Culture and culture learning

The ecological view acknowledges that the social and historical dimensions of language need to be put in relation to each other, highlighting the vital role of culture learning in SLA. Although it is common sense that culture learning should be integrated into language

learning, there has been ongoing debate around how culture should be defined and learned in the language curriculum. Different theoretical orientations espouse very distinct opinions. Table 2.3 outlines the key opinions on culture learning within the cognitive, social, and ecological orientation of SLA.

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Table 2.3: Interpreting culture learning from different perspectives

Cognitive orientation Social orientation Ecological orientation

Interpreting culture learning

Accumulating cultural knowledge about another culture (usually

represented by national attributes)

Knowing about the societal norms and symbolic systems of the target culture

Challenging the notion of bounded speech

communities and “one language - one culture” assumption and

transforming into “new” intercultural speakers

The cognitive stance usually involves understanding cultures as static and unproblematic and bounded by geographic borders, such as national traits. Although it sometimes recognises cultural subgroups within the territory of the national group, such as ethnic minorities or social classes, it inevitably considers culture as a finished product, “removing the possibilities for contestation and creation as a feature of social life.” (Liddicoat and Scarino, 2013, p.18) Cultural competence is deemed as the accumulation of a body of knowledge about a country and its cultural products, which is no more than a matter of observation with the learner being external to it. Many ICS programs in China promote this kind of culture learning, placing typical Chinese cultural elements at the core of the cultural curriculum, such as geographical and historical overviews, Chinese Philosophy, Chinese Customs, Chinese Film Appreciation, Chinese Classical Music Appreciation, etc. (e.g., Zhao, 2016). Scholars often criticise such an essentialised approach to culture learning (e.g., stereotypical cultural notes in language

textbooks) for its minimal expectations in actual intercultural communication (Liddicoat and Scarino, 2013).

Socioculturally oriented research studies widely adopt the understandings of culture as societal norms and symbolic systems. This line of research believes that speech events have their own cultural-specific structures and routines, and many speech acts have cultural- specific variations (Schulz, 2007). Cultural competence is defined as knowing what people from a cultural group are likely to do and the values or beliefs underlying these behaviours. The focus of culture learning in SLA, in this sense, is to “pay particular attention to social, cultural, and interactional contexts” in which the language is used (Duff, 2008b, p. xiii, quoted in Wang, 2010). Cultures are shared meanings that make collective sense of

experiences, and therefore, the use of symbols is an element of meaning-making. Language is also a component of culture, which is seen as the symbolic medium through which cultural knowledge is communicated and negotiated (Garrett & Baquedano-López, 2002). Language

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and culture are inextricably interrelated, acquired in the same process, as well as providing support for the development of the other (Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986; Watson-Gegeo, 2004). Research studies on developing Chinese pragmatics during ICS in China often fall into this category of culture learning (e.g., Diao, 2016; Jin, 2015). Although this paradigm became very strong in the 1980s, it is nevertheless criticised because it still places the learner within his/her own cultural frame and presents culture as relatively homogeneous, logical, coherent and uniform (Bayart, 2005).

The ecological perspective provides an alternative view on culture that sees culture as “practices” (Liddicoat & Scarino, 2013) in plural form. It problematises the notion of bounded speech communities and the “one language - one culture assumption” (Blommaert, 2005, p.216) and emphasises what Kramsch (2008) termed “unfinalisability”. Culture learning in this sense concerns the understanding of the deterritorialised nature of language and culture. Understanding culture as “practices” highlights multiple possibilities, which are also called “toolkits” by Swidler (1986) as “symbols, stories, rituals, and world-views, which people may use in varying configurations to solve different kinds of problem.” (p.273) In other words, an individual has multiple cultures which give him/her access to more possible practices than is required as the pre-defined norm of a particular group. Therefore, the central focus of culture learning involves more than just developing knowledge of another place and its people. One of the goals of culture learning is to transform into “new” intercultural speakers “who feel comfortable among people who have cultural baggage different to their own, who are capable of accepting the difference and do not feel threatened by it, able to objectify their own beliefs, to negotiate, to make themselves understood and to make the effort to understand others” (Antonio & Ángela Mª Larrea, 2015, p.7).

It is recognised that there will be some place for cultural facts in a language curriculum; the traditional models of teaching and learning cultural knowledge are not total fallacies. Rather, the problem lies in their narrowed scope. A distinction is made by Liddicoat and Scarino (2013) between “cultural orientation” and “intercultural orientation” to the learning of culture in SLA, with the former being learning the target culture in its own right and the latter being involved in the confrontations of multiple possible interpretations – a “fusion of horizons” (Gadamer, 2004, cited in Liddicoat & Scarino, 2013, p.44) and the

problematisation of one’s own understanding, which, in turn, leads to further learning. “Cultural orientation” entails both the cognitive and social view of culture, using both descriptive and communicative approaches to culture learning. “Cultural orientation” is widely adopted in Chinese ICS programs. An example can be found in Hu (2014) in which

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the author designed the culture curriculum for international students in China as two sections: a knowledge-based and a communication-based culture class. Such a curriculum is very useful for students’ cultural awareness and understanding. However, “intercultural orientation” should be given more weight to form a more solid approach to culture in language education.

This overarching view of culture learning echoes Moran (2001)’s experiential culture learning model, which captures both “cultural learning” and “intercultural learning”. Moran points out that if we define culture from the perspective of learning, cultural experience consists of four interconnected learning interactions – cultural participation (participating in cultural experiences), cultural description (describing what the culture is like), cultural interpretation (developing intercultural perspectives) and cultural response (developing intercultural identities). The latter two areas in the model correspond to the “intercultural orientation” to culture learning. Although these two areas have occasionally been investigated in the literature on ICS in China (Cui, 2013; Lumkes et al., 2012; Tian & Lowe, 2014) in terms of cultural awareness and transforming into intercultural persons, they only report the outcome of the ICS without scrutinising in detail the culture learning processes that lead to the results or enquiring if there is anything missing. Using Moran’s process-oriented model will shed more light on how cultural interpretation and response form an integral part of the holistic culture learning process.

Inspired by the broadened interpretation of culture from an ecological perspective and Moran’s experiential culture learning model, culture learning in this thesis will be explored regarding both “cultural” and “intercultural” orientations, with a focus on the latter.