The Conceptual Evolution of Culture Within Language and Culture Pedagogy

Addressing the cultural dimension of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) education is challenging, largely due to the difficulty in clearly interpreting the notion of culture itself (Spencer-Oatey, 2012). With its complexity rarely explored in an integrated manner, culture remains a vague notion, poorly operationalized in both theory and intercultural language teaching practice (Liddicoat & Scarino, 2013). To respond to this, this chapter critically dissected the theoretical discussions of culture as informed by multidisciplinary knowledge over the past six decades and proposes a multi-dimensional framework for conceptualizing culture within language education. This framework explores the conceptual contentions surrounding culture from three angles: whether culture should be taught as knowledge or meaning-making, as social constraints or public resources, and as value-free or value-laden. The framework proposed here is primarily intended to stimulate language educators’ interest in building confidence into their culture pedagogy. However, it also promises to inform language and culture curriculum development, textbook development, course design, and pedagogical research in the general field of second or foreign language education.