Cultural competence and its different components in the implementation of the social action-oriented approach. A new didactic issue

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Original version and publication (in French): « La compétence culturelle et ses différentes composantes dans la mise en œuvre de la perspective actionnelle: une nouvelle problématique didactique". Intercâmbio, Revue d’Études Françaises, Instituto de estudos franceses da Universidade do Porto; 2e série, vol. 7, 2014, pp. 21-38 (2015b).

I would like to thank my colleague from the University of Izmir (Turkey), Ahmet Acar, for reviewing this translation.

Abstract

Intercultural competence", as it is still generally understood in language and culture didactics, has been the subject of criticism for many years, which is briefly recalled here. In particular, it can no longer be opposed to "cultural competence", but must be considered as one of its components, in necessary relation to two other components that have previously appeared in the discipline, transcultural and metacultural. A sufficiently complex model of cultural competence must now even integrate two additional components, pluricultural and co-cultural, because they are required by the two new challenges that have appeared in the Common European Framework of Reference, namely living together, and acting together in a multilingual and multicultural Europe. The article illustrates this new cultural problematic in language and culture didactics by presenting the example of a FLE manual whose cultural approach aims to make all these components of cultural competence work simultaneously.