cohesion - European Centre for Modern Languages

8. The achievements of the “B” strand of projects:
Communication in a multicultural society:
the development of intercultural competence
Hermine Penz
In the last few decades mobility amongst the European population has increased
enormously – even those who are not professionally mobile need to interact
professionally and privately with more and more people from different cultures. This is
why intercultural competence has been identified as one of the key competences to
create cohesion in today’s multilingual and multicultural societies. This conviction is
also expressed in the language policies of the Council of Europe and the European
Union (e.g. 2008 – Year of Intercultural Dialogue).
In recent years the myth of monolingual and monocultural nation states has been
replaced by an awareness that “all national entities are multilingual, even those that call
themselves homogeneous” (Beacco and Byram 2003, quoted from Bernaus et al.
2007:10). From this perspective interculturality is considered an integral part of
multilingual societies. This view is also reflected in the Common European Framework
of Reference for Languages (CEFR) which promotes plurilingual and pluricultural
competences.
According to the CEFR (2001:43):
the language learner becomes plurilingual and develops interculturality;
the linguistic and cultural competences in respect of each language are modified by
knowledge of the other and contribute to intercultural awareness, skills and knowhow.
Similarly the Guide for the Development of Language Education Policies of the
Council of Europe (2007: 67) argues that “plurilingual education has two goals, the
acquisition of linguistic competences, and the acquisition of intercultural competences,
which does not necessarily involve the acquisition of actual language skills”.
However the guide clearly points out that people may be plurilingual without
necessarily being pluricultural (2007: 69): “One should not be misled by the proximity
of the terms plurilingual and pluricultural: while all speakers have a plurilingual
repertoire, this does not necessarily make them aware of other cultures. Acquisition of
a new linguistic variety provides an opportunity, but only an opportunity, to acquire
some knowledge of other communities that use that variety” (2007: 69).
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