3.2 From Communicative Competence to Intercultural Communication Competence

We have learned in the previous chapter that, for effective communication to happen, communicators should know more than syntax, lexis, and phonology. This is especially true when it comes to intercultural communication. Just as communicative competence goes far beyond verbal communication, despite the fact that intercultural communication competence has a lot to do with communicative competence under intercultural context, it is more than that. Before we move on to any specifics, it is very important to figure out what intercultural communication competence is and how it is different from communicative competence first.

3.2.1 Framework for Communicative Competence

Communicative competence is a term in linguistics which refers to a language user's grammatical knowledge of syntax, morphology, phonology and the like, as well as social knowledge about how and when to use utterances appropriately. The term was coined by Dell Hymes in 1966, reacting against the perceived inadequacy of Noam Chomsky's distinction between competence and performance. As there has already been much debate about linguistic competence and communicative competence in the second and foreign language teaching literature, the outcome has always been the consideration of communicative competence as a superior model of language following Hymes' opposition to Chomsky's linguistic competence.

The best-recognized idea of Communicative Competence was put forward by Canale in 1983. Canale believed that the theoretical framework for communicative competence should at least include four areas of knowledge and skill, which are grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence, and strategic competence.

According to Canale, Grammatical Competence is the mastery of the language code itself, which refers directly to the linguistic skills of the communicator. The communicator needs to speak grammatically right for himself or herself to be understood. Canale continued to put forward the idea of Sociolinguistic Competence, which means the communicator needs to have the ability to adapt to various contexts. Or in his words: Utterances are produced and understood appropriately in different sociolinguistic contexts depending on contextual factors such as the status of participants, purposes of the interaction, and norms or conventions of interaction. Just having the ability to master grammatical forms and meanings is not enough; the communicator needs to be able to combine those together to achieve unity of text. That is done through cohesion in form and coherence in meaning. The ability to master such a task requires what Canale calls Discourse Competence. The last competence Canale proposed is Strategic Competence. Strategic Competence is the mastery of verbal and nonverbal communication strategies to compensate for communication breakdowns due to limiting conditions or insufficient competence and to enhance the effectiveness of communication.

3.2.2 Concept of Communicative Competence

Among other scholars, Byram is the one who laid the foundation of intercultural communication competence. He defined successful intercultural communication as the ability to establish and maintain relationships. Byram believes that the objective of intercultural communication moves beyond understanding and exchange of information to try to relate to people from other countries. He put forward some ideas for one to evolve from a competent communicator to a competent intercultural communicator. The first is attitudes namely to have the curiosity and openness, readiness to suspend disbelief about other cultures, and belief about one's own. The second is knowledge, which means to know of social groups including their products and practices in not only one's own country but also the country of the other communicator. The third is the skills of interpreting and relating which means the ability to interpret a document or event from another culture, to explain it and relate it to documents from one's own. The next one is the skills of discovery and interaction. It goes beyond interpreting and relating to be able to acquire new knowledge of a culture and cultural practices and the ability to operate knowledge, attitudes, and skills under the constraints of real-time communication and interaction. The last one is critical cultural awareness which is the ability to evaluate critically based on explicit criteria, perspectives, practices, and products of one's own as well as other cultures and countries.

3.2.3 Concept of Transcultural Competence

Another scholar named Slimbach proposed the idea of Transcultural Competence, which is quite similar to the idea of intercultural communication competence and is composed by six categories of competence. These six competence, which are global awareness, world learning, foreign language proficiency, ethnographic skill, affective development, and perspective consciousness described in great depth the ideas put forward by Byram.

Global awareness is a basic awareness of transnational conditions and systems, ideologies, and institutions, affecting the quality of life of human and non-human populations, along with the choices confronting individuals and nations. World learning is similar to what Byram referred to as knowledge, which means direct experience with contrasting political histories, family lifestyles, social groups, arts, religions, and cultural orientations based on extensive, immersed interaction within non-English speaking, non-Americanized environments. Foreign language proficiency is the base of interaction that is a threshold-level facility in the verbal and nonverbal communication system used by members of at least one other culture. Ethnographic skill is also important which is the ability to observe carefully social behavior, manage stress, and establish friendships across cultures, while exploring issues of global significance, documenting learning, and analyzing data using relevant concepts. Other than interpreting and relating, Slimbach put forward the idea of affective development which is the capacity to demonstrate personal qualities and standards “of the heart” such as empathy, inquisitiveness, initiative, flexibility, humility, sincerity, gentleness, justice, and joy within specific intercultural contexts in which one is living and learning. Perspective consciousness is just like critical cultural awareness, which is the ability to question constantly the source of one's cultural assumptions and ethical judgments, leading to the habit of seeing things through the minds and hearts of others.

3.2.4 Skills of Multilingual Communicators

In the year 2012, Baker further developed the idea of intercultural communication. Rather than focusing on establishing and maintaining relationships as a whole, he emphasized the importance of mediation when miscommunication happens. Baker wrote that to have intercultural communication competence means that the communicator needs to know how to use linguistic and other communicative resources in the negotiation of meaning, roles, and relationships in diverse sociocultural settings of intercultural settings of intercultural communication through English.

He continued to put forward some more necessary skills of multilingual communicators. The first thing a successful multilingual communicator should know is the role of accommodation in adapting language to be closer to that of one's interlocutor in order to aid understanding and solidarity. Negotiation and mediation skills are also essential, particularly between different culturally based frames of reference, which have the potential to cause misunderstanding or miscommunication. The reason these skills are important is that they enable intercultural communicators to adjust and align themselves to different communicative systems and cooperate in communication.

Group Work

Summarize all of the competences that have been mentioned in the previous parts and discuss with your partners to see which one of them is the most fundamental competence to achieve successful intercultural communication in your opinion.

3.2.5 Components of Intercultural Communication Competence

To sum up, intercultural communication competence is the ability to communicate effectively and appropriately in various cultural contexts. There are numerous components of intercultural communication competence. Some key components include motivation, self-and other knowledge, as well as tolerance for uncertainty.

1) Motivation

If a person is not motivated to communicate with people from different cultures, then the components of intercultural communication competence discussed next do not really matter. Therefore a person's motivation for communicating with people from other cultures must be considered first. Motivation refers to the root of a person's desire to foster intercultural relationships. It can be intrinsic or extrinsic. While both types of motivation can contribute to intercultural communication competence, context may further enhance or impede a person's motivation to communicate across cultures. If a person has a healthy curiosity that drives him or her towards intercultural encounters in order to learn more about self and others, then there is a foundation on which to build attitudes and skills relevant to intercultural competence. It is the intrinsic motivation that makes intercultural communication a voluntary, rewarding, and lifelong learning process. Motivation can also be extrinsic, meaning that the desire for intercultural communication is driven by an outside reward like money, power, or recognition.

However, motivation alone cannot create intercultural communication competence. In either case, there is a risk that an individual's motivation can still lead to incompetent communication because if an extrinsically motivated person pursues intercultural communication solely for external rewards, the intercultural relationship established is very likely going to be abandoned once the reward is attained. That is why the motivation to accumulate more knowledge as supplements for oneself is an important part of building intercultural communication competence.

2) Self-and other-knowledge

Self-and other-knowledge include self- and other-awareness, mindfulness, and cognitive flexibility. Building knowledge of our own cultures, identities, and communication patterns takes more than passive experience. Developing cultural self-awareness often requires us to get out of our comfort zones. Listening to people who are different from us is a key component of developing self-knowledge. The most effective way to develop other-knowledge is by direct and thoughtful encounters with other cultures. However, not everyone can have these opportunities due to a variety of reasons. That is why, as students, we may have to make a determined effort to interact with other cultures on educational sources like college classes, books, or documentaries. Learning another language is also a good way to learn about a culture, because it enables one to read news or watch movies in that language, which can offer certain kinds of insights which could be easily lost in translation. However, it is also important to note that knowledge of another language does not automatically equate to intercultural communication competence.

Mindfulness is a state of self- and other-monitoring, which enables later reflection on communication interactions. Reflecting on the communication encounter afterwards in order to see what can be learned is also a way to build intercultural communication competence. It is only then that we will be able to incorporate what we learned into our communication frameworks because it requires cognitive flexibility to do so. Cognitive flexibility refers to the ability to continually supplement and revise existing knowledge to create new categories rather than simply forcing new knowledge into old categories. It is directly linked to a person's motivation of knowledge supplementing. Cognitive flexibility helps not only to prevent our knowledge from becoming out-of-date but also to prevent it from turning into potential stereotypes, which in turn helps people avoid prejudging an encounter or jumping to conclusions. We will discuss the danger of judging based on stereotype in the later chapter of prejudice. In conclusion, better intercultural communicators should try their best to know as much about others and themselves as possible and be able to reflect on and adapt their knowledge while gaining new experiences.

3) Tolerance for uncertainty

Motivation and knowledge can inform us as we gain new experiences, however how people feel in the moment of intercultural encounters also bears great importance. Tolerance for uncertainty refers to an individual's attitude towards comfort and the level of comfort he or she may actually feel in uncertain situations. Intercultural encounters often bring up uncertainty and situations of uncertainty most often become clearer as they progress. It is true that some people may naturally perform better under uncertain situations than others. Yet, another possible explanation is that the anxiety that an individual with a low tolerance for uncertainty feels may drive them to abandon current situation or otherwise communicate in a less competent manner. On the contrary, individuals with high tolerance for uncertainty may exhibit more patience, waiting on new information to become available or seeking out information actively, which may then increase their understanding of the situation and consequently lead to a more successful outcome. Individuals who are intrinsically motivated towards intercultural communication may have higher tolerance for uncertainty due to the fact that their curiosity could lead them to engage with others who are different simply because they find the self- and other-knowledge to be gained rewarding.

After reviewing the idea of communicative competence and comparing it to intercultural communication competence, it is quite easy to see that the broad concept of intercultural communication competence has led to a range of definitions and models. As globalization is leading to more intercultural communication, scholars are still completing the idea of intercultural communication competence little by little. It is very likely that there will not be a universal definition of intercultural communication competence. However, we can still summarize some characteristics of intercultural communication competence to guide our communication across cultures such as the willingness to engage with foreign culture, self-awareness and the ability to look upon oneself from the outside, the ability to see the world through others' eyes, the ability to cope with uncertainty, the ability to act as a cultural mediator, the ability to evaluate others' viewpoint, the ability to consciously use culture learning skills and to read the cultural context, and the understanding that individuals cannot be reduced to their collective identities.

Exercises

1. Choose the best answer from the following choices.

1) Which of the following is NOT what Canale believed that communicative competence should at least include?

A. Grammatical competence.

B. Sociolinguistic competence.

C. Discourse competence.

D. Verbal competence.

2) Which one of the following is NOT one of the three fundamental elements to build up intercultural communication competence proposed by Byram?

A. Awareness.

B. Knowledge.

C. Strategy.

D. Skill.

3) Which one of the following is NOT one of the six categories of competence that composed the idea of Transcultural Competence?

A. Global awareness.

B. Affective perspective.

C. Foreign language proficiency.

D. Ethnographic skill.

4) Which one of the following aspects of knowledge is strongly linked to the motivation of supplement that is very important in building up intercultural communication competence?

A. Self-awareness.

B. Other-awareness.

C. Mindfulness.

D. Cognitive flexibility.

5) Which one of the following is NOT one of the characteristics of individuals with a high tolerance for uncertainty may exhibit?

A. More patience.

B. More willingness to waiting on new information to become available.

C. More willingness to seek out information.

D. None of the above.

2. Fill in the blanks with the key points.

1) The term of communicative competence was coined by ____________ in the year of 1966.

2) Strategic Competence is the mastery of ____________________ strategies to compensate for communication breakdowns due to limiting conditions or insufficient competence and to enhance the effectiveness of communication.

3) Byram defined intercultural communicative competence as the ability to establish and maintain _______________.

4) Perspective consciousness is just like _____________, which is the ability to question constantly the source of one's cultural assumptions and ethical judgments, leading to the habit of seeing things through the minds and hearts of others.

5) Baker further developed the idea of intercultural communication competence by emphasizing the importance of ________________ when miscommunication happens rather than focusing on establishing and maintaining relationships as a whole.

3. Finish the following tasks with your own understanding.

Think about which of the following components of intercultural communication competence—motivation, mindfulness, cognitive flexibility, and tolerance for uncertainty—do you think you are most competent at, and which one needs the most work? Identify how you become so competent at the first one and some ways that you can improve the second one.