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particularly those taken from ethnography.
Ethnography
Ethnography technically refers to an anthropologist’s description of a
community through systematic observation, usually accomplished by
someone who has lived amongst the community as a ‘participant observer’
over many months, or even years. Ethnographers often give detailed
descriptions of language behaviour within the community. In later years,
ethnography has widened to encompass a variety of research techniques in
media research and cultural studies, as well as in anthropology. Moreover,
teachers, materials designers and learners of foreign languages have been
urged to develop ethnographic skills (Holliday, 1994; Roberts
et al
., 2001),
and the development of such skills is a fundamental part of the intercultural
approach. Ethnographic research is sometimes described, half sardonically,
as ‘loafing and lurking’ but the strategies used to observe, interpret and
explain social behaviour are sophisticated, practical and at the very heart of
the intercultural language curriculum. Ethnography is a recurring theme in
the remainder of this book, particularly Chapter 5.
Sociolinguistics
Although North American linguistics has been dominated by grammat-
An Intercultural Approach to Second Language Education
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ical modelling in the tradition of Bloomfield, and then Chomsky, other,
more socially based, approaches to language exploration and description
exist. Of these, sociolinguistics would seem to promise most to anyone
interested in culture. Loveday (1981) gives a lucid account of ways in which
sociolinguistics promised to contribute a cultural perspective to communi-
cative language teaching. For example, sociolinguists are interested in the
structures of discourses like conversation, joke-telling and teacher–pupil
interaction. Sociolinguistics is associated most strongly, perhaps, with
ways in which linguistic markers and procedures identify speakers and
writers as members of a particular group, whether that group is bound
together by age, gender, class, region, nationality, ethnicity or some other
common affiliation. It is also interested in the way bilingual speakers use
language. For example, sociolinguists ask when and why bilingual
speakers switch codes, and they consider whether the fact that they
command two or more languages alters their perception of their personal
identity.
Not surprisingly, it was from sociolinguistics that the most powerful
critique of Chomsky’s linguistics arose. Hymes (1972: 277) attacked the
narrowness of Chomsky’s idealised view of competence, which might be
characterised as knowledge of how to construct grammatically acceptable
sentences. Hymes coined the term ‘communicative competence’ to include:
knowledge of sentences, not only as grammatical, but also as
appropri-
ate
. [A child with normal abilities] acquires competence as to when to
speak, when not, and as to what to talk about, with whom, when,
where and in what manner.
The term ‘communicative competence’ became common currency among
ELT professionals in the 1970s; however, this did not prevent cultural
aspects of communicative competence from being relatively neglected.
Even so, sociolinguistics has had a powerful impact on the practice of
English language teaching. Stern (1992: 211) argues unequivocally that ‘a
foreign language must be studied sociolinguistically’, that is, foreign
language teaching must make the connection between linguistic features
and ‘social events, social structure, and social stratification’. Stern also
appeals for ELT to focus not just on the target language, but on ‘the people
who use the language, the way they live, what they do, think and dream’
(ibid.). While the sociolinguistic influence on ELT has embraced some
topics that are relevant to different cultures – for example, the study,
description and teaching of politeness formulae – there are other topics,
such as the social construction of the self and others, which have been com-
paratively neglected. An intercultural approach redresses this balance.
10
Intercultural Approaches to ELT
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