Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC)
Intercultural Communicative Competence. If I had to guess what this meant, I would say it had something to do with the ability to communicate and culture. Okay, so after a little research I can kinda say I was right.
ICC is defined as ‘ability to understand cultures, including your own, and use this understanding to communicate with people from other cultures successfully’ on the British Council Website.(https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/intercultural-communicative-competence.
It is about culture and it is about communication, however, as usual, there’s more to it than that. Its about how we understand another culture and how we use this understanding to communicate with others, who aren’t from the same culture as us.
CULTURAL SITUATIONS
So, why is ICC so important?? To start, when I began learning my first language, French, one of the first lessons we got is when to use the form ‘you’, as in ‘tu’ or ‘vous’. This was hard for me to getmy head around because before, I had never come across it. I now know that it’s the same in Spanish and German. Without this understanding, talking to people I don’t know or people like my teachers would be awkward. Understanding little differences in culture is so important. It’s about showing respect and sensitivity. It’s about showing people that you care.
We looked at the Cultura Project in class, it was so interesting to see how there is such a difference in cultures and how different cultures expect people to react in different situations. For example, in a comparison between Roeper School in America and Lycée Louis Armand à Chambéry, France, we see how people think differently to a mother slapping her child. In France, most people said the child probably deserved it, however in the American responses, they said they would feel the need to intervene, and would feel guilty if they didn’t. Personally I feel more on the American side, just for the record.
Byram’s Model of ICC 1977
In his definition Byram incorporated the 5 savoirs, Savoir, Savoir Etré, Savoir S’engager, Savoir Comprendre, Savoir Faire/Apprendre.
In the Cultura example, we see how it is important to use these steps of ICC to act in a way acceptable to the culture we are surrounded by.
Savoirs:
This the knowledge a person has about general interactions and social groups in their own culture and in other cultures. In the example above, we see how this would be important, in France, slapping a child is not seen as something that is bad, this seems to be how children learn right from wrong, however in America this would be frowned upon. A French person would have to understand that it is not okay to slap a child in America, but an American would also have to understand that in France, it would not be appropriate to say something to the mother slapping her child.
Savoir Etre:
Curiosity and openness, readiness to suspend disbelief (about other cultures) and also belief (about your own culture). This savoir is important in this example. The American must suspend their belief that slapping the child is bad, but also suspend disbelief that a mother would slap her child. They must be open to the possible reasons for slapping the child, as in France they see it as a way of correcting the child.
Savoir Faire/Apprendre:
This is cultural practices knowledge acquisition and procedural application of knowledge in real time. We see this in the example, it’s easy to know what’s acceptable in the other culture, but it may not be so easy to apply this knowledge. The example of the child isnt’ so good in this example, because hitting a child was not necessarily approved in the French example, it just wasn’t condemned as strongly as in the American sample.
Byram’s model is so helpful when learning a language and the culture behind it, it’s like a checklist we can use to ensure we have sufficient knowledge about the people we will be interacting with.
DIFFERENCE IN INTERCULTURAL SPEAKER AND MEDIATOR
Intercultural Speaker:
This is someone who possesses all of Byram’s Savoirs and communicates with people from other cultures by using this knowledge.
Intercultural Mediator:
This is someone who enables intercultural communication. (https://www.igi-global.com/dictionary/translator-intercultural-competence/45051). They use creative acts of meaning-making between language and culture. They are a participant in both cultures, thereby being bi-cultural. (Luddicoat, Anthony J. Intercultural mediation, intercultural communication and translation. Perspectives: Studies in Translation Theory and Practice. vol. 24., 2016)(https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0907676X.2014.980279),
Thanks for reading, till next week,
Tanya
Tanya's Linguistic Blog 