Community and culture in intercultural language learning

Abstract

This paper addresses changing meanings attached to the concept of "community" in languages education in the school setting in Australia. The change consists of a shift from "community" as a necessary definitional category, created in the mid 1970s to mark the recognition of languages other than English used in the Australian community, to a recognition, in the current context of increasing mobility of people and ideas, of the need to problematise the concept of "community" towards working with the complexity of the lived, dynamic languages and cultures in the repertoires of students. Intercultural language learning is discussed as a way of thinking about communities in languages education in current times.