Reflections of Own Vs. Other Culture: Considerations of the ICC Model

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine Byram's Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) model (Byram, 1997), one of the most influential models particularly in language education in Europe, from a pedagogical perspective. Although the model has opened up various innovative and creative teaching practices beyond a model that uses the native speaker as a goal in language learning (e.g. Byram, Nichols & Stevens, 2001; Coperías Aguilar, 2007, 2009), his conceptualization of “culture” has been criticized by various scholars as being a rather static and discrete entity, particularly as it is based on national boundaries (Block, 2007; Dervin, 2010). This study examines the conceptualization of “own” and “other” cultures in Byram's model from local pedagogical practices based on the data obtained from two different foreign language classrooms, an English classroom in a Korean university and a Japanese classroom in a UK university. The data from both classrooms show some degree of both fixity and fluidity in the illustration of “own” and “other” cultures. This study argues that, despite the pedagogical contributions of Byram's model, the categorization of “own” and “other” cultures can pose problems in interpreting fluidity and ambiguities identified in both classrooms. This study also points to the risk that the continuous use of his current model could result in reproducing fixed categories of “own” and “other” cultures by the teachers themselves. While acknowledging the ICC model's pedagogical contributions, this study argues the need for a pedagogically viable model that does not rely on binary distinction between “own” and “other” cultures.