Abstract
In recent years, there have been multiple endeavours at unsettling the dominance of western voices in knowledge production, consumption and dissemination in language and intercultural communication education and research. Including, mediating and creating ‘new’ knowledges about interculturality are epistemic acts that may sustain and exercise decoloniality and decentering through (potential) dialogues with e.g., the Global South. However, these acts might unknowingly precipitate epistemological appropriation through their complicity or due to the pressures to comply with the skewed geopolitics of knowledge production, consumption and dissemination. This paper unpacks the complex deployment of languaging and knowledging in contesting, blurring and problematising both the dominant epistemological tenets and/or decentring attempts. For example, it presents the notion of ‘epistemological chameleon’ which captures how our knowledgings and languagings are (in)deliberately revamped and reshaped to fit ‘trendy’ narratives without destabilizing one’s assumptions and perspectives; an act that may often be driven by the necessity to survive within the skewed geopolitics of knowledge. The concepts and methods of devenir-langue and transknowledging as proposed by the authors, are used to examine how six recently published research papers in English by prominent Northern and Southern scholars may exhibit potential lingua-epistemological inaccuracies to include and showcase the voice of the Global South(s) while claiming in-/directly to push for decoloniality and epistemological diversity in language and intercultural communication education and research. These articles were selected as example cases based on their indicated rationales and intentions for decoloniality, criticality and inter-epistemological collaborations and are not meant to generalise the current state of this complex field. Implications from these analyses are the development of six ideal-types of inclusion, mediation and creations versus epistemological appropriation based on the papers. Further insights are made into the factors precipitating appropriation that may often be implicit, unheeded and unintentional.
References
An, Ran, Jiajia Zhu, Yuran Li & Hui Zhu. 2022. Acculturation in a multicultural classroom: Perspectives within the yin-yang metaphor framework. Language and Intercultural Communication 22(5). 534–551. https://doi.org/10.1080/14708477.2022.2112960.Search in Google Scholar
Arias-Gutierrez, Ruth Irene & Paola Minoia. 2023. Decoloniality and critical interculturality in higher education: Experiences and challenges in Ecuadorian Amazonia. Forum for Development Studies 50(1). 11–34. https://doi.org/10.1080/08039410.2023.2177562.Search in Google Scholar
Bacevic, Jana. 2023. Epistemological injustice and epistemological positioning: Towards an intersectional political economy. Current Sociology 71(6). 1122–1140. https://doi.org/10.1177/00113921211057609.Search in Google Scholar
Berger, Peter L. & Thomas Luckmann. 1966. The social construction of reality: A treatise in the sociology of knowledge. New York: Anchor Books.Search in Google Scholar
Borghetti, Claudia & Xiaolei Qin. 2022. Resources for intercultural learning in a non-essentialist perspective: An investigation of student and teacher perceptions in Chinese universities. Language and Intercultural Communication 22(5). 599–614. https://doi.org/10.1080/14708477.2022.2105344.Search in Google Scholar
Borghetti, Claudia, Ana Beaven & Rosa Pugliese. 2015. Interactions among future study abroad students: Exploring potential intercultural learning sequences. Intercultural Education 26(1). 31–48. https://doi.org/10.1080/14675986.2015.993515.Search in Google Scholar
Byram, Michael. 1997. Teaching and assessing intercultural communicative competence. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.Search in Google Scholar
Deardorff, Darla K. 2016. How to assess intercultural competence. In Z. Hua (ed.), Research methods in intercultural communication, 120–134. New Jersey: Wiley Blackwell.10.1002/9781119166283.ch8Search in Google Scholar
Deleuze, Gilles. & Felix Guattari. 1986. Kafka. Toward a minor literature. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.10.2307/468842Search in Google Scholar
Demeter, Marton. 2020. Power relations in global knowledge production. A cultural/critical approach. Journal of Multicultural Discourses 15(1). 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/17447143.2019.1657124.Search in Google Scholar
Dervin, Fred. 2012. A plea for change in research on intercultural discourses : A ‘liquid’ approach to the study of the acculturation of Chinese students. Journal of Multicultural Discourses 6(1). 37–52. https://doi.org/10.1080/17447143.2010.532218.Search in Google Scholar
Dervin, Fred. 2019. Creating and combining models of Intercultural Competence for teacher education/training. In F. Dervin, R. Moloney & A. Simpson (eds.), Intercultural competence in the work of teachers: Confronting ideologies and practices, 55–71. London: Routledge.10.4324/9780429401022Search in Google Scholar
Dervin, Fred. 2022. Introduction: Why Chinese stories of interculturality? In M. Yuan, F. Dervin, B. Sude & N. Chen (eds.), Change and Exchange in global education, 1–24. London: Palgrave.10.1007/978-3-031-12770-0_1Search in Google Scholar
Dervin, Fred. 2023. Communicating around Interculturality in research and education. London: Routledge.10.4324/9781003451938Search in Google Scholar
Dervin, Fred & Ashley Simpson. 2021. Interculturality and the political within education. London: Routledge.10.4324/9780429471155Search in Google Scholar
Dervin, Fred & Hamza R’boul. 2022. Through the looking-glass of interculturality: Autocritiques. Singapore: Springer.10.1007/978-981-19-6672-9Search in Google Scholar
De Figueiredo, Eduardo H. Diniz & Juliana Martinez. 2021. The locus of enunciation as a way to confront epistemological racism and decolonize scholarly knowledge. Applied Linguistics 42(2). 355–359. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amz061.Search in Google Scholar
de Sousa Santos, Boaventura. 2006. Conocer desde el Sur: Para una cultura política emancipatória. Medellín: Fondo Editorial de la Facultad deCiencias Sociales.Search in Google Scholar
de Sousa Santos, Boaventura. 2014. Epistemologies of the south. Boulder: Paradigm.Search in Google Scholar
de Sousa Santos, Boaventura. 2018. The end of the cognitive empire: The coming of age of epistemologies of the south. Durham: Duke University Press.10.1215/9781478002000Search in Google Scholar
Ferri, Giuliana. 2022. The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house: Decolonising intercultural communication. Language and Intercultural Communication 22(3). 381–390. https://doi.org/10.1080/14708477.2022.2046019.Search in Google Scholar
Grosfoguel, Ramón. 2007. The epistemological decolonial turn: Beyond political-economy paradigms. Cultural Studies 21. 211–223. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380601162514.Search in Google Scholar
Guilherme, Maria Manuela D. 2023. Global debates, local challenges: the South talks back. Language and Intercultural Communication 23(1). 7–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/14708477.2022.2159969.Search in Google Scholar
Hall, Edward T. 1976. Beyond culture. New York: Doubleday.Search in Google Scholar
Hofstede, Geert. 1980. Culture’s consequences: International difference in work-related values. London: Sage.Search in Google Scholar
Holliday, Adrian. 2011. Intercultural communication and ideology. London: Sage.10.4135/9781446269107Search in Google Scholar
Holliday, Adrian. 1999. Small cultures. Applied Linguistics 20(2). 237–226. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/20.2.237.Search in Google Scholar
Holmes, Prue, Sara Ganassin & Song Li. 2022. Reflections on the co-construction of an interpretive approach to interculturality for higher education in China. Language and Intercultural Communication 22(5). 503–518. https://doi.org/10.1080/14708477.2022.2114491.Search in Google Scholar
Jia, Yuxin & Xuelai Jia. 2016. The anthropocosmic perspective on intercultural communication: Learning to be global citizens is learning to be human. Intercultural Communication Studies XXV(1). 32–52.Search in Google Scholar
Kolb, David. 1984. Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.Search in Google Scholar
Liu, Fengguang, Dan Han, Juliane House & Daniel Z. Kadar. 2021. The expressions “(M)minzu-zhuyi” and “Nationalism”: A contrastive pragmatic analysis. Journal of Pragmatics 174. 168–178. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2020.12.013.Search in Google Scholar
Menezes de Souza, Lynn Mario. 2019. Glocal languages, coloniality and globalization from below. In Guilherme Manuela & Lynn Mario Menezes de Souza (eds.), Glocal languages and critical intercultural awareness: The South answers back, 17–41. New York: Routledge.10.4324/9781351184656-2Search in Google Scholar
Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Sabelo J. 2023. Beyond the coloniser’s model of the world: Towards reworlding from the Global South. Third World Quarterly 44(10). 2246–2262. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2023.2171389.Search in Google Scholar
Pitts, Andrea J. 2017. Decolonial praxis and epistemological injustice. In I. J. Kidd, J. Medina & G. Pohlhaus (eds.), The Routledge handbook of epistemological injustice, 149–157. London, UK: Routledge.10.4324/9781315212043-14Search in Google Scholar
Puwar, Nirmal. 2004. Space invaders. Race, gender and bodies out of place. Oxford: Berg Publishers.Search in Google Scholar
R’boul, Hamza & Fred Dervin. 2023a. Intercultural communication education and research: Reenvisioning fundamental notions, 1st edn. London: Routledge.10.4324/9781003395225-1Search in Google Scholar
R’boul, Hamza & Fred Dervin. 2023b. Flexing interculturality: Further critiques, hesitations, and intuitions, 1st edn. London: Routledge.10.4324/9781003458050-1Search in Google Scholar
R’boul, Hamza. 2022. Epistemological plurality in intercultural communication knowledge. Journal of Multicultural Discourses 17(2). 173–188. https://doi.org/10.1080/17447143.2022.2069784.Search in Google Scholar
R’boul, Hamza. 2023a. Intercultivism and alternative knowledges in intercultural education. Globalisation, Societies and Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2023.2166018 [E-pub ahead of print].Search in Google Scholar
R’boul, Hamza. 2023b. Postcolonial challenges to theory and practice in ELT and TESOL: Geopolitics of knowledge and epistemologies of the South. London: Routledge.10.4324/9781003322535Search in Google Scholar
Sidnell, Jack. 2012. Who knows best? Evidentiality and epistemological asymmetry in conversation. Pragmatics and Society 3(2). 294–320. https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.3.2.08sid.Search in Google Scholar
Walsh Marr, Jennifer. 2023. Ideal types and ideal(ized) students in internationalized post-secondary pedagogy. Comparative and International Education 51(2). 99–109. https://doi.org/10.5206/cie-eci.v51i2.14794.Search in Google Scholar
Wijngaarden, Vanessa & Paul Nkoitoi Ole Murero. 2023. Osotua and decolonizing the academe: Implications of a Maasai concept. Curriculum Perspectives 43. 33–46. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41297-023-00190-2.Search in Google Scholar
Xiaowen, Tian & Fred Dervin. 2023. Power relations and change in intercultural communication education: Zhongyong as a complementary analytical framework. Language and Intercultural Communication. https://doi.org/10.1080/14708477.2023.2256310.Search in Google Scholar
Zembylas, Michalinos. 2023. A decolonial critique of ‘diversity’: Theoretical and methodological implications for meta-intercultural education. Intercultural Education 34(2). 118–133. https://doi.org/10.1080/14675986.2023.2177622.Search in Google Scholar
Zhou, Vivien Xiaowei. 2022. Engaging non-essentialism as lived wisdom: A dialogue between intercultural communication and Buddhism. Language and Intercultural Communication 22(3). 294–311. https://doi.org/10.1080/14708477.2022.2046768.Search in Google Scholar
© 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Special Issue: Tribal Epistemologies and the discursive construction of COVID-19 knowledge; Guest Editor: Rodney H. Jones
- Disciplinary tribes and the discourse of mainstream media expert opinion articles: evidencing COVID-19 knowledge claims for a public audience
- Ways of seeing and discourse strategies of naming the novel coronavirus in the US and Hong Kong
- Who is our friend and who is our enemy? The enregisterment of tribalising digital discourse during the COVID-19 pandemic
- “By the way I want to give you some masks”: exploring multimodal stance-taking in YouTube videos
- Affective geographies and tribal epistemologies: studying abroad during COVID-19
- Editorial
- Tribal epistemologies and the discursive construction of COVID-19 knowledge
- Special Issue: Against Epistemological Theft and Appropriation; Guest Editors: Othman Z. Barnawi and Hamza R’boul
- The myopic focus on decoloniality in applied linguistics and English language education: citations and stolen subjectivities
- The bidirectionality of epistemological theft and appropriation: contrastive rhetoric in China
- Attempts at including, mediating and creating ‘new’ knowledges: problematising appropriation in intercultural communication education and research
- Epistemological theft and appropriation in qualitative inquiry in applied linguistics: lessons from Halaqa
- Can the subaltern speak in autoethnography?: knowledging through dialogic and retro/intro/pro-spective reflection to stand against epistemic violence
- The violence of literature review and the imperative to ask new questions
- Editorial
- Against epistemological theft and appropriation in applied linguistics research
- Special Issue: Art as social practice: language and marginality; Guest Editors: Roberta Piazza, Birgul Yilmaz and Charlotte Taylor
- ‘Art as social practice: language and marginality’: Special Issue of Applied Linguistics Review
- Objects are not just a thing – (re)negotiating identity through using material objects within the Kurdish diaspora in the UK
- “I am surprised they have allowed you in here to do this”: women’s prison writing as heterotopic space of narrative inclusion
- Walking with: understandings and negotiations of the mundane in research
- Translanguaging art – Questioning boundaries in Monika Szydłowska’s Do you miss your country?
- Reinventing the self through participatory art: writing and performing among rough sleepers
- Research Articles
- Expectation-practice discrepancies: a transcultural exploration of Chinese students’ oral discourse socialization in German academia
- Perceived teacher feedback practices, student feedback motivation and engagement in English learning: a survey of Chinese university students
- Incidental vocabulary learning from listening, reading, and viewing captioned videos: frequency and prior vocabulary knowledge
- A longitudinal study on lecture listening difficulties and self-regulated learning strategies across different proficiency levels in EMI higher education
- Secondary students’ L2 writing motivation and engagement: the impact of teachers’ instructional approaches and feedback practices
- Marked on the voice: the visibility experiences of Russian heritage migrants following the war against Ukraine
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Special Issue: Tribal Epistemologies and the discursive construction of COVID-19 knowledge; Guest Editor: Rodney H. Jones
- Disciplinary tribes and the discourse of mainstream media expert opinion articles: evidencing COVID-19 knowledge claims for a public audience
- Ways of seeing and discourse strategies of naming the novel coronavirus in the US and Hong Kong
- Who is our friend and who is our enemy? The enregisterment of tribalising digital discourse during the COVID-19 pandemic
- “By the way I want to give you some masks”: exploring multimodal stance-taking in YouTube videos
- Affective geographies and tribal epistemologies: studying abroad during COVID-19
- Editorial
- Tribal epistemologies and the discursive construction of COVID-19 knowledge
- Special Issue: Against Epistemological Theft and Appropriation; Guest Editors: Othman Z. Barnawi and Hamza R’boul
- The myopic focus on decoloniality in applied linguistics and English language education: citations and stolen subjectivities
- The bidirectionality of epistemological theft and appropriation: contrastive rhetoric in China
- Attempts at including, mediating and creating ‘new’ knowledges: problematising appropriation in intercultural communication education and research
- Epistemological theft and appropriation in qualitative inquiry in applied linguistics: lessons from Halaqa
- Can the subaltern speak in autoethnography?: knowledging through dialogic and retro/intro/pro-spective reflection to stand against epistemic violence
- The violence of literature review and the imperative to ask new questions
- Editorial
- Against epistemological theft and appropriation in applied linguistics research
- Special Issue: Art as social practice: language and marginality; Guest Editors: Roberta Piazza, Birgul Yilmaz and Charlotte Taylor
- ‘Art as social practice: language and marginality’: Special Issue of Applied Linguistics Review
- Objects are not just a thing – (re)negotiating identity through using material objects within the Kurdish diaspora in the UK
- “I am surprised they have allowed you in here to do this”: women’s prison writing as heterotopic space of narrative inclusion
- Walking with: understandings and negotiations of the mundane in research
- Translanguaging art – Questioning boundaries in Monika Szydłowska’s Do you miss your country?
- Reinventing the self through participatory art: writing and performing among rough sleepers
- Research Articles
- Expectation-practice discrepancies: a transcultural exploration of Chinese students’ oral discourse socialization in German academia
- Perceived teacher feedback practices, student feedback motivation and engagement in English learning: a survey of Chinese university students
- Incidental vocabulary learning from listening, reading, and viewing captioned videos: frequency and prior vocabulary knowledge
- A longitudinal study on lecture listening difficulties and self-regulated learning strategies across different proficiency levels in EMI higher education
- Secondary students’ L2 writing motivation and engagement: the impact of teachers’ instructional approaches and feedback practices
- Marked on the voice: the visibility experiences of Russian heritage migrants following the war against Ukraine