Keywords

1 Introduction

After decades of research on intercultural competence, the question we need to ask is: are we getting any clearer in our definition and assessment of knowledge and skills needed to become interculturally competent? In recent scholarly debates on what is required to become interculturally competent, concerns have been raised about relying on an outdated model based on the mainstream “cognitive/affective/behavioural” model (Martin 2015). Instead, arguments are being made in favour of a “developmental paradigm” that is grounded in the “dynamic interaction that arises between individuals” (Hammer 2015). Such a constructionist-grounded approach shifts the intercultural lens beyond the individual’s skills and traits to the process through which cultural meanings are discursively constructed in interaction (i.e., enacting interculturality). In other words, the measure of intercultural competence should be based on the experience of the individual’s engagement with cultural difference.

From a pedagogical perspective, how can we facilitate the development of intercultural competence for language learners? Many studies of intercultural language learning in online contexts initially focused on exchanges of cultural information in the belief that simple exposure to target language culture mediated by its target language speakers would contribute to intercultural awareness. However, according to Hammer (2015), examination of practical applications generally provides weak evidence of students becoming more effective at navigating the murky waters of cultural differences. More recent studies, for example, Ware (2013) and Tudini (2007), go beyond the raising of intercultural awareness to challenge students to reflect upon their own culture. They examine the role of dyadic construction of interculturality in the second language classroom in an attempt to identify key interactional features that promote intercultural negotiation.

The focus of this study is thus to report on the implementation of an online Skype exchange project which aims to promote intercultural learning and understanding between students across three universities located in Australia, Mexico and Germany. It examines students’ self-recorded exchanges and assesses them within the debate on the inclusion of interculturality in language learning and teaching. By analysing the negotiation of meaning that occurs between exchange partners, our study seeks to highlight the social nature of “intercultural mediation” (Liddicoat 2014; Kohler 2015), where rapport building, that is, the development of personal relationships between the participants, may have a significant impact on the negotiation of intercultural knowledge and attitudes.

Research has shown that e-communication tools have multiple advantages. Skype, in particular, provides an authentic frame for both language and culture learning (see Guth and Marini-Maio 2010; Liddicoat and Tudini 2013; Taillefer and Muñoz-Luna 2014; Tian and Wang 2010). It provides a synchronous vehicle for increased exposure to L2 input via native speaker encounters, combining both visual and audio information, essential for accurate encoding and decoding of messages. Skype also provides a cost-effective opportunity for intercultural exchanges, exposing students, who may not otherwise have the opportunity, to sustained interaction with persons from other cultural groups. As our project aims to increase students’ sensitivity to diverse cultural practices, and to develop a broader understanding of the conventions, values and belief systems that operate within their own and others’ cultural domains, the use of Skype tools seems thus particularly suited to meet these objectives.

2 The Project Rationale

Initially, this pilot project set out to explore traces of evidence of cultural learning in undergraduate students’ Skype interactions. However, as the project was developing, we became increasingly aware that “evidence” might not be the right word for what we were hoping to find. According to Dervin and Vlad (2010), a “culturalist” approach, which seeks to document the development of intercultural (Belz and Kiginger 2002) or pragmatic (Belz 2003) competencies along the model proposed by Byram (1997), reduces the other to national or cultural characteristics. Rather, these authors advocate examining how multiple cultures and identities are co-constructed and used to define oneself in interaction. The cultural content of learners’ exchanges cannot be taken as proof, or evidence of culture learning, and is therefore not as important as how they mediate the multidimensional aspects of culture in interaction. Our analysis and reflections are therefore anchored in a discursive approach, applying Levy’s (2007) multidimensional understanding of culture to the analysis of “cultural related episodes”. Zakir et al. define these “as any part of a dialogue produced in the teletandem sessions in which the students focus on any interest, explanation or inquisitiveness about their own culture or the partner’s” (2016, p. 26).

Our approach uses the five dimensions of culture as described by Levy (2007) because they broaden the understanding of culture as: (a) elemental; (b) relative; (c) group membership; (d) contested and (e) individual (variable and multiple). According to Levy:

Culture as elemental refers to one’s cultural orientation, values and beliefs system that are taken for granted and seem mostly unproblematic. It colours our understanding and interpretation of other groups’ cultural experiences.

Culture as relative refers to recognizing one’s own and others’ cultural practices and comparing or contrasting them. This view often leads to generalizations.

Culture as group membership refers to group identification (e.g., age, religion, language, etc.). This is quite noticeable when interlocutors are drawn to one another on account of their perceived shared belonging to a particular social group.

Culture as contested may be associated with “culture shock” at both an individual level and a broader societal level, where one’s core beliefs and values may be challenged. In our data this manifests itself through the types of questions and responses that reflect inquisitiveness about cultural groups or practices.

Culture as individual (i.e., variable and multiple) in which culture is interpreted as a variable and subjective concept. This is revealed when intercultural partners share individual experiences that are “subject to individual interpretation.” (Levy 2007, p. 111)

It is important to keep in mind, as Levy (2007) explains, that “the concept of culture is essentially holistic in nature and each dimension overlaps and builds upon the one before” (cited in Zakir et al. 2016, p. 23).

3 Organization of the Project

The corpus used in this study is part of a larger study that ran across several semesters in 2014 and 2015. It involved pairing two cohorts of Flinders University undergraduate students with overseas students. The first cohort were intermediate-level Spanish language learners (Group 1/SPAN) who spoke English as their first language and were paired with advanced-level English language learners at Universidad Panamericana in Mexico. The second cohort of Flinders University students were enrolled in “Intercultural Communication” (Group 2/LING), spoke English as their first language and were paired with advanced-level English language learners at Universität Paderborn in Germany. We chose to focus on overseas students who had advanced levels of English so that language difficulties would be minimal.

Participants were requested to email each other to arrange a first meeting over Skype, to introduce themselves, and subsequently to meet in pairs on at least three separate occasions via Skype at their chosen location. Participants were informed that they would be expected to audio-record their conversations for a minimum of three 15-minute sessions over a 12-week semester, and to hand up the self-recorded conversations for analysis by the researchers. All recordings of exchanges were conducted on a voluntary basis and the only incentive offered to students was the benefit they would derive from participating in such a project. In total, five pairs of students completed the project in Semester 2 2015. Their recordings constitute the data for this report.

Lead questions on cultural themes were suggested by the instructors and were provided to all exchange partners. These were selected based on their relevance to everyday encounters. The proposed themes sought to promote mutual give and take between the participants and provided prompts for exchanges on cultural knowledge, negotiating one’s understanding and interpretation. General themes selected for the intercultural exchanges included: (a) social conventions in everyday situations; (b) young people’s social life; (c) cultural celebrations; (d) attitudes towards different cultural groups and minorities; (e) conflict in relationships; and (f) social issues (e.g., same sex marriage; euthanasia; binge drinking; the environment; etc.) (See Appendix A).

4 Analysis and Discussion

Recorded data were transcribed and analysed by us to determine how the participants coming from different cultural backgrounds approached the cultural dimensions. Excerpts taken from our corpus will highlight key elements of the process of enacting interculturality that we seek to document. We discuss, firstly, an excerpt from the Skype exchange between the Australian and German participants and, secondly, an excerpt from the Australian and Mexican participants. As we are about to see in the following excerpts, various dimensions of culture co-exist that we think are representative of participants’ engagement in culture learning as they discursively co-construct meanings about culture.

4.1 Looking at Excerpt 1—B-K and Bel

In Group 2 (Skype session 2), we identified several topics involving cross-cultural comparisons of lifestyle, social practices, and social groups, thus signalling one’s understanding of a foreign culture (see Excerpt 1 in Appendix B). In looking at how the partners process cultural information, the data provide evidence of the multidimensional aspects of culture as outlined by Levy. At the start of this session, both speakers briefly establish group similarities between young people across the two countries. B-K (the German student) is trying to open up the topic by alluding to differences based on observation of social groups (young people), but Bel (the Australian student) dismisses this by emphasizing the similarities rather than the differences between them. Culture can thus be seen as group membership, indicating the need to establish rapport between the interlocutors. The topic of youth culture, however, is not taken up because presumably it does not require deeper inquiry (youth culture being taken as elemental). Alternatively, it could be that Bel is deliberately trying to avoid disagreement and wishes to set off the discussion on consensual terms, the weather being generally considered culturally acceptable for the purpose of small talk. This is supported by other studies of telecollaborative communication. For example, Zakir et al. note

[…] that participants frequently try to find something in common with their partners abroad, especially with regard to social practices and lifestyles. This can be interpreted as a need, or willingness, to identify with one another in order to get “closer” and make the interaction more pleasant and friendly (2016, p. 24).

In turn 5 (T5), B-K reframes the topic by taking up the lead question suggested by the instructor, i.e., “knowledge about each other’s country and culture”. After a brief mention of the weather, B-K quickly raises issues of historical and political consequence for Australians (T11, T13, T15) by mentioning what she knows about Australia, i.e., mainly the Indigenous people and Australia’s historical beginning as a penal colony. Feeling that the topic is too contentious, Bel manages to shift her understanding of culture onto safer ground by providing factual geographical information. In doing so, she adopts a didactic voice, mentioned by Liddicoat and Tudini (2013) in their study of chat interactions between native speakers and non-native speakers (NS/NNS). Bel also takes on the role of South Australian tourism advocate, stressing intra-cultural differences within Australia. For example, she emphasizes the distinctive features of South Australia in terms of accents, wineries, and evaluating the attraction of Melbourne vs. Adelaide. Later, in T44, she tentatively offers to talk about her knowledge of Germany in order to remain on the topic of establishing solid cultural facts about the other’s culture (T45), but her attempt is aborted by B-K who is not satisfied with the responses to her initial inquiry on Australian Indigenous groups. In T50, B-K is seeking to deepen her understanding of Indigenous Australians, and perhaps hopes that Bel can clarify the negative representation that her Australian friend, Alana, has reported to her about this group.

What has happened is that Bel is driven to a position which requires calling into question a dominant Australian historical and cultural narrative, which she outwardly rejects as a negative stereotype. Although she distances herself from this view—“…it’s a very unusual topic in Australia because historically at school we haven’t been taught much about what actually happened to the Indigenous Australians in the history” (T51)—, it is not clear which perspective Bel adopts on the historical events that shaped the cultural context of Australia. This would require her embracing varying viewpoints dealing with conflicting interpretations of events and forcing her to adopt, to quote Kramsch, “a didactic moral stance” (2013, p. 28). From this transcript then, we can clearly see elements of contested culture within the larger national culture as mentioned by Levy (2007), but unlike the other excerpts, there is little explicit marking of awareness of cultural relativity.

By contrast, focusing on another brief excerpt taken from an exchange between Din (Australian) and Jul (German), the following quote demonstrates the need to go beyond stereotypes and representations, and explores culture as a relative concept. In this excerpt, the students are talking about a cultural practice—food consumed at Christmas—as a marker of identity and discuss it as individual, variable and multiple.

[...] we eat certain foods on certain days (.2) there are many families who eat certain things on Christmas…like fish probably. I think most people eat fish (.) but my brother and I we don’t like fish so there has never been fish at Christmas but maybe that’s something I would introduce to my life if I were to live abroad. I would suddenly adopt traditions that I didn’t have when living in Germany because I live here and I know I am German but when I am abroad maybe I’ll have to try harder to be some kind of German who lives abroad. I will maybe try to be more (..) person at first and then try to go out and learn new things new stuff (.) That’s interesting I haven’t thought about that before. (T495–504)

Interestingly, the German student becomes aware that if she were to travel or live abroad, she would enact a German cultural identity based on her family traditions.

4.2 Looking at Excerpt 2: Irene and Myra

In the following exchange between Irene (Australian) and Myra (Mexican), taken from Group 1 (Skype session 2), our analysis further reveals how the notion of cultural relativity is discursively constructed (See Excerpt 2 in Appendix B).

In T89, Myra asks Irene to provide information on how Adelaideans spend their public holidays and, in particular, Australia Day. This request is met with some hesitation from Irene as she states that Myra’s question is a difficult one to answer and presents the celebration of this public holiday as both a culture-relative and a culture-contested experience.

Culture as membership is shown in the way Irene explains which group, or members of the Adelaide community, she aligns with in the celebration of this holiday. We note that Irene displays membership to the non-Aboriginal community in T94, and recognizes Aboriginal people as part of the Australian population in T92, to which she also belongs. The dimension of culture as relative is also displayed in T92 as Irene explains that this holiday is experienced differently depending on the social group with which one aligns. That is, she identifies herself as a non-Aboriginal person, and at the same time she distances herself from white Australians who celebrate Australia Day.

Irene’s personal interpretation of the celebration of this day is further developed in the conversation, and we can observe both dimensions of culture as contested and as individual in her discourse. While in T94, Irene states that, like most white Australians, she also spends the day drinking, having a barbecue and going to the beach, this membership dimension coexists with the identification of points of contestation towards cultural representations. Specifically, in turns 92, 94 and 96, Irene states that Australia Day is the day when Australia was invaded by the British. Hence, she argues, it is a very sad day for Aboriginal Australians. Indeed, Irene further states in T102, that she is embarrassed at the fact that Australia Day is celebrated, and that white Australians do not respect how Aboriginal Australians experience this celebration. Moreover, she interprets these differing perspectives as indexing division in Australian society between white and Indigenous people.

This triggers Myra’s engagement with Irene’s moral stance on whether Australia Day should be celebrated. First, in T101, Myra lets Irene know that, based on her own research into the issue, she is aware of social fragmentation in relation to this celebration. Given the timing of this exchange, which coincides with the Party for Freedom’s attempt to mark the anniversary of the Cronulla riots in Sydney,Footnote 1 Myra may be aware of the tensions provoked by this event as reported in the media. Of course, she could simply be referring to her knowledge of social division in Australia in a more general sense. What we can ascertain, however, in T105, is that Myra attempts to connect with Irene’s arguments. She requests confirmation as to whether, in celebrating Australia Day, the “social [groupings are] just like separate”, that is, whether this celebration is politically positioned as a celebration for all Australians or, as Irene assertively states, Aboriginal people’s opposition is ignored. Although they are both collaborating in establishing their knowledge of Australian culture, one notes an imbalance in the development of the participants’ discourse, as Irene tends to take over and misses the opportunity to seek further elaboration on Myra’s knowledge of social issues in Australia.

Overall, the dynamics observed in these exchanges point to the participants’ willingness to engage in collaborative processing of cultural information. There is evidence of inquisitiveness in Myra’s reflection, and of critical analysis in Irene’s contributions. This analysis brings into the discussion a critical reflection on how the celebration of a public holiday reveals marked differences in perspectives and beliefs from different communities within a given national milieu.

5 Final Words

The online exchanges between the two Flinders student groups and their overseas partners yielded rich and complex results, all of which would benefit from further exploration. Based on the limited data presented here, our analyses reveal that:

  1. (i).

    Overwhelmingly, exchange partners draw on cultural similarities to establish a rapport, preferring to align themselves with each other (as illustrated in Excerpt 1). A question that could be further investigated is whether establishing a rapport on the basis of finding common ground is simply due to a lack of familiarity between the participants or a reluctance to engage further in intercultural negotiation.

  2. (ii).

    Participants engage in identifying differences that they perceive at many levels, as if they were trying to establish their otherness (see the two Australian-German exchanges). We found examples (particularly in Excerpt 2) that illustrate how a reflective space is thus created, within which challenges to the participants’ own world view shape their developing intercultural understanding.

  3. (iii).

    Micro analyses looking at explanatory sequences and reformulations still need to be carried out to reveal more about how cultural representations are negotiated in online exchanges and to ascertain the affordances that this medium provides in fostering the development of learners’ critical understanding. Pragmatic differences could be highlighted along the lines provided by Liddicoat (2014). For example, “decentring” could be fostered if learners are guided to reflect on how pragmatic acts are linguistically and culturally enacted. Specifically, by adopting Eggins and Slade’s (2004) systemic functional approach to analysing discourse, learners could be led into identifying speakers’ differing roles in the construction of culture-related episodes. This approach may enable practitioners and learners to jointly uncover: a) speech functions selected in dialogic structure (i.e., how learners construct social interaction by using language to align themselves with others and to position themselves in the exchange activity); b) levels of discourse interactivity (i.e., the degree to which interaction is predicated on the incorporation of reference to interlocutors’ content and acknowledgment of prior conversational contributions); and c) the precise discursive moves that exemplify intercultural communicative competence and enable its further development (Ryshina-Pankova 2018, p. 219).

In summary, a close analysis of students’ conversations indicates that online intercultural exchanges provide opportunities for students to co-construct cultural knowledge. In the excerpts that we have presented, interculturality is enacted as learners explore cultural representations based on self-reflection on both their own and other cultural perspectives, and as they draw from each other’s personal experiences. By documenting aspects of learners’ emerging awareness of their own and others’ cultural practices and attitudes in a context of authenticity, this study contributes to the scholarship on interculturality and intercultural learning.

As stated earlier, in this project we are not concerned with making claims about the success or failure of intercultural competence in terms of pre-set goals. We believe that promoting critical understanding through authentic contact is ultimately crucial for developing intercultural awareness and cultural sensitivity amongst our students, given that “nowadays, focus is on connections not just differences; multilayered affiliations, not unidimensional identities, contact rather than community” (Canagarajah 2011, p. 212).

The use of culture-related episodes can serve as a springboard for initiating critical reflection in the classroom prior to engaging in online exchanges, and for re-examining the data in follow-up sessions. Specifically, structured small group discussions on transcribed intercultural exchanges are likely to enable a collaborative exploration of the identified culture-related episodes. These can lead from the discovery of cultural knowledge to further questioning around the complexity of students’ own perspectives and assumptions. We believe it is critical to create such opportunities for moving beyond the dichotomous discourse of uniformity and diversity.