three main parts. First, we deal with the theoretical tenets that support our
view of the intercultural speaker. This first part includes chapters 1 to 3
with references to the notion of the intercultural speaker, an account of the
multilingual reality in European countries, and an updated revision of the
construct of communicative competence. Drawing on these ideas, the
second part of the volume includes the issue of English as lingua franca
(henceforth ELF) as described in chapter 4 to 7 by referring to particular
learning settings. Within the global context of ELF, each chapter includes
a state-of-the-art revision of the following aspects: (i) materials for the
teaching of English as a lingua franca, (ii) benefits deriving from such
teaching, (iii) the issue of text creation, and (iv) pragmatic development in
the classroom. Finally, the third part of the book comprises empirical
research conducted in instructed settings where English is the target
language. These studies may be distributed into two subgroups: those
dealing with multilingual and multicultural issues, and those focusing on
pragmatic input in EFL settings. On the one hand, chapters 8 to 10 focus
on individual variation in oral production of language learners, the role of
bilingualism in the use of request acts, and identity in the teaching of
English. On the other hand, chapters 11 to 13 focus on the presence of
request mitigation devices in three different sources of pragmatic input that
are available to language learners, namely those of oral transcripts, EFL
textbooks and films. Pragmatic competence is regarded in these studies as
a key issue when dealing with the development of communicative
competence in English language learning contexts.
Although the whole volume is devoted to the issue of communication in
intercultural encounters, the concepts of intercultural language use and
language learning are tackled from different perspectives in each chapter.
As has been previously mentioned, the first three chapters (see House,
Alcón and Celce-Murcia, this volume) provide the theoretical framework
for the volume. They present and develop the three main notions that arise
in subsequent chapters, and that also constitute our proposal for the study
of English acquisition and use in intercultural settings. These are the
notions of the intercultural speaker, the construct of intercultural
communicative competence, and the use of English as a lingua franca.
House argues for a description of the term intercultural speaker which may
differ from the notion adopted in publications following an educational
perspective. In this first chapter, the author provides us with an in-depth
Introduction 3
analysis of the term intercultural and its use in education and in applied
linguistics literature. Her analysis involves deconstructing the term
intercultural by pointing to the notion of culture and the meaning of inter.
In so doing, the author sets the basis for the idea of intercultural speaker
that underlies the whole volume, and suggests that one of the various
languages of that intercultural speaker will be English, given its
international scope as means of communication. In the second chapter,
Alcón discusses the spread of English in continental Europe as a
controversial issue that needs to be clarified if a language policy towards
plurilingualism is to be accomplished. The author also proposes a research
agenda on English in Europe, taking into account that the notion of
communicative competence is the objective of language learning. In this
line, Celce-Murcia revises previous models of communicative competence
and justifies her new proposal of the construct of communicative
competence on the basis of previous research in the third chapter.
Chapters 4 to 6 (see Coperías, Ife and Machón and Roca, this volume)
specifically deal with the idea of English as a lingua franca by pointing to
various language learning settings. In chapter 4 Coperías presents an
overview of existing foreign language teaching material by raising the
need to consider intercultural competence as a teaching goal. The author
also points to recent proposals that include intercultural communicative
competence as part of the foreign language teaching and learning process.
In chapter 5 Ife focuses on the benefits of the lingua franca in language
learning. The author particularly refers to added L2 benefits in a context
where both first (henceforth L1) and second language (henceforth L2)
speakers find themselves on neutral territory. Written communication is
the focus of chapter 6. Manchón and Roca refer to the process of text
creation by users of English as a lingua franca in an instructed context. The
authors present an extensive overview of research dealing with the writing
process. They also include a research agenda and some pedagogical
implications deriving from existing studies.
One aspect that has traditionally received less attention in language
learning contexts has been that of pragmatic development. Chapter 7
focuses on one particular aspect of pragmatic development, that of
pragmatic acquisition from a multilingual perspective. Cenoz deals with
the multicompetence model in describing pragmatic competence of foreign
language learners. In so doing, we are provided with a different view of
pragmatic development to that presented by other scholars (Kasper and
Rose 2002; Barron 2003), who have mainly considered second language
learning contexts or who have not paid much attention to individual
variables, like those of the learners’ mother tongue or bilingualism. Some
of these variables like the typological distance between the learners’ L1
