Film, Culture and Identity: Critical Intercultural Literacies for the Language Classroom

Abstract

Language teaching in the last 10–15 years has seen a shift away from the communicative approach and towards the paradigm of intercultural (communicative) competence. It has also been influenced by a broader educational shift away from an emphasis on print literacy and towards multiliteracies. At the same time, we have witnessed the rise of interrelated sociocultural and critical discourses which have made their presence felt, somewhat belatedly, in the areas of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and Modern Foreign Languages (MFL). Film is an ideal medium through which to exploit the tools offered by sociocultural and critical discourses for the exploration of visual literacy and intercultural perspectives. Such exploration, it is suggested, should take place with full awareness of the transformational power of language learning which can, on the one hand, stimulate students’ exploration of their own identities and, on the other, help prepare them for global citizenship. The model of intercultural literacies proposed here seeks to tie together these strands of possibility and serve as a practical guide for the pedagogical use of films in language courses. It is, more broadly, applicable to the use of any nontraditional literacies in developing students’ intercultural competence.

Depuis 10 à 15 ans, l'enseignement des langues a connu le revirement d'une perspective axée sur la communication vers un modèle de compétence de la communication interculturelle. L'enseignement a aussi été influencé par un mouvement plus général qui tend à diminuer l'importance de la compétence écrite et à donner plus de poids à des multicompétences linguistiques. En même temps, nous avons été témoins de la montée de discours socioculturels et critiques qui sont en corrélation et qui se sont fait sentir avec quelque retard dans le cadre de Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) [Enseigner l'anglais à ceux qui parlent une autre langue] et de Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) [Les langues vivantes étrangères]. Le film est un véhicule idéal pour exploiter les outils que les discours socioculturels et critiques offrent pour l'exploration de la culture visuelle et des perspectives interculturelles. Une telle exploration, suggérons-nous, devrait se faire avec la pleine conscience du pouvoir transformationnel de l'apprentissage d'une langue, qui peut d'un côté stimuler les étudiants à explorer leur propre identité, et d'un autre côté les aider à se préparer pour une citoyenneté mondiale. Le modèle d'apprentissage interculturel proposé ici vise à rassembler ces échantillons de possibilité et servira de guide pratique à l'usage pédagogique de films dans les cours de langue. De façon plus générale, ce modèle est applicable à tout apprentissage de langue nontraditionnel pour développer la compétence interculturelle des étudiants.

Keywords:

• film
• intercultural competence
• literacy
• multiliteracies
• transformation
• citizenship

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to Linda Hartley and Véronique Wechtler, both of the University of Dundee, for their collaboration on the original research underpinning this article. I am also very grateful to Alison Phipps, of the University of Glasgow, for her invaluable comments on an earlier draft of this piece, as well as to an anonymous reader from LAIC for a number of insightful suggestions. Finally, thanks are due to Micheline van der Beken for her help with the French translation of the abstract.

Notes

1. Kumaravadivelu (2003) does not use the term ‘critical intercultural literacies’, but he makes the quoted comment in the course of a discussion of ‘Critical Cultural Consciousness’.

2. Despite a widespread tendency to associate ‘communicative competence’ primarily with spoken language, and ‘literacy’ primarily with written language, a broader view is taken here. Both communicative competence and literacy are seen as encompassing spoken as well as written communication; and both, but especially literacy, may also include nonlinguistic communication.

3. In a later reply to comments on their article, Zuengler and Miller (2006b: 827) point out that they mean ‘sociocultural’ not in the more limited sense of Vygotskian research but in the broader sense of a range of approaches which emphasise social and cultural factors in learning.

4. Hall and Eggington (2000) do not refer directly to a sociocultural or social turn, but their collected volume is itself part of this shift. Pennycook's essay forms part of Hall and Eggington's collection.

5. Although Hammond and Macken-Horarik (1999: 529) focus on written text, they acknowledge that others adopt broader definitions of critical literacy ‘that incorporate[s] talk as well as engagement with other semiotic systems’.

6. It is worth noting that in her Interdisciplinary Model for Teaching/Learning Foreign Cultures, Guilherme (2002) includes the three macrodivisions of intercultural communication, critical pedagogy and cultural studies, the last of which covers areas such as literary criticism, popular culture, media studies and gender studies. It is not clear that the three macrodivisions are of the same order; rather, they seem to function to indicate broad tendencies within an overall interdisciplinary convergence, in much the same way that the various approaches we have associated with the social/cultural turn are broadly complementary, if not necessarily of one level.

7. Pennycook does not use Auerbach's terminology, but rather refers to ‘access’ (Auerbach's voices of power) and ‘voice’ (power of voices) models. Auerbach's terminology has been adopted, notably, by Warschauer (1999: 170–171), who also argues that the two aspects cannot be easily separated (Warschauer, 2002: 71).

8. Barton is in fact writing of an ecological approach to literacy rather than language teaching, but his concept has much in common with that promoted by Tudor or Bax.

9. It should be noted that this model is designed to be inclusive, incorporating all key elements, but makes no claim about the relative importance of the elements. Indeed, it is highly likely that their importance relative to each other will vary from context to context.

10. Of course, many contemporary films are transnational productions with multilingual and multicultural teams of directors, producers, actors, technicians and so forth. Here, the term ‘foreign film’ is used loosely to refer to any film which, relative to a particular viewer, makes substantial use of a foreign language or languages, and/or is presented from a foreign cultural perspective. Nevertheless, taking into account internal differences within national cultures as well as the increasing rate of cultural flows between nations, it must be recognised that the term can only be approximate. Indeed, a case could easily be made for differing degrees of foreignness in film.

11. Verlan refers to the slang which has become widespread among youth in the banlieux, or suburbs, of cities such as Paris, where there has been significant unrest in recent years. This was notably captured in Mathieu Kassovitz's 1995 La Haine.

12. Barton and Hamilton (2000) define a ‘literacy event’ as an activity ‘where literacy has a role’ (8), while ‘[l]iteracy practices are the general cultural ways of utilising written language which people draw upon in their lives’ (7). Literacy events are thus observable events which can help to reveal the underlying literacy practices of a community. While Barton and Hamilton focus on written texts, our focus here has been broadened to include visual and other literacies.