Comparative Discussion of Intercultural Discourses in the 20th Century

20세기 '상호문화 담론들'에 대한 비교 고찰

The word culture itself is very difficult to define. Therefore, in order to confine its meaning, many scholars prefer to attach different prefixes such as inter-, bi-, multi-, cross-, pluri-, trans-, in front of the adjective cultural instead of defining the word culture itself. These prefixes have been used along with about thirty various nouns, ranging from adaptability to training. In this paper, we focused on the adjective intercultural. In fact, this adjective has been widely used, not only in education but also in the communication and philosophy sectors among the world academia discourse. Intercultural Education appeared in America in the 1930s and also in the 1970s in Europe, in order to improve relations between immigrants and the people who received them. Intercultural communication arose in America as a cultural education program for American diplomats and professionals, while interculturalism appeared in the 1970s in Canada as a policy in opposition to multiculturalism. Intercultural philosophy started in 1990s Germany as philosophical speculation against Eurocentrism. As such, the adjective intercultural has been used with a combination of diverse nouns. In regards to this, one can ask the following questions: did the scholars have any kind of agreement during their discussions? Did they communicate and make a positive impact on each other? If not, how can we interpret their common use of the word intercultural? To answer these questions, we tried to compare fives types of intercultural waves of the 20th century, paying particular attention to their time periods, places and backgrounds of appearance, their emphases and shortcomings. Following our research, we found that intercultural waves in the 20th Century have developed independently despite their common use of the word intercultural. Therefore, we concluded that the use of same word intercultural was the result of humankind's effort to approach cultural differences in a positive way in the global village created by internationalization and globalization of the 20th century.

본 논문은 20세기에 '상호문화적'이라는 용어를 사용하며 출현한 미국의 상호문화교육, 상호문화의사소통, 캐나다의 상호문화주의, 유럽의 상호문화교육, 상호문화철학을 그 출현 시기, 장소, 배경, 주안점, 한계 등을 기준으로 비교해보면서 이것들이 상호 영향이나 합의 하에 출현한 것인지 아니면 독자적으로 출현한 것인지를 밝혀보고자 하였다. 우리는 이 다섯 가지의 '상호문화 담론들'을 비교, 분석해 본 결과, 이 담론들이 비록 '상호문화적'이라는 용어를 모두 사용했지만 상호 영향이나 합의는 거의 없이 독자적으로 발전해 왔음을 알 수 있었다. 우리는 이것을, 20세기 국제화, 세계화에 의해서 만들어진 지구촌에서 점점 부각되고 있는 문화적 차이들을 가능한 긍정적으로 접근해 보고자 하는 인류의 공통적인 노력의 소산이라고 해석하였다. 우리는 이런 상호문화 담론이 한국 다문화 사회에도 널리 퍼지길 기대한다.