Challenging Intercultural Communicative Competence: Culture as an Emergent Phenomenon

Despite ongoing critical debates, performance-oriented practice of teaching intercultural communicative competence, including influential models of Michael Byram and especially Geert Hofstede, often relies on static and essentialised cultural models and disregarding the idea of culture as an emergent phenomenon. Focusing on Hofstede’s 6D model, the article discusses the theory and practice of teaching intercultural communicative competence as part of English for Specific Purposes within the context of business and management studies in light of philosophical perspectives drawn from the ethics of dialogic personalism (Levinas, Ricœur) and Wolfgang Iser’s literary anthropology. The aim of the discussion is to provide teachers and practitioners with a relevant theoretical framework as well as pedagogic perspectives necessary for using potentially problematic cultural models in a way which is both efficient and theoretically viable.