Anne-Brit Fenner - narva.ut.ee

The role of literature in developing 

intercultural awareness in the FL 

classroom 

Anne Anne-Brit Brit Fenner 

University of Bergen 

Norway

�� Savoir Savoir: : declarative knowledge, socio socio-cultural cultural 

knowledge 

�� Savoir faire faire: : practical skills and know know-how how and 

intercultral skills and know know-how how 

�� Savoir être être: : ’existential competence’ (Bildung) 

�� Savoir apprendre 

apprendre: : ability to learn 

(Common Common European European Framework Framework of of Reference Reference 2001) 

�� Savoir s’engager s’engager: : education – political education, 

critical cultural awareness 

(Byram1997)

Two traditions related to the teaching 

of cultural competence in FLT 

‘Bildung Bildung’ ’ as an overall aim of education – 

developing identity; the roles of Self and 

Other (citizenship) 

Emphasis on skills (a more instrumental view 

of language) 

Most national curricula in Europe reflect both 

traditions

“Culture 

is at base an all all-embracing embracing socially 

constructed world of subjectively and 

inter inter-subjectively subjectively experienced 

meanings. Culture must be 

constructed and reconstructed as a 

continuous process.” 

(Berger in Wuthnow, Hunter, Bergesen and 

Kurzweil 1984)

�� Learning about about culture 

�� Learning through through culture

Why literature? 

�� Authentic text 

�� Fiction: a different ’reality’ 

�� The particular represents the general 

�� Individuals in historical contexts 

�� Identification with individuals 

�� Multiplicity of meaning 

�� Identification with the foreign culture/the 

Other 

�� The personal voice of a culture 

Anne Anne-Brit Brit Fenner

�� Insight into personal experiences 

�� The reader has to use personal experience 

in order to understand others 

�� Greater learning potential than reality, 

which is always in the present 

�� Examples of language as communication 

and as culture 

�� A tool for interpreting and structuring reality 


�� Requires personal interpretation 

and negotiation 

�� Provides good models for 

learners’ own text production 

�� The literary text is ’open’ and 

’undetermined’ (Iser 1991)

Literary language is not 

”represented [] as a unitary, 

completely finished finished-off off and 

indisputable language – it is 

represented … as a living mix of varied 

and opposing voices …” 


(Bakhtin 1981)

Reading a literary text, according to 

Bakhtin, creates ”suspence between 

utterances”, the utterances of the writer of 

the text and the potential utterances of the 

reader, the inherent questions with which 

the reader encounters the text. 


(Wertsch 1992)

”Message X is not transmitted from 

the writer to the reader, but is 

constructed between them as a kind of 

ideological bridge, is built in the 

process of their interaction.” 

(Bakhtin Bakhtin & Medvedev 1985: 152) 


The Implied Reader 

�� In the reading process the text ’appeals’ to 

the reader’s expectations 

�� Makes the reader ask questions about 

him/herself 

�� ’Attacks’ the reader’s pre pre-knowledge knowledge and 

experience 

�� Allows the reader to discover Otherness 

�� Challenges the reader’s pesonal and cultural 

memory 

(Iser 1974, 1978) 


”The idea of interpretation adds to the 

simple idea of meaning that of a 

meaning for someone. For the agent, 

interpreting the text of an action is 

interpreting himself or herself.” 

(Ricoeur 1992) 


Bridging gaps between 

cultures through literature: 

�� discovering interesting aspects of 

Otherness 

�� using new discovery to develop 

suspicions about Self/the familiar 

» tthe 

he literary text plays an active part in 

our lives 


Reading literature as a process 

of negotiation 

Negotiation (dialogue) between: 

�� text – reader 

�� learner – learner 

�� teacher – learner 

�� own culture – target culture 

�� Self – Other 


Dialogue 

”The idea that the other can simply 

reveal or disclose itself to us, without 

any work whatsoever on our part, is 

ultimately unintelligible. There can be 

no access to the other without our 

actively organising the other in terms 

of our categories. 

(Foucault 1998: 37)

�� ”Dialogue shapes and reorganises the 

material learned through discussion, mutual 

questioning and reflection in a social 

environment (the learner together with 

peers and teacher).” 

(Hietala & Niemirepo 1995 1995) 

�� ”a a conversation where meaning is 

constructed through sharing.” 

(Bohm 1990)

Process of negotiation : 

�� expectations 

�� answering expectations 

�� awareness of new expectations 

�� raising questions 

�� challenging personal and cultural 

experience 

�� creating new uderstanding 


The teacher’s task: 

to create a community of 

interpretation and negotiation 


(Wenger 1998)

Reading literature as a process of 

negotiation requires: 

�� Open tasks 

�� Personal interpretation 

�� Personal involvement 

�� Critical reflection 

�� developing critical attitudes 

�� Classroom discussion 


Taking into account, exploring 

and developing: 

�� the learner’s text 

�� the teacher’s text 

�� the resulting classroom text 

(Fish 1980; Iser 1978, 1991; Eco 1979, 1994, 

Sørensen 1983, 2002) 


Based on: 

�� the reader’s horizon encountering the horizon of the text 

(Gadamer 1979) 

�� the learner encountering the text with his/her habitus and 

cultural capital 

(Bourdieu 1991) 

�� the learner’s Zone of Proximal Development 


(Vygotsky 1991) 

�� the learner’s development from the use of everyday concepts 

to scientific concepts (Vygotsky 1991)

Reading as intercultural 

negotiation: 

�� learning about the target culture 

�� learning through the target culture 

�� critical reflection on the reader’s own 

cultural identity 

�� developing an outside perspective of 

Self 


Intercultural negotiation 

based on: 

�� a culturally determined understanding 

of Self 

�� the literary text opening up for new 

understanding through experiencing 

the Other/Otherness 

�� different cultural understandings 


Developing intercultural awareness is 

a dialogic and dialectic process. 

This requires tasks which not only ask 

what, when, where and who, but, 

more importantly, ask why and how? 

Tasks which require personal 

involvement are vital for ’savoir être’ 

and ’savoir s’engager’ (Bildung).

Anne-Brit Fenner - narva.ut.ee

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