Editorial

After presenting three bumper special issues this year, we conclude Volume 18 of LAIC with just six papers. This final ‘open’ issue, our sixth in 2018, is a collection of two parts. Our first four papers tap into a strand of research which has run through IALIC since its earliest days – that of the development of intercultural competence and ‘intercultural citizenship skills’ in different sorts of language education programmes: study abroad, homestay and content based learning. Then our two concluding papers investigate the way language is used in intercultural communication in two very different genres of media representation: subtitling by fans (called by those in the know, ‘fansubbing’) of risqué contemporary films translated from English to Persian; and the dubbing of post-war westerns from English into Spanish.

Unsurprisingly, a topic which has featured regularly in IALIC since its inception has been the development of intercultural competence, and indeed the way in which intercultural competence was acquired – initially by students participating on study abroad programmes in different countries in Europe, as well as the USA. Since then, studying abroad has become a global enterprise, with notably increasing numbers of students coming to Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand from Japan and China (e.g. Jackson, 2010), and of course vice-versa. In our first paper of this issue, taken from a larger study, Çiftçi and Karaman draw on interpretative phenomenology in order to carry out an in-depth exploration of the preparatory experiences of three trainee English language teachers from Turkey who are planning to come to a major university in England to study as part of an Erasmus programme. Their phenomenological approach enables insightful themes to emerge from the various sources of qualitative data provided by their participants: ‘groundless optimism’, ‘naiveté’, and ‘intercultural (in)competence’. In particular, these three students describe how they become overwhelmingly preoccupied by the bureaucratic, formalistic procedures necessary for their sojourn, rather than engaging in a more meaningful cultural and linguistic enquiry. However, what is particularly insightful about this paper is just how the phenomenological approach enables the authors to tease out highly nuanced accounts from each individual student regarding the extent of their participation in the ‘imagined community’ with which they are about to engage. This paper therefore testifies to the highly personal nature of each sojourner’s own, individual experience of working out how to ‘study abroad’, not least through engaging with strange institutions in a strange land.

The second study in this issue engages with a less prototypical, and perhaps potentially more transformative type of ‘study abroad’ environment – that of a volunteer training programme, which was designed to promote meaningful interactions between binational participants. This programme comprised US and Mexican volunteers who worked together for up to a week for an International Non-Governmental organisation (INGO) based at a community centre on the US-Mexico border. A particular feature of this programme was the immersion experience that it offered along with the opportunities for volunteers to stay in the homes of Mexican helpers with the scheme. Drawing on Byram’s (2011) model of intercultural citizenship, King de Ramírez’s study gives an account of the temporal changes that take place over three phases of the participants’ experience: from binational socialisation before the immersion training model began, via the intercultural socialisation that took place during the homestay/immersion programme, to a consideration of the gains in intercultural citizenship skills that the participants made during the programme. Contra some of the gloomier findings of previous research into the study abroad experience, the reports of the participants in this paper suggest not only that this particular model of immersion/homestay programme can lead to an increase in the acquisition of a foreign language, but also support Byram’s (2011) proposition that transnational education can lead to gains in intercultural citizenship skills – particularly, here, ‘in the practice of more equitable forms of communication’ (King de Ramírez, this issue, my emphasis). Quite possibly, it was the specific embedding of this programme within a form of community service that made this particular experience a more meaningful and positive experience for participants than some of the more ‘academically’ oriented study abroad programmes. On the evidence of this paper, it may be that more programmes of this type could be run internationally in order to promote the principles of intercultural co-operation and the practice of reciprocal language learning.

Arguably the development of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) was a logical progression from communicative language teaching (CLT). However as is the nature of these things, the two approaches to language teaching have tended to take their own position in the firmament of language teaching methodologies: CLT associated more perhaps with foreign language teaching; and CLIL more with the project of multilingualism within Europe. Within this context, Do Coyle (2007) proposed some time ago that intercultural communication is an essential element within CLIL, whereas – as is well known – one of the criticisms of CLT is that its underlying idea of communication was often restricted to the more localised transactional situation in which communication takes place between interlocuters. In our third paper in this issue, Roiha and Sommier carry out a long-term follow up study using interviews to investigate the impact of CLIL upon a cohort of Finnish learners who had learnt English through their school’s use of this methodology. Ironically, while participants reported positive attitudes towards the way in which a content-based programme enabled them to learn English and develop intercultural awareness through English with peers from different countries, they were reluctant to endorse its capacity to enhance their learning of other foreign languages in keeping with CLIL’s aspiration towards a pan-European multilingualism. Thus paradoxically, this study suggests that CLIL managed to bring about both enduring bilingual and intercultural competence in these particular Finnish students, but appeared to fall short of facilitating their engagement with a range of different languages. Clearly, further follow-up studies of this nature could usefully be carried out to see if, possibly larger cohorts, of learners in other countries had a similar experiences; or whether this type of experience was specific to the implementation of CLIL in this particular Finnish school.

In the fourth paper in this issue, our the final ‘pedagogic’ contribution, Makiko Fukuda investigates a specialised educational context which is new to these pages: an international Japanese school. Apparently there are 88 Japanese schools dispersed in 50 countries around the world; but the positioning of this particular school in the linguistically and politically complex region of Catalonia makes some of the decisions which have to be made about language policy in relation to the education of the students even more challenging than usual. While Japanese language policy has conventionally promoted the maintenance of Japanese identity for citizens who raise their children abroad, more recently, trends towards internationalisation within Japan have led to the endorsement of kokusaijin or the ‘internationally minded person’. However, within this complex local context, it appears that this particular school falls somewhat short of achieving this. Specifically, its failure to include a developed programme in Catalan – the local language – in the curriculum leaves children and families struggling to cope within the local culture, and the identities of families stranded between identifying as Japanese, identifying as Spanish and identifying as Catalan. All in all, Fukuda concludes that this particular case of a Japanese education abroad is aversely affected by a national education policy which remains driven by a hegemonic monolingual language ideology. This not only hinders children’s drive towards a polyglot language development but also constrains the development of cultural hybridity in their sense of self.

If the first four studies in this issue explore some of the interhuman aspects of intercultural communication, our final two papers engage with rather novel aspects of media representations of communication across cultures, although these are not always shown in an entirely positive light. It is a truism to say that film and television are powerful ways in which it is possible to engage imaginatively with the beliefs, values and indeed the language(s) of another ‘culture’ – and arguably this can be even more powerful where there are constraints by the state on citizens’ access certain media products. Apparently, just such constraints still prevail in Iran, from where our fifth paper emanates. Here, there is a plethora of audio-visual television productions watched by members of the population, many of which contain materials – either language or images – which would be subject to censorship if they become visible to the authorities. Thus, while audiovisual television productions which conform to Iranian social norms might be translated by official translators, there is an extensive ‘underground’ population, who are enthusiastic for imported audio-visual television productions and are actively engaged in mediating these products to a wider audience. This is achieved by these enthusiasts – ‘fans’ – undertaking their own subtitling of the films in question, a process which is referred to by those in the know as ‘fansubbing’. This is particularly new and fascinating territory for these pages – and I have since discovered that there is a vibrant strand of intercultural research into this area, some of which is built upon in this paper. What is of interest in this particular political and religious context, is just how profane, or ‘taboo’, content is re-presented by these fans as they translate the film from, predominantly the English language, into Persian. In their paper, Khoshsaligheh, Ameri and Mehdizadkhani investigate a small exploratory corpus of eight popular anglophone movies, in order to identify the strategies which these ‘fansubbers’ use to translate taboo language within the films. Not only do these practices facilitate the distribution of foreign media to a wider population, but they are also indexical of a subtle form of resistance to and subversion of a conservative ‘state-supported ideology’ which supports censorship and inhibits freedom of expression.

Popular genres of film and television change through time, rising to prominence in the culture and then either subsiding or vanishing entirely. From the beginning of the twentieth century up to the 1960s, in the US and across Europe, the genre of the ‘western’ film and television series was immensely popular. Notorious in the early manifestations of the genre was the negative portrayal of Native Americans, although a wave of ‘revisionist westerns’ starting, broadly speaking, from 1970 began – perhaps somewhat self-consciously – to act as a corrective. However, the western’s negative portrayal of Native Americans did not simply portray them as a stereotypically primitive race which engaged in acts of excessive barbarism towards each other and the European immigrants; it also had a linguistic dimension. For Native Americans were also portrayed in western films either as not talking at all, or talking in a kind of simplified English – what has been dubbed ‘Injun English’. Our final paper in this issue addresses just this aspect of the representation of Native Americans in classic westerns, which Roberto Valdeón (after Meek, 2006) describes being a form of English displaying features closer to those of ‘foreigner talk’ or ‘child language’. This linguistic representation of Native Americans becomes even more problematic when one considers the complexities of translating this form of English into another language. Drawing on Michael Cronin’s study of Stagecoach (2009), the last paper in this issue analyses the use of language in the representation of Native Americans in two classic westerns, and the way in which this dialogue is then dubbed in the version of the film treated for distribution in Spain. Paradoxically, Valdeón’s analysis suggests that the English speech of the Native American protagonists in the two classic westerns which he analyses is not universally impoverished. However, the positioning of the Native Americans is compromised in the dubbed version for release in Spain. He concludes that this recontextualisation of the speech of the Native Americans might be related to the political environment which was prevalent in Spain in the 1940s, when the films were made.

As we wrap up Volume 18, I would again like to thank the team at Taylor and Francis who as ever have supported us and kept us on track throughout another year: our new Editorial Assistant, Nenycae Mei Murla; our stalwart and long-suffering Production Assistant, Santhosh Manmohan; our new Production Editor, Alex Rutherford; and in particular Lucy Sheach, our long-standing Editorial Manager for her continued belief in and support of the journal, which has enabled us to expand this year. Thanks also to my colleague on the Editorial Board, Maria Dasli, Reviews and Criticism Editor, for keeping us amply supplied with new reading through the year; and to our two book reviewers in this issue, Gerdi Quist and Christine Penman, for keeping us up to date with recent publications in the field. We also have said a sad farewell this year to Helen O’Sullivan, who has moved on from the Editorial Board; and we thank her for her services to the journal over the years. Of course, none of this would have been possible without a small army of reviewers who give of their valuable time, without acknowledgment or personal gain, to ensure that we are able to meet the highest standards of scholarship each year. To them in particular, we extend our gratitude as we conclude this volume.