Culture, Power, and English Language Teaching: Rethinking Intercultural Communicative Competence through Critical Discourse Analysis

Abstract

This study critically examines the implementation of Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) in junior high school English language teaching, exploring how culture and power are discursively embedded in classroom practices. Grounded in Michael Byram’s (1997, 2008) intercultural framework and informed by Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), the study adopts a qualitative design drawing on classroom interactions, teaching materials, and teacher narratives. The analysis reveals that ICC is largely reduced to savoirs, or factual knowledge about English-speaking cultures, while attitudinal, interpretive, and critical dimensions receive limited pedagogical attention. Cultural learning is commonly presented as static and decontextualized, reinforcing dominant cultural representations of English and constraining opportunities for critical reflection. Although communicative activities are incorporated, savoir apprendre/faire is enacted mainly as a controlled performance rather than an exploratory intercultural engagement. One of the most important points in Byram’s ICC model, “savoir s’engager,” is, in fact, almost entirely absent from classroom discourse, resulting in a perspective that is detached from ethical and critical discourse, as if it were merely instrumental in intercultural learning. This study argues that the application of the ICC in English language learning in the classroom can reflect broader critical assumptions, namely, the positioning of English as a global language that carries a specific ideology. To realize the transformative potential of ICC, English language instruction in junior high school must go beyond merely conveying cultural knowledge; it must also explore intercultural meanings in a reflective, critical, and ethically engaged manner.