Intercultural Communication Studies XVII: 2 2008 Honna English across Cultures and Intercultural Awareness

In order to enrich English as a language of multicultural communication and to ensure intercultural communicability among speakers of its different varieties, it is important that we develop internationally collaborated and coordinated educational programs. This paper addresses some of the important issues involved in intercultural awareness as a pedagogical response to actual and potential inconveniences of incommunicability caused or to be caused by the spread of English as a multicultural and multinational language. Intercultural awareness is explored in terms of intercultural literacy in which teaching awareness of language plays an important role. Teaching awareness of language aims at our clear understanding of how language is designed and how people use language. Thus, it can be useful for students to become conscious of the function of language in multilingual and multicultural settings, thereby enhancing intercultural literacy, which is needed for improved mutual communicability among different varieties of English. In this connection, the study of metaphor will be emphasized, accompanied by reports from training sessions intended for metaphorical analysis of everyday language