CULTURE IN SLA: TOWARDS DEVELOPING INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

Abstract

In this paper, the importance of “culture” is focused on regarding its relation to second/foreign language acquisition/learning. By reinterpreting the Iceberg Model of Culture, the author thinks that second/foreign language learners are exposed to the dominant culture with its social and linguistic norms and therefore they experience deculturalization, which also brings about the issue of the Self and the Other. It is suggested in the paper that a shift from communicative competence (CC) to intercultural communicative competence (ICC) in multicultural second/foreign language classes per se could enhance language learning by involving these learners’ native culture elements in the language learning/teaching process. While the paper illustrates some pedagogical implications that such a shift could entail, it concludes that introducing these practices in multicultural second/foreign language classes have the potential to enable both practitioners and learners to deal with power relations and the deculturalizing forces, which might be prevalent in such classes.