Kommunikative Konstruktion von Interkulturalität: Fallbeispiele in Erstkontaktgesprächen zwischen deutsch- und russischsprachigen Studierenden
Communicative Construction of Interculturality: Examples from Initial Encounters between Native German and Russian Speaking Students

Summary/Abstract: The paper investigates the communicative construction of interculturality in initial encounters between native German and Russian speaking university students. Contrary to the traditional approach to intercultural communication, culture and cultural belonging are understood here as variables that are communicatively produced in interpersonal interaction, primarily by means of language (Altmayer 2020, Hausendorf 2000, Földes 2007, Günthner 2019). The focus is on the observable ways in which participants indicate the relevance of cultural differences / belongings in the ongoing conversation. Using examples from German-Russian student conversations (approximately two hours of audio data), I will show how participants interactively employ certain methods to (re-)activate cultural belongings in the unfolding conversation and in doing so, construct an intercultural setting. It will also be shown that they use interculturality reflexively as an interactional resource. This article is a contribution to the linguistic research on interculturality in the particular case of German-Russian student encounters. Intercultural communication is regarded and analysed as ordinary communication. The methodology of the present study follows basically the approach of Interactional Linguistics (Selting/Couper-Kuhlen 2000, Couper-Kuhlen/ Selting 2001). The theoretical basis is provided by current approaches to culture and interculturality (i. a. Földes 2009) and by the notion of intercultural accounts (i. a. Dausendschön-Gay/Krafft 1998, Wolf 1998).

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