The reconstruction of intercultural discourse: Methodological considerations

This paper is concerned with a methodology for the study of intercultural communication. We argue that intercultural communication should be regarded and analyzed as ordinary communication. Intercultural communication is often analyzed as a type of communication in which meanings and communicative practices are not shared between the participants, thus leading to miscommunication. Still, intercultural communication, as any type of communication, is only possible when interactants construct a common ground of meanings and practices that are oriented to as shared, and which we have called 'intercultural discourse'. We therefore propose an analysis of intercultural communication which aims at the reconstruction of the 'common ground' and of the process of its construction. This process can, but need not be characterized by misunderstandings. In this paper, we illustrate this reconstruction method with an analysis of the construction of word meaning in Dutch-Surinamese work-meetings of educational specialists in the Netherlands. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.