CHAPTER OBJECTIVES

This chapter will enable you to:

LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY

There is yet another perspective from which the ‘nation equals culture equals language’ formula is problematic. In Chapter 3, we examined how a language with a name is a discursive construction but we largely took a monolingual view. However, the complex identities resulting from globalisation and transnationalism which we observed in Chapter 4 are also related to significant linguistic complexity: the majority of the world's population uses more than one language on a regular basis and monolingualism is by and large a historical and Anglophone anomaly. That means that attention to linguistic diversity needs to be placed at the centre of all intercultural communication enquiry because diverse communicators bring to the table their diverse linguistic repertoires, trajectories and proficiencies. Intercultural communication is characterised by multilingual practices, is embedded in beliefs about language, and plays out in the political economy of language. To put it differently, all human communication, whether we consider it as intercultural or not, takes place in and through language. Natural language can be characterised as a system of choices to which speakers enjoy differential levels of access. Within the choices available to them, speakers choose on the basis of practices (‘what is normally done’) and on the basis of beliefs (‘what is the best/appropriate/ right thing to do’). Language choice – as practice and ideology – is a crucial aspect of intercultural communication and it is the aim of this chapter to focus attention on real language in intercultural communication.