Crossing transcultural liminalities with critical virtual exchange: a study of shifting border discourses

The physical environments where we work, play, live are not neutral. They are not blank backdrops, silent witnesses to human activity. Rather, place – the physical surroundings – and space – practiced place – are shaped by unique social, cultural, historical, and political variables, the products of histories and the creators of tomorrows (Blommaert, 2013). Importantly, place and space are infused with power: while geopolitical boundaries and state borders may delineate geographies into countries and cultures, they also impose linguistic, cultural, and political divides on peoples and communities and create power asymmetries that perpetuate the ideologies of the colonizer and the colonized (Marston et al., 2005). An acknowledgment of the significant role of place and space in language education means seeing both as integral components and reflections of larger socio-political human realities (Higgins, 2017), but also recognizing the potential perils of monoglossic, monolingual approaches to language studies and educational practices that flatten local plurilingual and pluricultural realities in favor of generalizable monolithic geopolitical superficiality. This latter contradiction explains why attending to place and space holds great pedagogical potential for second/foreign language teaching, opening a wide span of multiand interdisciplinary opportunities for critical cultural education (Gruenewald, 2003) and situating language study in cultural, historical, geographic, and cross-cultural frames within the context of humanistic learning (Modern Language Association (MLA) Report, 2007, p. 4). Among current methodologies and practices in intercultural education, virtual exchange (VE) is a potential pedagogical platform for such placeconscious education: A staple in language learning research and practice for the last 20 years, virtual exchange connects students from geographically