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Part of
Cultural Linguistics and Critical Discourse Studies
Edited by Monika Reif and Frank Polzenhagen
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 103] 2023
► pp. 170–190

Critical Cultural Linguistics (CCL)

Challenging the cultural (re)production of Otherness

Cultural Linguistics analyses the relation between language and cultural conceptualizations, studying how linguistic interactions influence the development of cultural conceptualizations, and, at the same time, how language structure and use draw on and reflect cultural conceptualizations (Palmer 1996; Sharifian and Palmer 2007; Sharifian 2011, 2017). Yet, if cultural conceptualizations are encoded and embodied in language, they are by no means neutral or accidental. Therefore, I would add a critical perspective to Cultural Linguistics by speaking of ‘Critical Cultural Linguistics’ to sustain the non-neutrality of the conceptualizations that define our experiences, and to foreground how cultural conceptualizations are shaped by contexts, conditions, power relations, unequal access to cultural and natural resources, as well as by socio-cultural and historical factors (Giorgis 2017).

I will examine the potential of the Critical Cultural Linguistics paradigm from an interdisciplinary perspective, analysing some examples of how language conceptualizes and (re)produces Otherness and the much too short step between the cultural conceptualization of the Other and the cultural conceptualization of the Enemy. After having examined cases from Literature, the Media, and studies on Critical Linguistics, I will argue that a critical approach to foreign languages and foreign language education can problematize the conceptualization of Otherness. To ground such an argument, I will draw on my experience as a practitioner describing a classroom activity which uses the foreignness that foreign languages foreground to reflect on pre-given assumptions on languages and cultures – one’s own included. The outcome of this activity put into evidence in which way Critical Cultural Linguistics can become a very promising field for both critical (foreign) language education and critical intercultural communication.

Keywords: Critical Cultural Linguistics, Otherness (the construction of), intercultural education, foreign-language education
Article outline
  • 1.The context/s: Who is the Other?
  • 2.The framework: Cultural Linguistics and Critical Cultural Linguistics
  • 3.The role of language in the cultural conceptualization of the Other as the enemy
  • 4.The role of foreign languages and foreign language education in problematizing and challenging the cultural conceptualization of Otherness
    • 4.1An activity conducted in class
    • 4.2The advantages of a foreign language
  • 5.The critical mandate of foreign language education
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 9 November 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.103.07gio
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