Life in the contemporary world brings almost everybody into contact with people ofother languages and cultures. Foreign and second language teaching has evolved tomeet the challenges of the twenty-first century by putting a new emphasis on learningfor communication, or communicative competence. This book argues that a furtherevolution is required, to take account Of the affective and cognitive effects of engaging with otherness, of encountering people of different cultural identities and socialvalues and behaviours. In other words, language learners need to acquire interculturalcompetence too. Linguistic competence and intercultural competence are two dimensions of intercultural communicative competence.