Metaculture: The Model of Future Cross-Cultural Foreign Language Education?

Abstract

Regarding the priorities of present day intercultural communication (the situation of multicultural contact, the dialogue of civilizations, interpersonal base of communication, the “global citizen” phenomenon, etc.), the article outlines the rationale of the necessity to consider metaculture as a conceptual framework (and its sequence) of intercultural dialogue and thus predetermined intercultural foreign-language education. Intercultural dialogue can be generally defined as an inductive reciprocal meaning-making process functioning to defeat expectancies on the borderline of cultural habitats, the catalyst being the personal awareness of the communicant. Metaculture, being the result and the state of this dialogue, is the state of evolving awareness aiming to bridge the gaps of cultural borders, conditioned by the cases of national identity. The article presents the comparative analysis of metaculture (S.E. Yachin), interculture (V.A. Belyaev), transculture (M.N. Epstein), the third culture (Fred L. Carsnir) theories to figure out their complementary character. Culture within an intercultural contact is thus interpreted as based on self- and co-constructing evolution of the communicants, which allows it to reach the meta-level of self-awareness of a cultural identity, postulating itself as an object of reflection. Metaculture determines the goal-setting and helps select the contents of intercultural foreign-language edu-cation. The prospects of further investigation of metaculture within intercultural foreign-language education, however, appear challenging.