Embodying intercultural communicative competence in French L2 video reflections: Illustrating skills, knowledge, and attitudes

Research has long touted and recently confirmed the importance of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) — the ability to appropriately communicate with those from diverse sociocultural and linguistic backgrounds — in second language (L2) teaching and learning. Additionally, while multimodal course materials have contributed to learners’ ICC, the link between students’ embodied modes (gestures, facial expressions, body movements) and ICC remains under-explored. Building on ICC and the social semiotic theory of multimodality, this study blends multimodal transcription and conversation analysis to examine how 73 university undergraduate learners of L2 French used embodied modes in 188 asynchronous video reflections and how these modes accompanied demonstrations of ICC skills, knowledge, and attitudes. Findings indicate that gestures and facial expressions indicated students’ demonstrations of the ICC skills of observing, analyzing/interpreting, evaluating, relating, listening, questioning, researching, and problematizing. Further, embodied modes demonstrated students’ retrieval and communication of cultural and sociolinguistic knowledge. This study has implications for online language learning and enhancing ICC through virtual multimodal assignments.