The Influence Of Bilingual Mental Lexicon On Intercultural Communicative Competence

With the development of communication and transportation, intercultural communicative competence becomes one of the required abilities for citizens in the 21st century to survive and live meaningfully and productively. The basic idea of communicative competence is the ability to use language appropriately, both receptively and productively, in real situations. Though it is theoretically meaningful, some problems also arose. Expression is hard to understand or ambiguous, therefore communication with people from English-speaking countries is not effective.Wilkins (1972) points out that without grammar, one cannot have a good communication with other people, but without the vocabulary, one cannot even express his idea, therefore vocabulary is the foundation and the decisive factor of the communicative competence. Some learners'intercultural communicative competence can not be improved effectively, the main reason is related to the learners'mental lexicon.This paper is an attempt to study intercultural communicative competence from the perspective of mental lexicon, especially bilingual mental lexicon, and focuses on the discussion that how does bilingual mental lexicon affect intercultural communicative competence. Firstly, the author introduces the definition, history, functions and classifications of intercultural communicative competence, and then focuses on the notion, organization, lexical access, variables that affects lexical access and representations of bilingual mental lexicon. The paper also analyzes the influence of bilingual mental lexicon on intercultural communicative competence and the approaches to cultivate intercultural communicative competence.This paper will be somewhat significant both theoretically and practically. However, it is a new approach to probe into cultivating the intercultural communicative competence from the perspective of mental lexicon. Anyway, the author hopes heartily that it will provide a new field of vision of intercultural communication study, promote people's cognition of the essence of intercultural communication and improve the communication more effectively of English learners in China.