John P. O'Regan

The Ethics of Intercultural Communication.

Abstract For some time, the role of culture in language education within schools, universities and professional communication has received increasing attention. This article identifies two aporias in the discourse of intercultural communication (IC): first, that it contains an unstated movement towards a universal consciousness; second, that its claims to truth are grounded in an implicit appeal to a transcendental moral signified.These features constitute IC discourse as ‘totality’, or as ‘metaphysics of presence’.The article draws on the work of Levinas (1969/2007, 1998/2009); and Derrida (1976, 1978, 1981, 1993) to propose more considered ethical grounds for intercultural praxis. Contra a Hegelian impetus towards universal consciousness,we posit an irreducible distance and separation between the self and other. In so doing, not only are we able to supersede the field’s implicit appeal to the transcendental as a source of truth but also to counter perceptibly ‘exorbitant’ claims and actions of the intercultural other. In this vein, the article proposes a discourse ethics of responsibility by which it still becomes possible for a critical intercultural praxis to make value judgements and to take potentially transformative action vis-à-vis cultural acts that challenge the limits of intercultural tolerance and hospitality.

Cultural Relativism and the Discourse of Intercultural Communication: Aporias of Praxis in the Intercultural Public Sphere

The premise of much intercultural communication pedagogy and research is to educate people from different cultures towards open and transformative positions of mutual understanding and respect. This discourse in the instance of its articulation realises and sustains Intercultural Communication epistemologically – as an academic field of social enquiry, and judgementally – as one which locates itself on a moral terrain. By adopting an ethical stance towards difference, the discourse of intercultural communication finds itself caught in a series of aporias, or performative contradictions, where interculturalists are projected simultaneously into positions of cultural relativism on the one hand and ideological totalism on the other. Such aporias arise because the theoretical premises upon which the discourse relies are problematic. We trace these thematics to a politics of presence operating within the discourse of intercultural communication and link this to questions of judgement and truth in the intercultural public sphere. We propose that the politics of presence be set aside in favour of an intercultural praxis which is oriented to responsibility rather than to truth.

The development of national occupational standards for intercultural working in the UK

From 2007 to 2008, CILT (Centre for Information for Language Teachers) developed a set of National Occupational Standards for Intercultural Working in the UK. This paper reports on three questions arising from the development project: how these standards are distinctive from others, how they realise intercultural competence and how they meet workplace expectations. Drawing on the directly relevant published evidence‐base, the paper argues that these standards are distinctive in their relationship with other suites, the range of their application, and the ways in which personal attributes are exemplified and embedded within performance outcomes. The standards also reflect a multi‐dimensional approach to competencies which include personal qualities such as reflection, self‐development, critical thinking and ethics; and the standards are described in a way which is credible and achievable in the workplace. For example, one pivotal unit of the standards focuses on self‐exploration and performance improvement around the areas of inclusive working practices, effective communication and challenging stereotypes.

Travelling languages : culture, communication and translation in a mobile world

This issue of Language and Intercultural Communication features a selection of the papers presented at the tenth annual conference of the International Association for Languages and Intercultural Communication (IALIC) in association with the Centre for Tourism and Cultural Change at Leeds Metropolitan University in December 2010. The theme of this tenth anniversary conference, chosen to highlight and explore research synergies in the fields of intercultural communication and tourism, was Travelling Languages: Culture, Communication and Translation in a Mobile World. Based on the commonly held assumption that we now live in a world that is ‘on the move’, characterised by growing opportunities for both real and virtual travel and the blurring of boundaries between previously defined places, societies and cultures, the theme is firmly grounded in the interdisciplinary field of ‘Mobilities’. ‘Mobilities’, a term coined and developed by Sociologist John Urry at the turn of the twenty-first century (see, for example, Urry, 1999; 2007), deals with the movement of people, objects, capital, information, ideas and cultures on varying scales, and across a variety of borders, from the local to the national to the global. It includes all forms of travel from forced migration for economic or political reasons, to leisure travel and tourism, to virtual travel via the myriad of electronic channels now available to much of the world’s population. Underpinning the choice of theme was a desire to consider the important role of languages and intercultural communication in travel: an area which has, perhaps surprisingly, tended to remain in the background of Mobilities research. When we travel abroad or enter into virtual relationships and transactions with organisations or individuals in other parts of the world, we often encounter new languages and have to develop new means of communication and interaction, whether by learning new languages ourselves or by seeking the assistance of intermediaries. In both cases, some form of translation between languages and cultures is involved and a degree of intercultural competence, a concept much analysed and debated in the pages of this journal, is required. Scholars with an interest in intercultural communication, language education, and linguistic and cultural translation thus have potentially much to contribute to the Mobilities debate, as is clearly demonstrated in the seven contributions to this Special Issue. The papers which are included in this Special Issue represent eclectic understandings of the dual concepts of mobile language and border crossings, from crossings in ‘virtual life’ and ‘real life’, to crossings in literature and translation, and finally to crossings in the ‘semioscape’ of tourist guides and tourism signs. In the way in which the papers have been arranged in this issue they more or less correspond to one of these dimensions. Thus, the first pair of papers, by Broughton and Dooly respectively, are concerned with border crossings in cyberspace, and with the paper by Penman and Omar form part of a trio which are devoted to borders both virtual and real. In his paper, Lee Broughton explores the culturally productive activities of Language and Intercultural Communication Vol. 11, No. 4, November 2011, 299 303

THE SOCIAL COGNITION OF MEDICAL KNOWLEDGE: WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO CHILDHOOD EPILEPSY

This article arose out of an engagement in medical communication courses at a Gulf university. It deploys a theoretical framework derived from a (critical) sociocognitive approach to discourse analysis in order to investigate three aspects of medical discourse relating to childhood epilepsy: the cognitive processes that are entailed in relating different types of medical knowledge to their communicative context; the types of medical knowledge that are constituted in the three different text types analyzed; and the relationship between these different types of medical knowledge and the discursive features of each text type. The article argues that there is a cognitive dimension to the human experience of understanding and talking about one specialized from of medical knowledge. It recommends that texts be studied in medical communication courses not just in terms of their discrete formal features but also critically in terms of the knowledge they produce, transmit, and reproduce.