Intercultural Communicative Competence in Language Education: A Bibliometric Analysis (1995–2022)

Abstract

This study conducted a bibliometric analysis for intercultural communicative competence in language education by using 401 research articles in this field spanning from 1995 to 2022 in Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection—SSCI database. CiteSpace visualized knowledge maps of this field of research. The research findings show that in the field of Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) in language education, The Modern Language Journal is found to be the most highly cited journal within the past twenty-seven years; the top three highly cited authors are Michael Byram, Claire Kramsch, and Robert O’Dowd; Ethical Issues in Teaching for Intercultural Citizenship in World/Foreign Language Education is the most highly cited article; transcultural skill, intercultural communicative competence, technology-assisted L2 research, and pragmatics instruction are found to be top four leading research streams. These findings provide considerable insights into the highly cited journals, authors, articles and leading streams concerning ICC in language education from the diachronic perspective. The visualization of ICC in language education literature by formulating a bibliometric approach might be beneficial for researchers and scholars to track the development of this field.