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» NEW! » Holmes - Intercultural dialogue: challenges to theory, practice and research

Holmes, P. (2014). Intercultural dialogue: challenges to theory, practice and research. Language and Intercultural Communication, 14(1), 1-6. https://doi.org/10.1080/14708477.2013.866120

The term ‘intercultural dialogue’ is now in wide currency and offers much hope to peace and harmony among nations. Officially inaugurated in 2008, via the Council of Europe's White Paper and promulgated by the European Union's declaration in the same year, the concept suggests a social and political response to the need for intercultural communication and understanding in what was then a rapidly expanding European Union. (Currently, there are 28 nations encompassing a mix of languages, ethnicities, religions, histories, geographical complexities, etc., including emergent transcultural landscapes brought about by migration and other global flows of people.) The term engenders a rational post-war European society where people can engage in (inter)cultural communication openly and freely in conditions of security and mutual respect, thanks to the numerous institutions within the European Union, and the laws and conventions that require and condone civil communicative practices.