Introducing intercultural communication pedagogy and the question of the other

This paper constitutes the introduction to the special issue of Pedagogy, Culture & Society, titled ‘Intercultural Communication Pedagogy and the Question of the Other’, which emerged from the launch event of the Institute for Language Education at the Moray House School of Education and Sport, University of Edinburgh. It proceeds from the arguments that intercultural communication pedagogy has clung too long to essentialist competency models that erase all differences, and that to counteract their effects one needs to pay greater attention to the most pre-original and non-synthesisable ethical relation between self and other. To do so, the paper draws on debates that have problematised competency models, discussing in depth two interrelated central themes that these debates have tended to overlook. The first theme refers to the possibility of the oppressed turning into oppressors in their efforts to free themselves from the unified notion of culture that competency models support. The second theme refers to the emancipatory mission of critical pedagogy which, despite its best intentions, operates within a normative framework from which self and other become the same. The paper culminates with the questions that drive contributions to this special issue, offering an overview of the papers that it contains.