Blending Spaces

Arnd Witte

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781501500787
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book comprehensively analyzes the development of interculturally blended third spaces by the second language learner, beginning with the linguistic and sociocultural imprints of the first language and culture on the mind and culminating in the proposal of a phase-model of the development of intercultural competence. The foundational analysis of L1-mediated constructs is followed by an analysis of forms interaction, concepts of identity and constructs of culture/interculture, thus shifting the object of analysis from the subjective to the intersubjective levels of construction and interaction. The focus of the book is on the gradual development of interculturally blended third spaces in the mind of the learner as genuinely new bases for construction. This book takes an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on research in cultural psychology, linguistic anthropology, critical theory, language acquisition and second language learning and shows how culture and interculture need to be emphasized as an integral part of second language learning.

1 Introduction: The interplay of languages, cultures, and minds

Can one learn this knowledge? Yes; some can. Not, however, by making a course in it, but through “experience”. – Can someone else be a man’s teacher in this? – Certainly. From time to time he gives him the right tip. – This is what “learning” and “teaching” are like here. (Wittgenstein 1953: 227e; emphasis in the original)

Teaching and learning a second or foreign language¹ means first of all mediating and learning the words, grammar, pronunciation and morpho-syntax which are part of the linguistic system. These linguistic elements are didactically reducible and thus learnable, following a clearly definable grammatical progression (cf. Harden, Köhler, and Witte 2006). However, language is not only a linguistic system but also the main tool for abstract thought and the central semiotic system of a speech community.² Therefore, in order to be able to use the second language (L2) appropriately, the student also has to learn about the cultural patterns and social structures of the other speech community which guide intersubjective language use. The sociocultural context of language usage, however, is highly dynamic, complex and, in its (inter-)subjective application, very flexible; it is also dependent on the social, cultural, and psychological framework, as invoked momentarily by the language users, for example, by the interlocutors in a conversation. These pragmatic contexts of social language use are structured by relatively loose and dynamic principles rather than by prescriptive rules, which make grammar much more analytically accessible, teachable, and learnable. However, unlike the language system itself, sociocultural principles of language use are not systematically reducible, and they consequently cannot be presented in an easily learnable fashion to the L2 learner. This has led to a situation in many L2 classrooms in primary, secondary, and tertiary-level education where structured learning of the second language as a linguistic system in terms of grammar, syntax, phonetics, lexis, semantics, morphology, and communicative language use has taken priority in the foundational stages of L2 learning which is expanded in the higher stages by the cultural frame of reference of the L2 speech community.

This division of language and culture has been identified as one of the major concerns by the 2007 Modern Language Association (MLA) Ad Hoc Committee Report entitled “Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World.” This report identifies some problems in foreign language departments and language programs at U.S. universities in response to the language deficit which has become an urgent matter in the U.S. after the catastrophic events of 9/11. In particular, the report identifies the division into lower and higher level courses in foreign language programs as problematic since they tend to support the artificial division into language skills (primarily taught at lower level) and cultural content (taught at higher level, mainly through literature).³ As a means of overcoming this division, the MLA (2007) Ad Hoc Committee Report proposes that this situation should be addressed by moving towards “a broader and more coherent curriculum in which language, culture, and literature are taught as a continuous whole, supported by alliances of other departments and expressed through interdisciplinary courses, [which] will reinvigorate language departments as valuable academic units central to the humanities and the missions of institutions of higher learning” (MLA 2007: 3).

It seems obvious that the MLA Report is concerned about the weakening status of foreign language departments in the U.S., and it proposes tactical alliances with cognate academic departments in the humanistic faculty to safeguard the foreign language departments. This move, however, is not only tactically motivated, because interdisciplinarity makes utter sense when the goal of L2 learning is not confined to the linguistic system but is also broadened to include the development of overarching intercultural competence, based on the learner’s increasing awareness of and ability to use cultural constructs of the target culture, while at the same time becoming increasingly aware of the patterns and constructs of his or her native culture; this facilitates the ability to cognitively, emotionally, and behaviorally move between the dominant constructs of the languages and cultures involved in the learning experience. In this book, such a comprehensive, interdisciplinary, and integrated concept of second language learning will be addressed, with all its repercussions for the shift of subjective cultural frames of reference and constructs of identity, but also for the development of intercultural third spaces of learners, tapping into the disciplines of psychology, sociology, cultural studies, anthropology, ethnography, language philosophy, pedagogy, critical theory, and applied linguistics (cf. Chapters 6-10).

The MLA Report (2007: 2) uses the terminology “translingual and transcultural competence” which is different from the concept of intercultural competence used in this book, although the authors of the report propose a definition which seems to oscillate between the two concepts:

The idea of translingual and transcultural competence (...) places value on the ability to operate between languages. Students are educated to function as informed and capable interlocutors with educated native speakers in the target language. They are also trained to reflect on the world and themselves through the lens of another language. (...) In the course of acquiring functional language abilities, students are taught critical language awareness, interpretation and translation, historical and political consciousness, social sensibility, and aesthetic perception (MLA 2007: 2-3).

In this citation, the phrase “operating between languages,” insinuates the development of a “third place” on the part of the individual student, stimulated and fostered by rich experiential activities in the L2 classroom (cf. Sections 8.2 & 9.6). The phrase of reflecting on the world and oneself “through the lens of another culture and language,” does not imply “that one national language can be mapped onto one national culture” (Kramsch 2012: 18) but that the conceptualizations and patterns of construal, as subjectively mediated in the third place between languages and cultures, are used by the L2 learner as a genuinely new basis for construction. The third place is characterized by the subjective blending of spaces within and between cultures (cf. Section 4.7), operating on the margins of cultural systems of meaning, in borderline zones and spaces in-between traditional cultural patterns, values, and norms, thus constantly developing relevant spheres for the subject where cultural production and subjective positionings take place. The negotiation for meaning in borderline spaces between the languages and cultures evokes the concept of interlingual and intercultural positionings by students; the positionings are characterized by the recognition of linguistic and cultural boundaries and the intent to negotiate concepts, patterns, discourses, and norms in the subjective third space between the languages and cultures.

The concept of translingual and transcultural positionings has other intentions, ⁴ in that it aims to overcome traditional boundaries and position itself above existing cultures, thereby eliminating essentializing constructs such as racism and ethnocentrism. Transcultural individuals can be seen as “culturally footloose, owing loyalty to no single culture” (Parekh 2006: 150). They can be detached from cultural systems of meaning and values and create their own original lifestyle beyond the constraints of culture (for a discussion of the concepts of trans-, inter-, and multiculturality, cf. Introduction to Chapter 8). Hence, the terminology used in this book centers on the “inter” as the space of enunciation in terms of negotiation for meaning which recognizes the cultural situatedness of the subject with regard to language, identity, positioning, activity, and emotion. Since the complex activities of making sense are centered on the learner as an embodied subject, the perspective taken in this book is not that of the learner to whom something is being done (as expressed in the above citation, e.g., that the student is “educated,” “trained,” and “taught”), but it understands the learner as an active and engaged member of a linguistic and cultural community who is constantly negotiating for meaning in all aspects of everyday life in psychological, linguistic, emotional, cultural, and behavioral domains. The L2 classroom is not confined to form/function-focused language learning but it has to fundamentally consider the learner’s development of intercultural competence and should also take into account each learner’s complex and competing expectations, worldviews and beliefs, identities and voices, and anxieties and desires which are initially facilitated by the cultural values and beliefs of the first language (L1) speech community.

This is where this book enters the debate: in the first part it attempts to comprehensively analyze the notions of cultural, social, pragmatic, communicative, emotional, and cognitive contexts of subjective L1 usage and the influence they have on L2 learning and teaching. The comprehensive nature of these analyses means that this part of the book will function as a post-disciplinary handbook that provides a critical review and contextualization of existing research with regard to intercultural dimensions of second language learning. A constructionist-developmental perspective will be applied in order to analyze the complex interplay of cognitive development, cultural patterns, and social structures in L1 acquisition (including the acquisition of concepts, frames, schemata, and plausibility structures) and, from that basis, in intercultural L2 learning. In the second part of the book, the emphasis shifts towards interculturally blended spaces as the transitory domains for subjectively producing novel knowledge. For the field of L2 learning, the constructionist approach has the potential to overcome the traditional dichotomies of own (or native) and other (or foreign) since neither are static and essentialist categories but highly dynamic and complex notions engaged in dialectic processes of accommodation and assimilation, whilst always focused on the developing subject. The intercultural third space provides the ideal terrain for symbolically deconstructing essentialist categories and reconstructing them as the dynamic blended foundation of subjective symbolic construction, based on the complex interplay of languages and cultures in the subjective mind of the L2 learner. The third space between cultural frames provides the nucleus for the subjective development of intercultural competence (cf. Chapter 10) which is a complex construct that includes cognitive, emotional, psychological, and behavioral domains of the learner and is thus difficult to define in terms of its mediation, development and assessment in the L2 classroom.⁵ In Section 10.2, a model of principles for progressively mediating intercultural competence in the L2 classroom will be developed in terms of encouraging and allowing for the blending of spaces between the cultures which integrates many of the concepts, notions, and theories analyzed in the previous chapters. Neither the first nor the target culture, nor the mind of the learner or the intercultural third place, are static and atomistic entities: they all constantly interact and are subject to ongoing change which makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to assess the subjective accounts of intercultural competence of the L2 learner in a comprehensive and inclusive manner (cf. Section 10.3) which involves the psychological and identity-related domains of learners that cannot be verbalized or observed.

The focus on the learner as a subject is easier claimed than implemented in L2 teaching; each individual learner is unique in terms of socialization, lingualization, emotion, experience, memory, constructs of identity, desire, ambition, and many other aspects. However, what learners in a homogenous L2 classroom have in common is the first language and the inherent concepts, frames, and plausibility structures which facilitate smooth intersubjective exchange. Another shared domain of learners in a homogeneous class is the internalized culture which provides them with basically the same frame of mind and patterns of thought and action. Both elements, language and culture, are broadly shared in a speech community, albeit subjectively harbored to different degrees. Subjectivity as a conscious stance is facilitated by culture and language which are also the glue that holds a speech community together and, by implication, makes it distinguishable from other speech communities in terms of ...

Table of contents

• Trends in Applied Linguistics
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• 1 Introduction: The interplay of languages, cultures, and minds
• 2 First language acquisition and early cognitive development
• 3 Formation of concepts and plausibility structures
• 4 Language and the intersubjective construction of meaning
• 5 Imposing structure on language-in-use: From language philosophy to discourse analysis
• 6 The dynamics of identity
• 7 The complexities of culture
• 8 The interplay of cultures: Constructs of interculture
• 9 Fostering intercultural competence in the second language classroom
• 10 Mediating and assessing intercultural competence in the L2 classroom
• 11 Conclusion
• References
• Name index
• Subject index