This book forms part of a wider effort of The National Languages and Literacy Institute of Australia, Language Australia for short, to theorise what we have called ...
Lo Bianco, Joseph (2003) Common themes. In J. Lo Bianco & C. Crozet (Eds.), Teaching Invisible Culture: Classroom practice and theory (pp. 7-9). Melbourne: Language Australi
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Common themes Joseph Lo Bianco
This book forms part of a wider effort of The National Languages and Literacy Institute of Australia, Language Australia for short, to theorise what we have called Inter cultural Language Teaching (ILT). In 1999 we published a still in-demand book called Striving for the Third Place: intercultural competence through language education, edited by Lo Bianco, Liddicoat and Crozet; in 2000 we issued two volumes, Teaching languages, teaching cultures, by Liddicoat and Crozet and Integrating culture learning in the languages classroom, a multi-perspective conceptual journey for teachers, by Papademetre and Scarino. Thinking carefully about ILT requires us to understand better not simply the,' connections between culture and language, but also how the notions of language ·. understanding and language knowledge interact with behaviour in that language. At first this may seem like an esoteric concern, but in fact has major practical implications. Past views of culture and its connection to language have tended to view the general behaviours and values of a community as a separate domain from their language knowledge and language understanding. However, this book is based on the clear sense that such a separation is not very helpful to the classroom language teacher. Understanding a foreign language and knowing it relate very closely to a speaker's general as well as their linguistic behaviour. This is because the interests, values and social relations among speakers of languages are connected with what they know of the language they speak natively. In other words most of us have a language culture, or a language ideology, as well as a language. The practical effect of this insight for our book is that when a learner studies a new language they are also engaging with the language ideology of its speakers. Encounters between existing speakers of a language and its new learners bring to the fore not just formal linguistic knowledge (grammatical correctness, pronunciation and vocabulary knowledge), but how these are used (behaviour) and what views the "native" speakers have about how it should be used, whether or not they practice these views. A great quantity of TEACHING INVISIBLE CULTURE
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PART 1 - CULTURE THEORY
general human relations is mediated by language. This means that learning and using newly or partially acquired languages, brings to the surface language culture among interacting speakers. These interactions among speakers are very complex, involving at least native >< native, learner >< native, and learner >< learner interactions. Even the most basic language interactions involve language culture and ideology. Native speaker to native speaker interactions in a given society always have elements of language ideology and culture about them. The evidence for this is all around us. For example, we use different terms for cutting down trees depending on whether we are committed greenies or committed wood-chippers, we refer to refugees and asylum seekers differently depending on our views of their rights and the state's behaviour towards them. Our language is always loaded with our views of other people, ourselves and the groups we identify with or belong to, and the beliefs we hold about the world around us. The language relations between a native speaker and a learner tend at first to focus on the language itself, its forms and structure, but as learners acquire more competence in both language and culture, and what they say and write moves on to a greater focus on content rather than form, they engage in increasing uses of the language for expressing themselves and therefore activate a more "natural" language culture/ideology. For this important reason, in both the language specific chapters as well as in the introductory chapters of the book, we discuss a range of ways to understand connections between culture and language, and offer practical ideas for raising awareness of culture in foreign language programs. Raising awareness of culture involves both direct teaching of culture "as information", as well as teaching of culture "as language", and the teaching of culture "as communication". The introductory chapters deal with these issues in a general and even in an abstract way. The six language specific chapters take up these general and academic questions in ways relevant to the teaching of Chinese, English, French, German, Italian and Japanese as foreign languages. Although the language-specific chapters address many questions that are particular to the languages concerned, they also address some common themes, including:
Verbosity Verbosity is a broad term that encompasses a range of specific language behaviours such as the amount of speaking that the particular culture encourages or discourages, the role of silence in that language culture, how the open expression of opinions is regarded, and what limitations there are on topics of discussion, that is, various socially determined constraints on what it is appropriate to say, by whom and when. Most chapters also discuss different social contexts of speech, and some chapters discuss social contexts of writing as well. and the roles of various social actors in relation to speech and writing, and how these contexts and social actors impact on rules and patterns of verbosity.
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COMMON THEMES
Interpersonal relations Interpersonal relations is a term that refers to various devices that different languages institute to regulate how individuals and groups relate in society. These devices include terms of address, both formal and routine greetings, pronominal reference between various social actors, how directness and face are conceived and handled, how consensus and dissension are evaluated, whether and how emotion is displayed, how tactile relations are governed, how hierarchy and egalitarianism are utilised, as well as issues of kinesics (such as facial expression, finger use and various other gestures), posture, eye contact and gaze.
Politeness Politeness goes far beyond popular notions of not being rude, though of course what counts as rudeness in different cultures varies. The language specific chapters consider the variable uses of thanking, how and when requests are appropriate, justifications, invitations, offers (and their refusal or acceptance), denials and claims, compliments and apologising, omission and hinting, swearing, the use of titles and first names, tone in speech and the role and limits of joking.
Ritualisation Under this heading the chapters address ceremony, rituals, and the opposite of these, such as the tolerance of eccentricity, and how these are given more or less stable presence in the lives of different language communities.
Classroom activities Finally, some classroom activities are included. Some are for beginners, while others are for intermediate learners or advanced students. These suggested classroom activities comprise a small section of the chapters but they are an important componei{t'as they aim to make productive use of the language and culture connections that have been dealt with in the discussion part of the chapters.
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