Linguaculture and transnationality: the cultural dimensions of language

This chapter presents the concept of linguaculture (or languaculture), following the history of the concept from the 1980s to today. Referencing both older and contemporary branches of language study that deal with linguaculture without using this term, it includes cultural linguistics and intercultural pragmatics.

The concept of linguaculture focuses on the complex relationships between language and culture. Originally it was introduced by linguistic anthropologists (Friedrich, Agar) to encompass the single universe of language and (the verbal aspects of) culture (e.g., rural southern Vermont linguaculture). Later it was taken up by language and culture educationalists (Risager and others) to designate the cultural dimensions of language in a globalised world characterised by migrations of people from one cultural context to another, and including situations where the language in question is being learnt as a second or foreign language.

Linguaculture encompasses three inter-related cultural dimensions: the semantic–pragmatic dimension, the poetic dimension, and the identity dimension. These dimensions are traditionally studied in relation to languages used as mother tongues or first languages, for instance in cross-cultural semantics. But in an educational perspective it should be noted that the dimensions are transformed in the processes of learning languages as second or foreign languages.