Intercultural competence as an aspect of the communicative ...

2.3.6. Criticism against the intercultural elements in the classroom
Just as there are differences of opinion about the definition of ICC, there are
confronted views on its importance. The basis for these differences is the complex nature
of the concept with the criticism mostly directed at ICC’s ‘bulkiness’ and unwieldiness
for the classroom.
From a sociological point and a point of cultural determinism, it could be
purported that learners cannot understand any other culture except their own. Even if
learners show a genuine wish to understand another culture, they would not be able to
because they would analyse and define the target culture issues and concepts against their
own cultural patterns. Lyotard sees comparison between two cultures as an act of violence
because ‘a universal rule of judgement between genres [and cultures, by the same token]
is lacking in general’ (Lyotard 1988: xi as cited in Bredella 2003: 231). Also, as Fish
(1997) says, we can claim to understand a foreign culture if we approve of what we
understand. However, understanding and approving are two distinct processes.
Further, this radical relativism would lead to the situation in which we would not
be able to criticise bad practices in a particular culture, we would be forced ‘to tolerate
the intolerable’ (Bredella 2003: 232). Another assumption of radical relativism is that it is
based on a concept of culture as a closed homogeneous system that determines an
individual’s behaviour. However, people sometimes do not follow these rules and act
differently, and radical relativism would not be able to account for instances of such
behaviour.
Another criticism comes from those who see intercultural understanding in the
light of abandoning one’s culture 17 (Harden, Witte 2000). However, understanding and
empathy that one can show are not connected to the loss of one’s own identity. McCarthy
believes that we can develop ‘a third position’ as a result of the interaction with other
cultures, that is, while not one culture holds the point of view that is absolute, learning
from experience can bring us closer (McCarthy 1989).
There have also been voices against intercultural learning as a superfluous aspect
of language learning, a stand taken by Edmondson and House (2000) (in O’Dowd 2004).
Basing their claims on the research conducted by Oller and Perkins (1978) which found
no correlation between the affective domain and the cognitive and skills domain, that is,
17 Some scholars have gone even further claiming that the cultural aspects taken into consideration are
solely those of the target culture, thus ignoring the learner’s culture (Alptekin 2002).
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