“When Legal Capability meets Intercultural Communication Competence:How can theory and practice of Intercultural Communication Competence inform theory and practice of Public Legal Education?”

In modern-day society, the law shapes every aspect of our daily life. The lack of legal understanding among the general public signals an urgent need to take action.

Public legal education (PLE) has crucial role in improving people’s understanding of the law while building legal skills and confidence that can empower individuals to make changes in their own life and in the community. Scholars have been working on developing legal capability framework and principle which could be used to measure individual legal capabilities and evaluate PLE initiatives. Legal capability, although has much to offer, is reasonably new, and there are still some gaps in the literature. At the same time, the practice of PLE is still patchy and in small scale.

In this thesis, I argue that the law is a culture with its own set of norms, behaviours and language. Therefore, learning the law is similar to learning a culture. Intercultural communication is a discipline that looks at interactions between different cultures. Intercultural communication competence (ICC), a concept derived from intercultural communication, is often utilised in language and culture learning in similar functions and attributes as legal capability in PLE. I contend that the large range of literature of ICC can be supplementary and constructive to the theory and practice of PLE.

This thesis takes you through a cultural journey to explore a different view of the theory and practice of PLE through the lens of ICC models and intercultural learning. It ultimately suggests that ICC can bring various benefits to PLE, not only to enhance the literature, but also in practice that benefits both learners and educators. Incorporating intercultural communication in PLE also gives developers an opportunity to explore new approaches to make PLE programmes more accessible and suitable for learners in order. to achieve full potential of PLE that brings about positive changes to individuals, society as well as the legal sector.