If for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the "Battle of the Teutoburg Forest", fought in 9 CE between Roman armies and Germanic tribes, was predominantly a reference point for nationalist and chauvinist discourses in Germany, the first decade of the twenty-first century has seen attempts to link public remembrance with local/regional…

The paper critically engages with contemporary theories of intercultural and inter-religious dialogue found in the areas of linguistic pragmatics and intercultural theology. Drawing on Ducrot's theory of polyphony, it takes preliminary steps in formulating an alternative conception of the individual subject that incorporates a polyphonic…

A frequent weakness of communicative approaches to foreign language teaching is a neglect of the intercultural dimension. Cultural knowledge is often treated as an addendum which focuses on learning facts about the target country. This article explores whether task-based language teaching (TBLT) can successfully address the intercultural…

This study explores the implications of Canada's official bilingual status on young immigrant adults who are presently studying at the undergraduate level at university. More precisely, I examine how these young adults have experienced and judge French as a second official language (FSOL) learning in "English-dominant" regions of Canada. Through a…

Research on intercultural couplehood often relies on cultures and "solid identities" to explain the couples' experiences. By looking at the media construction of an intercultural couple on Chinese television, we are interested in how they are presented and co-constructed through different perspectives, especially if and how (cultural) differences…

The most outstanding overhaul in educational policies in Spanish monolingual communities has been the widespread implementation of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) programmes. This article delves into the supposedly indissoluble relationship between CLIL and intercultural communicative competence. Using as a basis a case study on…

This paper aims to contribute to the current debate on British Studies from the perspective of eight international students attending a British Studies module in part completion of a foundation/access programme in the UK. Drawing on three sets of in-depth student interviews and 15 classroom observations used to triangulate findings, the analysis…

This paper is based on research done on intercultural communication at Greenmarket Square in the heart of Cape Town, South Africa. The Square is well known as a market for informal traders (mainly from other parts of Africa), local people and tourists from all over the world. Using originally collected discursive evidence from market traders, the…

Research on transnational literacies has generally focused on youth who live in one country and communicate using digital literacies across national boundaries. Our work contributes to this literature by providing a view of transnational literacies that are unique to the USA-Mexico border region. The students in this ethnographic study navigate…

This paper examines the relationship between language and identity in the Israeli conflictual situation, exploring the perceptions of Israeli Arab adolescents in two different contexts: a mixed city and a homogeneous Arab town. Adolescents in the mixed city, although more exposed to Hebrew and to Jewish culture, develop a stronger sense of "Arab"…

In this article I will first discuss the notions of "politeness" and "impoliteness" including a multilevel model of politeness and impoliteness that relates universal levels to culture- and language-specific ones. Given this framework and my earlier postulation of a set of parameters along which members of two linguacultures differ in terms of…

This article draws on interactional pragmatics and a cross-cultural approach (UK, France, Spain) to investigate the negotiation of individual and group identities in two different speech events, parliamentary debates and editorial meetings. The cross-cultural examination of the use of linguistic resources for signalling "social role, boundaries…

This article approaches translation through the application of the model of systemic functional linguistics. More specifically, it explores the use of the potential of appraisal theory of evaluation (Martin, J.R., & White, P.R.R., "The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English". London: Palgrave, 2005), centring on the realization of…

Developments in communication technologies have brought about the proliferation of self-mediated textualities and empowered networks of non-professional translators to engage in participatory subtitling practices. These subtitling agencies are often part of a movement of cultural resistance against global capitalist structures and institutions,…

In this article the main question is: what might Social Semiotics offer to studies of the "cross-cultural"? Social Semiotics distinguishes between "society" and "culture". "The social" is the domain of "interaction" seen as semiotic work, organized in fields of power. "Culture" is the repository of semiotic resources, of material and non-material…