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Critical Approaches to Intercultural Discourse and Communication
During the last few decades, many disciplines in the humanities and social sciences have witnessed a critical turn. In the field of teaching English to speakers of other languages, for instance, Kumaravadivelu (2006: 70) states that the critical turn is about “connecting the word with the world, … recognizing language as ideology, not just as system, … (and) extending the educational space to the social, cultural and political dynamics of language use.” Critical approaches have a philosophical affiliation with the Frankfurt School, poststructuralism, postcolonialism, and critical pedagogies, all of which problematize the relation of domination and subordination perpetuated in social practices and structures and envision social transformation for more equitable relations of power. In the field of second-language education, investigations of the sociopolitical and ideological dimensions of the ways in which language is used, taught, and learned have provided alternative perspectives to understand language and culture. In exploring critical approaches to intercultural discourse and communication, it is important to scrutinize how we understand culture, the core concept of the inquiry area. Critical explorations of culture provide researchers and practitioners with the opportunity to reconceptualize cultural difference, identify connections between cultural representations and power, and become cognizant ...
