Language awareness and (critical) cultural awareness – relationships, comparisons and contrasts

Abstract The vexed question of the relationship between 'language' and 'culture' will be the starting point. I do not propose to 'resolve' the question but to consider some ways in which relationships between cultural awareness and language awareness might be conceptualised and then have some impact on language education. By 'language education' I refer to the teaching and learning of all languages in a curriculum, whether this be the synchronic experienced curriculum of a learner at a given point in time or the diachronic curriculum of their lifelong learning. I will draw on the Council of Europe's concept and platform for 'Languages in Education, Languages of Education' and plurilingual and intercultural education to provide an overview of the issues involved. Finally, I will consider the impact on teaching and learning in practice by suggesting that, in the best cases, language and culture teaching produces, through the development of linguistic and intercultural competence, alternative conceptualisations of the world and contributes to the education/Bildung of the individual in society. Keywords: language awarenesscultural awarenessintercultural communicationplurilingualism Notes 1. In seeking to develop general linguistic ability, the teacher will attempt among other things to make his (sic) pupils consciously aware of the phenomenon of language and its workings. He will want to help his pupils to knowledge of certain truths concerning the phenomenon, to understanding of certain relationships between that phenomenon and other aspects of human behaviour. He will be concerned above all with the foreign language and will not neglect to teach the pupil to use the language, but he will also by extension be helping the pupil towards a conscious knowledge of his own language and its nature as an example of the general phenomenon (Byram, Citation1978, p. 206). 2. Both 'language' and 'culture' are difficult concepts to define in the abstract. Language teachers and other linguists however are usually happy to be pragmatic and 'define' by use and refinement of use where necessary; teachers of German understand each other when they speak of 'teaching the German language' for example. There is often more concern to attempt to define 'culture' perhaps because language people are new to the concept, but it can be treated just as pragmatically. My own shorthand is the phrase 'beliefs, values and behaviours' shared by a social group, whether permanent or transitory. 3. The teaching/training of attitudes is a complex matter with difficult ethical dimensions, but is the one which is commonly addressed by techniques of experiential learning in commercial training. The attitudes I refer to in my model are those of curiosity rather than positive feelings about others, and the teaching task in this case is that of stimulating curiosity, a task which those working in general education are familiar with. 4. The concept of Bildung is complex but is introduced in a special issue of The Journal of the Philosophy of Education by Løvlie and Standish (Citation2002, p. 318) as follows: 'In a fragment published as the Theory of Bildung, Wilhelm von Humboldt states that Bildung is about linking the self to the world in "the most general, most animated and most unrestrained interplay". And he goes on to describe the interaction between the student's inner powers and capabilities and the external world in terms that reverberate through the literature on education in the following centuries: thus it is crucial that the student "should not lose himself in this alienation, but rather should reflect back into his inner being the clarifying light and comforting warmth of everything that he undertakes outside himself" (von Humboldt, Citation2000, p. 58ff). The practical aim of Bildung, then is to strengthen the student's innate powers and character development'. 5. Since the CEFR is a European instrument for specifying teaching, learning and assessment options, leaving to member states the decisions about what is to be taught, learnt and assessed and how, it might be expected to remain neutral on the context and operationalisation of social agency. On the other hand, the Council of Europe pursues activities to promote education for democratic citizenship (EDC) and it might be expected that the purposes of CEFR could be combined with those of EDC. This has been attempted in the Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters where analysis leads to commitment to action.