This paper is a report of a research project on critical multiliteracies and multimodality in Brazilian education. In the context of a growing concern for the construction of images in contemporary society, the paper discusses the interrelations between image, language and interpretation. The specific object of the investigation described below is…

The purpose of this paper is to offer a reading of "Handwriting", the book of poems by the Canadian-Sri Lankan author, Michael Ondaatje, in which he recovers the recent and ancient cultural history of the island through his reading of different types of scripts and languages. The texts that Ondaatje rewrites in his poems are visual,…

In multilingual Europe, visual discourse may function as a cross-culturally strategic form of communication, thanks in part to its perceptual and iconic availability. In this regard, we offer a social semiotic critique of a range of visual resources deployed in the official promotional texts of 30 of the 43 cities either nominated or competing for…

Henry A. Giroux became established as a leading figure in radical education theory in the 1980s. Not only did he revive the arguments for civic education proposed by the main educational theorists of the 20th century, namely Dewey, Freire and others such as the reconstructionists Counts, Rugg and Brameld, but he also advanced their theories by…

Image studies, or imagology, was traditionally subsumed under the uncritical notion of "national character", which was itself replaced by the constructivist term "national stereotype". Since its origins in comparative literature, the field has moved beyond the narrow disciplinary confines of the humanities, with their predominantly qualitative…

With the advent of European unity, understandings of the terms "Europe" and "European" have become even more complicated than they were before. A contested concept within its borders, how is "Europe" understood and seen from the outside? This paper deals with the under-researched issue of public perceptions of the…

This paper discusses strategies of intercomprehension in the context of the promotion of plurilingualism and intercultural competence in Europe. Plurilingualism and intercomprehension are concepts of particular importance in the multilingual and multicultural European context. These are explicit aims and requirements of the European Union when…

This paper deals with European language policy and its contribution to the formation of a European identity. The realisation of the "European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages" in Germany and the United Kingdom is discussed and evaluated. (Contains 1 table and 5 notes.)

This paper explores the policy turn of the "learning society", and how the academic world is responding to new social and political demands. It highlights some of the criticisms levelled at the learning society, as well as the voices of support. The paper also showcases the European Language Portfolio and the Transferable Skills project…

Danish as a second language textbooks published over the last 15 years have presented the Danish cultural identity as a homogenous and purely national phenomenon. Research into teaching theory, on the other hand, has been more broad-minded, and is based on interactivity. The aim of this paper is to explain this divergence. (Contains 2 notes.)

In philosophy, authenticity has been used with two meanings: one entails the notion of correspondence; the other entails the notion of genesis (Cooper, 1983: 15). As in certain branches of philosophy, language teaching has perhaps clung too long to the first of these notions of authenticity at the expense of the other. This paper reviews four key…

This qualitative study utilises the relational dialectics of Baxter and Montgomery (1996) to examine the relationship communication of six heterosexual intercultural couples living in Finland. In this study, I attempt to answer the following questions: what cultural issues are relevant in the couples' relationship? What intercultural relational…

Since decolonisation, the increase in immigration from France's former colonies in North Africa has prompted metropolitan writers to reconsider conceptions of French society. In their novels, Tournier and Hocquenghem present contemporary France through the defamiliarising eyes of a North African immigrant, who serves as a device for the critique…

Europe can become "united in diversity" only by helping its citizens internalise experientially their composite cultural identity as Europeans. Merely conceptual "understanding" of the other cultures is insufficient to promote genuine mutual respect and real opportunities for synergy across frontiers. An example is given of how…

This paper examines the use of questioning as an index of intercultural competence (IC) in an Internet-mediated, German-American language learning partnership. Such telecollaborative, intercultural exchanges are becoming increasingly more common as a means of providing students at one location with cost-effective access to distally located…