Chapter 2 uses one first-generation immigrant mother’s narrative as a basis to outline the language background of the family and to explore the construction and the characteristics of the bilingual space at home, as well as the history and the forces behind the shift of linguistic repertoire in the household during the early years of children who are speakers of Chinese as a heritage language.

Feedback in its actual forms has gained momentum because many developments in teaching and learning in schools and in the foreign-language classroom in particular have facililtated the implementation of a feedback culture. In the last decades, education in schools has become more and more learner-oriented. On this basis, formative feedback practices have become more and more important and specified in order to help teachers and learners to overcome the concentration on the person of the teacher and on drill-based forms of instruction. Today, feedback is no longer a one-way road, but also reaches teachers and is complemented by various other forms of feedback. This general positive development was further promoted by the changes in foreign-language instruction from the Grammar-Translation-Method to Intercultural Communication, with the aim of coming as close to real-life settings as possible.

The chapter addresses the relation between post-Gricean pragmatics and intercultural pragmatics. As such, it addresses meaning in relation to intentions and inferences and provides an overview of the main developments in this tradition, placing them in the context of the utility they have for understanding cross-cultural communication, and specifically the acquisition of pragmatic competence. Section 1.2 introduces the concept of pragmatic universals and moves to discussing how Grice’s account of cooperative conversational behavior can be viewed as such pragmatic universal principles. After pointing out some problems with Grice’s original account as it is seen from the perspective of several decades, Section 1.3 proceeds to post-Gricean approaches to linguistic communication, focusing not so much on the traditional debates concerning the number and scope of the necessary maxims or principles (covered briefly in Section 1.3.1) but rather on the semantics/pragmatic boundary and the related question of the truth-conditional content that opened up interesting contextualist pursuits (Section 1.3.2). Section 1.4 addresses different versions of contextualism and places them in the context of the debates between minimalists and contextualists. Section 1.5 concludes with comments on the utility of post-Gricean pragmatics for intercultural communication, stressing the significance of pragmatic universals.

This chapter examines the different kinds of Indigenous-language texts that scholars can find in the archives, including word lists, philosophical vocabularies, dictionaries, grammars, and religious texts. It provides an overview of the kinds of features scholars are likely to find in these sources and the kinds of (sometimes competing) interpretations scholars have put forward to understand them. This essay argues that Indigenous-language texts reveal the practices of intercultural communication and demonstrate the varied ways traders, missionaries, officials, and other colonizers deployed linguistic knowledge to justify dispossession and to achieve the practical goals with respect to colonization. Yet because these texts ultimately depended on willing Native participation in the production of linguistic knowledge, these sources also provide unmatched possibilities for recovering diverse Indigenous intellectual and sociopolitical frameworks.

Through her own trajectory, as well as her daughter’s, Emmanuelle Le Pichon describes their experiences of “languages belonging” and legitimacy from France to Canada via Italy, the Netherlands and the United States. Emmanuelle Le Pichon shows her concern with categorizing and reductive terms such as foreign language or L1, L2, L3 and proposes alternative ways for a proactive celebration of diversity in the classroom.

Claire Kramsch grew up between four different languages, French, English, German, and Yiddish. She tells how beyond the differences in languages, it is the misunderstandings between the speakers of these languages that have always fascinated her and that have guided her research. Literature and discourse analysis led her to develop the concept of symbolic competence.

Explores the emerging subdiscipline of Peace Communication (PeaceComm), beginning with a discussion about the history of the practice, and the author’s ongoing quest to introduce a subdiscipline, dedicated to assessing and evaluating the critical efficacy of the practice. A methodological template for comparative global assessment and evaluation is offered, stressing the need to prioritize political conflict data and conflict zones-based context analyses, given that political conflict is caused by collective grievances related to “group”-level disadvantages and perceived disadvantages, not individual prejudice. The template is operationalized through the assessment of Sesame Street interventions into the Israeli Palestinian ethnopolitical nationalist conflict, drawn from field work in 2001, 2004-2006, and 2011. Best practices and other interdisciplinary contributions for practitioners are recommended, to understand conflict intractability where socialization, culture, and inter-“group” (mediated and interpersonal) communication intersect in glocalized conflict zone contexts, and in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, specifically. The interventions targeted children, who comprise the majority within conflict zones. The model used, mediated contact effects, is one of seven models and six subtypes of PeaceComm practiced historically worldwide the author has previously categorized, and is one of those most in need of PeaceComm scholarship, with potential to succeed but scarce evidence collected about its efficacy.

Building on concepts introduced by Edward Stewart in the original 1971 edition of American Cultural Patterns: A Cross-Cultural Perspective and expanded by Milton Bennett and him in its 1991 revision, this chapter presents an observational framework for comparing typical forms of “perceptual representation” among a broad range of regional cultural groupings. The underlying idea is that sensory stimuli can be experienced at various levels of abstraction, and cultural groups that need to coordinate meaning and action will represent experience in ways that systematically differ from some other groups. The labeling of different modes of perceptual representation is presented as an etic observational category, which means that the category is not suitable for describing single cultures or individuals. Etic categories allow observation of the interaction among cultures – both the abstract dynamic of contrasting cultural patterns and the concrete interactional space that is opened when people with different cultural worldviews attempt to communicate. For intercultural professionals, etic categories allow useful comparisons among cultural worldviews for purposes of training and coaching. For participants in cross-cultural encounters, etic categories can form doorways into the experience of alternative worldviews. That empathic experience allows events to be perceived differently and the resulting alternative experience to guide more interculturally adaptive behavior.

Intercultural communicative competence (ICC) is an essential skill-set in the twenty-first century, but what constitutes this skill-set is not familiar to most people. In order to change this, the introduction examines reasons why developing ICC is so important in today’s interconnected world, identifying peace, economic, technological, demographic, ethical, and self-awareness imperatives. It also makes the case for utilizing second/foreign language classrooms to foster ICC development, since learning another language presents a unique opportunity for this process; it can teach learners about other cultures, while also helping them reflect on their own.

Each individual represents a complex network of social relationships, starting with primary socialization by parents or caretakers (Duff, 2010; Ochs & Schieffelin, 2008). As we grow up, we get socialized into more and more social groups, including families, friendships, sports teams, religious organizations, or professional associations. These relationships shape our identity throughout our lives. Some aspects of our identity are determined for us; others we control. Some aspects are relatively constant, since societies and social groups strive for stability (i.e., preferring little or slow change); others are malleable. We present our selves in different ways across various interactional contexts (e.g., professional identity at work, familial at home). Studying another language provides a unique opportunity to reflect on our various selves, because our identities are often renegotiated when we encounter new cultures and navigate new social expectations. To delve into these issues, this chapter examines identity as a complex and dynamic phenomenon, considers the relationship between language and identity, and suggests ways for addressing these issues in the L2 classroom.

Anne Ife’s chapter traces attitudes towards language tolerance in Western Europe during the last half of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first century. This includes an exploration of the post-Second World War climate of cultural and linguistic acceptance as well as the current climate shaped by increased fear and suspicion, and the growth of populism and resentment of incomers. Using media and documented sources and relevant research findings, this chapter examines in particular evidence of linguistic othering, and gauges its impact on intercultural relations, notably in the UK where language issues featured prominently in political campaigns and media discourse relating to migrant communities in the lead-up to the 2016 European Union referendum.

Jan D ten Thije addresses the spectrum of scientific and societal issues referred to as intercultural communication by pointing out five different theoretical and methodical approaches. First, he discusses the interactive approach which investigates intercultural (face-to-face) interaction. He then focuses on approaches that compare and contrast cultural and linguistic systems, before discussing those that consider collective and national images of ‘self’ and ‘other’ by analysing cultural representations in various forms of (computer-mediated) communication. A fourth approach comprises studies into multilingualism and linguistic diversities, and finally, the transfer approach integrates knowledge, attitudes, capacities, reflectivity and motivation in learnable intercultural competencies. Ten Thije elaborates on the interfaces and interrelations of these approaches in how they address the notion of ‘intercultural mediation’.

Richard Evanoff’s chapter examines aspects that are key for most of the approaches mentioned above. Intercultural ethics is here defined as the process by which people from different cultures negotiate the norms that will govern relations between them at a variety of levels, including the interpersonal, intergroup and international. The chapter then discusses descriptive, normative and meta-ethical directions as three main methodological approaches to intercultural ethics, and it concludes by considering how intercultural dialogue on ethics might be conducted. In particular, Evanoff suggests that it may be possible for people from different cultures to co-create ethical norms on the basis of ‘third cultures’.

Margaret Littler adopts a critical approach to the understanding of religion as an object of intercultural knowledge, diverging from a view of religion as a set of codified and culturally specific practices, and proposing instead an appreciation of the transformative nature of faith as a dynamic potentiality within life. Her chapter, which draws on ideas relating to the power of narratives and memory, argues for a non-representational approach to literary texts, in which religion is not only content or theme, but a source of creative intensity that erupts into a settled understanding of religious orthodoxies. The chapter focuses on German-language texts that engage creatively with religion, making of it an emergent phenomenon with the potential to unsettle and expand the dominant images of Islam and Christianity circulating in Europe today. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of minor literature, it seeks to demonstrate how a non-representational reading of texts opens up unexpected perspectives rather than representing what is already known.

Birgit Neumann’s chapter focuses on the specificities of literature, i.e., its distinct poetic and affective potential, to create and negotiate concepts of self and otherness, which underlie processes of intercultural communication. This includes close readings of identity constructs in Andrea Levy’s Small Island (2004) and Teju Cole’s Open City (2011), which illustrate how literary representations may promote, trouble or problematize intercultural communication.