All the Monoliths Are Fluid Now

Abstract

Metaphors are omnipresent. Far from just being stylistic devices in literary texts, they are an integral part of human communication and cognition and play a most important role in how individuals and collectives constitute a meaningful relationship to the world (cf. Gibbons and Whiteley 2018, 205). As such, metaphors can be found in all kinds of communicative contexts, ranging from more colloquial everyday conversations to "the most serious of academic texts" (Littlemore and Low 2006, 5). An example of the latter can be found in the field of English language education, where, in recent years, a growing number of studies have argued for the necessity of transcultural learning in the EFL classroom. In doing so, these academic texts make use of a recurring metaphor: they conceptualise transcultural learning and transculturality – a concept used in English language education1 to describe the dynamic and hybrid conditions of contemporary cultures – via the metaphor of liquidity. Thus, in the spirit of Bauman (2007) and his 'liquid times,' Guest sees contemporary cultures as inherently "fluid" (2006, 14), Freitag-Hild remarks that current cultural spheres are "always in a flux" (2018, 168), and Schachtner speaks of "cultural flows" (2014, 228) constantly intersecting. In contrast to the more traditional image of cultures as "monolithic and static construct[s]" (cf. Blell and Doff 2014, 79), Hannerz refers to a "pool of culture" (1998, 49) in which, according to Grünewald, Küster and Lüning, "floating identities" exist (2011, 69), and Volkmann speaks of the "Auflösung" (dissolution; 2014, 38) of fixed cultural boundaries. Much like liquids being brought together, therefore, in English language education, contemporary cultures are seen as "mixing and fusing" (Viebrock 2019, 79), thus clearly showing that, indeed, metaphors find their way into the most serious of academic debates. The present paper will take a closer look at this 'liquid-metaphor' in the context of teacher education. More specifically, this paper provides a theoretical exploration of the learning potential that this metaphor might offer to student teachers2 of English: it will be argued that by analysing this dominant metaphor in current studies on transcultural learning, student teachers can gain a profound understanding of