Philosophical inquiry into intercultural communication and the teaching of culture in foreign language teaching

Abstract Based upon meaning holism in the philosophy of language, this article discusses issues of intercultural communication and explores the philosophical basis of cultural difference, pointing out that cultural difference does have its necessity, but can be bridged through language exchange and education under the guidance of a holistic view of language. This is so because culture essentially consists of a system of beliefs that a language user has of the world, life and society. Such being the case, this article proposes an independent, systematic and specialised curriculum for the teaching of culture so as to help students enrich their system of cultural beliefs, by virtue of questioning and speculating in an effort to find the rationale for foreign culture beliefs.