Beth Callen
Lancaster University

The Discourse of Intercultural Experience

This paper looks at the discourses adopted by UK modern languages students when describing their experiences of living and working abroad.  It suggests that, whether students’ evaluation of their contacts with L2 speakers is negative or positive, the linguistic characteristics of the resulting discourse are in fact remarkably similar. 

The data come from a series of focus groups conducted with students returning from their ‘year abroad’ in France, Italy, Spain or Germany, and the analysis is organised around the themes which emerge from their discussions: modes of socialising, attitudes towards drinking, friendship, pace of life and so on.  The paper addresses two central issues in relation to these themes:

•	It identifies the different responses to new linguistic and cultural experiences by examining the evaluative aspects of the students’ discourse (comparatives, negatives, hedges, modals, adjectives and adverbs)

•	It demonstrates how in both negative and positive responses, the same discursive strategies are employed within the same comparative structure, but with either L1 or L2 speakers being evaluated in a markedly negative way, depending on the nature of the experiences being recounted.  In other words, one culture (home or host) is always viewed in a firmly unfavourable light.

Analysis of such evaluative discourse is significant for the year abroad in particular and for the language learning enterprise as a whole.  The paper will end by discussing the significance of students’ positioning of themselves in relation to the target culture for their learning.