Meeting Foreignness

Foreign Languages and Foreign Language Education as Critical and Intercultural Experiences

Paola Giorgis

How is Foreignness defined by language? Who has the power to define the ‘foreigner’ as such, on which grounds, from which positioning, for which purposes? And within such premises, which is the role of foreign languages in defining, or challenging, Foreignness? This book reflects on the concept of Foreignness from a special lens, that of foreign languages and Foreign Language Education. Advancing that the experience of foreignness that foreign languages foreground opens up to a different apprehension of the self and the others, this work shows how such experience can problematize, question, and challenge meanings, assumptions, conceptualizations and representations ordinarily taken-for-granted, a much needed reflection at times when prevailing narratives essentialize individuals and groups according to their linguacultural backgrounds.

Though with a global perspective, the book also addresses the Italian context in particular: after introducing a brief historical background, it examines how ‘foreignness’ is addressed, portrayed, or questioned in contemporary socio-cultural and political debates, and presents practical activities to show how the foreign language can be used for intercultural purposes.

An original interdisciplinary approach, combining Critical Linguistics, Foreign Language Education, Intercultural Studies, and Critical Pedagogies, together with works of literature and examples from several fields, integrates theoretical references, practices and research methodologies to take the reader within the complex and fascinating world of languages, displaying how they inform individual and collective identities and representations, and how they can both serve processes of manipulation and domination, as well as those of empowerment and emancipation. For its interdisciplinary and integrated approach, this book aims to address teachers, educators, scholars, practitioners, researchers, and students, but also those readers who are curious to know more about languages, and about how they shape our identities, our meanings and our lives.

Lexington Books

Pages: 142 • Trim: 6¼ x 9¼

978-1-4985-6050-4 • Hardback • October 2018 • $117.00 • (£90.00)

978-1-4985-6052-8 • Paperback • June 2021 • $44.99 • (£35.00)

978-1-4985-6051-1 • eBook • October 2018 • $42.50 • (£35.00)

Subjects: Language Arts & Disciplines / Linguistics / Sociolinguistics, Foreign Language Study / English as a Second Language, Foreign Language Study / Italian, Language Arts & Disciplines / Study & Teaching, Language Arts & Disciplines / Translating & Interpreting

Meeting Foreignness

Foreign Languages and Foreign Language Education as Critical and Intercultural Experiences

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

How is Foreignness defined by language? Who has the power to define the ‘foreigner’ as such, on which grounds, from which positioning, for which purposes? And within such premises, which is the role of foreign languages in defining, or challenging, Foreignness? This book reflects on the concept of Foreignness from a special lens, that of foreign languages and Foreign Language Education. Advancing that the experience of foreignness that foreign languages foreground opens up to a different apprehension of the self and the others, this work shows how such experience can problematize, question, and challenge meanings, assumptions, conceptualizations and representations ordinarily taken-for-granted, a much needed reflection at times when prevailing narratives essentialize individuals and groups according to their linguacultural backgrounds.

Though with a global perspective, the book also addresses the Italian context in particular: after introducing a brief historical background, it examines how ‘foreignness’ is addressed, portrayed, or questioned in contemporary socio-cultural and political debates, and presents practical activities to show how the foreign language can be used for intercultural purposes.

An original interdisciplinary approach, combining Critical Linguistics, Foreign Language Education, Intercultural Studies, and Critical Pedagogies, together with works of literature and examples from several fields, integrates theoretical references, practices and research methodologies to take the reader within the complex and fascinating world of languages, displaying how they inform individual and collective identities and representations, and how they can both serve processes of manipulation and domination, as well as those of empowerment and emancipation. For its interdisciplinary and integrated approach, this book aims to address teachers, educators, scholars, practitioners, researchers, and students, but also those readers who are curious to know more about languages, and about how they shape our identities, our meanings and our lives.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 142 • Trim: 6¼ x 9¼

978-1-4985-6050-4 • Hardback • October 2018 • $117.00 • (£90.00)

978-1-4985-6052-8 • Paperback • June 2021 • $44.99 • (£35.00)

978-1-4985-6051-1 • eBook • October 2018 • $42.50 • (£35.00)

Subjects: Language Arts & Disciplines / Linguistics / Sociolinguistics, Foreign Language Study / English as a Second Language, Foreign Language Study / Italian, Language Arts & Disciplines / Study & Teaching, Language Arts & Disciplines / Translating & Interpreting

Author

Paola Giorgis teaches English language, literature and visual arts in Italian high schools and holds a PhD in anthropology of education and intercultural education.

More info at:

- https://centerforinterculturaldialogue.org/?s=giorgis
- http://researching-multilingually-at-borders.com/?page_id=1818
- wom.an.ed - women’s studies in anthropology and education www.womaned.org

Table of Contents

Introduction
The Missing Link: Presenting What, How, from Where and to Whom
Part One
Within Praxis
1.The Context
1.1Made in Italies
1.2Native or Foreign?
1.3Languages, Identities, Migrations
2.The Educational Perspective
2.1The Activities
2.1.1Intercultural Grammar
2.1.2Intercultural Poetry
2.1.3Intercultural Citizenship
2.1.4A Comment on the Activities
Part Two
Within Theory
1.Introduction: What’s in a Word?
2.Foreign
3.Language
3.1mOther tongue
3.2Other Languages
3.3Language and Power
4.Education
4.1Critical Pedagogies
5.Critical
6.Intercultural
6.1Intercultural Education
7.Experience
Part Three
Within Research
1.Introducing the Research Study
2.The Contexts
3.The Participants
4.Methodology and Data Collecting
4.1General Considerations on Methodology
4.2Data Collecting: Sampling
4.3Some Issues Regarding Data Collecting
4.3.1In/Out Issue
4.3.2Objectivity/Subjectivity
4.3.3Ethical Issues
4.4Interviews and Back-talk Focus Groups
4.4.1Motivation and Procedures
4.4.2Theoretical References
5.Analysis of Data
5.1Main Principles
5.1.1Reflexivity
5.1.2Text Construction and Rhetorical Figures
5.1.3Dialogue Between the Data and the Framework
5.1.4Triangulation and Accountability
6.The Findings
7.Discussion
7.1On the Study
7.2On the Research Methods
Part Four
Meeting Foreignness. Foreign Language Education as a Critical (and) Intercultural Experience
1.Meeting Foreignness
2.Foreign Language Education as a Critical (and) Intercultural Experience
2.1English and English Language Teaching
2.2English as a Foreign Language and English as a Lingua Franca
2.3English as a Lingua Franca and English Language Teaching. An Impossible Match?
3.Foreign Languages and the Intercultural
4.What’s Next?
4.1How to Do It
A Final Note
The Bigger Picture. A Few Remarks on Some fin-de-siècle Fascinations

Reviews

Paola Giorgis’ strength is praxis: she shows how to turn theoretical writings into informed applied choices. She presents the foreign language classroom as both a critical and an intercultural space – as indeed it is.
— Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz, Director, Center for Intercultural Dialogue

Paola Giorgis combined the doggedness of the white truffle hunter and the deftness of the master cook to prepare this highly original intercultural and interdisciplinary reflection on foreign languages and Foreign Language Education.
— Jean-Marc Dewaele, Birkbeck, University of London, UK

Paola Giorgis has created a written work of art bringing together contemporary ways of knowing within foreignness, interculturality, and linguistic diversity. Moving seamlessly between classroom, philosophy, and scholarship, Giorgis has given us an emancipatory praxis which understands power, communication, and context.
— Shirley R. Steinberg, The University of Calgary

Giorgis herself remains predominantly upbeat—and for good reason: she has identified and operationalised an armoury of specific research strategies and tools, all the more powerfully with which to argue her case for a liberalising form of language education today. This has the dual purpose of being enormously helpful for research students in Higher Education; demonstrating in clear and rational terms how a methodological framework for constructing, conducting and analysing educational research can—and I would say must—emerge from the theoretically informed, politically overt stance of the researcher. . . . From my reading of Paola Georgis I now understand—and can argue more cogently—why foreign language teaching and the meeting of foreignness through foreign languages is axiomatic to arriving at an understanding of self and others that constitutes meaningful maturity.

— Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education