Teachers’ linguistic reasoning about interculturality in ELT: exploring how educators conceptualize and justify intercultural pedagogical practices

This study examines how ELT teacher educators conceptualise and reason about interculturality in their pedagogical practices. Although interculturality is a central concern in language education, little is known about how educators justify its place in teacher preparation. Drawing on linguistic reasoning as the main lens, supported by epistemic cognition, the study explores how educators describe, compare, and justify intercultural aims, and how their epistemic orientations shape these processes. Data were generated through semi-structured interviews and metaphor-elicitation tasks with 12 teacher educators, analysed thematically to capture pragmatic and critical dimensions of reasoning. Findings reveal fragmented conceptualizations: while many treated interculturality as instrumental support for language learning, others framed it as central to fostering reflection, empathy, and identity development. Epistemic orientations proved decisive: essentialist views of culture led to pragmatic, fact-based reasoning, whereas constructivist and evaluativist orientations supported dialogic and critical justifications. Tensions between aspirations and institutional constraints, particularly exam-driven curricula and English-only ideologies, further shaped how intercultural aims were enacted. The study concludes that intercultural pedagogy in Turkish ELT remains marginal yet resilient, sustained through educators’ epistemic awareness, reasoning, and agency. These insights extend linguistic reasoning research, foreground epistemic cognition, and offer implications for intercultural pedagogy in global ELT contexts.