Exploring ‘new’ interculturality online

Abstract

AbstractThe way the ‘intercultural’ is taught and researched today is experiencing many transformations. As such from an approach based on the knowledge of how ‘cultures’ interact with each other, the ‘intercultural’ is now examined, amongst others, in relation to the aspects of context, identity construction, intersubjectivity, and power relations. Based on chat sessions between university students studying intercultural communication in two European countries (both ‘local’ and international students), the article proposes to put discursive pragmatics (DP) (French pragmatics and Dialogism) into practice to examine how the students construct interculturality online during several chat sessions. The results show that the students have to negotiate and ‘defend’ their national and ethnic identities but also construct each other's perceptions.Det sätt på vilket ‘interkulturell’ lärs ut och forskat i dag upplever många förändringar. Från en strategi som bygger på kunskap om hur ‘kulturer’ interagera med varandra, är det ‘interkulturell’ nu undersökt, bland annat i samband med de aspekter av sammanhang, identitetskonstruktion, intersubjektivitet och maktrelationer. Baserat på chattsessioner mellan universitetsstudenter som studerar interkulturell kommunikation i två europeiska länder (både ‘lokala’ och internationella studenter) föreslår artikeln att sätta Diskursiv pragmatik i praktiken för att undersöka hur studenterna konstruerar interkulturalitet under flera chatt sessioner. Resultaten visar att studenterna måste förhandla och ‘försvara’ deras nationella och etniska identiteter, men också bygga varandras uppfattningar.Keywords: discourseintercultural dialogpower relations Notes on contributorFred Dervin is a Professor of Multicultural Education at the University of Helsinki (Finland). He specializes in language and intercultural education, the sociology of multiculturalism and linguistics for intercultural communication and education. Dervin has widely published in international journals on identity, the ‘intercultural’ and mobility/migration. He has published over 20 books: Politics of Interculturality (CSP, 2011), Linguistics for Intercultural Education (Benjamins, 2013) and Reflexivity in Language and Intercultural Education. Rethinking Multilingualism and Interculturality (Routledge, 2014). He is the series editor of education beyond borders (Peter Lang), Nordic studies on diversity in education (with Kulbrandstad and Ragnarsdóttir; CSP), Palgrave studies on Chinese education in a global perspective (Palgrave with Xiangyun Du) and post-intercultural communication and education (CSP). His website: http://blogs.helsinki.fi/dervin/.