Students writing culture: Strategies for illuminating pluralistic voices through critical intercultural communication pedagogy

Several commitments of critical communication pedagogy (CCP) (Fassett & Warren, 2007; Warren & Fassett, 2010) and critical intercultural communication pedagogy (CICP) (Atay & Toyosaki, forthcoming; Atay & Trebing, forthcoming) include self-reflexive and dialogic engagement with students in a collaborative learner-teacher/teacher-learner process that is cognizant of nuanced human subjectivity and agency as well as the constitutive nature of communication. Other aims of CCP and CICP are to demonstrate how individual and pluralistic voices are linked to systemic and structural forces and, in turn, to work toward dismantling inequitable power configurations and relations. Illuminating the voices of the invisible, hidden, muffled, silenced, excluded, and marginalized-such as with students from special populations-as well as calling attention to those who have a voice and often exercise it without reservation, hesitation, or contemplation is necessary as a means of revealing how the macro structures work in and through individuals micro communication practices (Fassett & Warren, 2007). And, because as intercultural pedagogues we are charged with bringing to light the complex matrix of intercultural relations within our social worlds in ways that will make sense for our students, we must create strategies for examining the interplay between communication, cultural identity, and power.