The construction of interculturality: A study of initial encounters between Japanese and American students

This article investigates how Japanese and American students initiate topical talk as they get acquainted with each other during their initial encounter at a student-organized conversation table. Whereas previous studies of intercultural communications tend to take interculturality for granted, this study investigates the observable and reportable ways in which the participants demonstrate the relevance, or the irrelevance, of interculturality in the development of the interaction. The participants in the data presented in this article recurrently produce a common set of questions that reflect on their categorizations of the coparticipants. This study closely examines vocal and nonvocal conduct associated with the delivery of these questions, the selection of respondents to these questions, and the treatment of problems emerging in the development of these question-answer sequences. In doing so, it explicates how the participants utilize their cultural differences as a resource for organizing their participation and, at the same time, recreates the salience of the interculturality of the interaction.