Intercultural representations of Germany and their impact on academic mobility
There has been a lot of debate among researchers on intercultural activities of crossborder mobility (Dervin, 2011, Henze and Zhu, 2012, Machart and Lim, 2013). Since the word ‘culture’ is used to put people in different categories and create culturally different Others, the question arises wheth...
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2017
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/67418/1/FBMK%202017%2037%20%20IR.pdf |
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| Summary: | There has been a lot of debate among researchers on intercultural activities of crossborder
mobility (Dervin, 2011, Henze and Zhu, 2012, Machart and Lim, 2013). Since
the word ‘culture’ is used to put people in different categories and create culturally
different Others, the question arises whether it can explain all intercultural activities
in mobile students’ experiences or do they represent occurrences of “interculturality
without culture?” (Dervin 2010). The study of ‘intercultural’ activities should focus
on the experiences and interactions between individuals, and cultural identification
processes of interculturality should not refer to any kind of static ‘culture’ during the
sojourn. According to Dervin & Machart (2015), it is believed that social and
personal representations of the Other’s culture impact attitudes and subsequently
behaviours. In this study, a liquid intercultural approach is employed to examine how
Malaysian students represent themselves, Germany and German speakers, and the
impact of this representation on student mobility. Interviews were conducted with
students in the B.A German programme in Malaysia who took part in a cross-border
academic mobility programme in Germany, as well as with students who did not take
part in any mobility programme. Participants were asked on their representations of
Germany and German speakers, and their motivation to participate in the mobility
programme. Students who have been to Germany were also asked on their
‘intercultural’ encounters in the host country. Using Mixed Intersubjectivity
(Dervin,2013), the analysis would entail how participants identified themselves as
non-native language learners and how they perceived Germany, the impact of their
representations on their motivation to study abroad and how mobile participants
faced interculturality when they were in Germany. The focus of the study is on how
the participants talked instead of what they said about themselves, the Other and the
encounters they made. This will reveal the power relations between the language
learners and the native speakers from the mobile students’ point of view. |
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