This article draws on data from an ethnographic account of the institutionalisation of 'the intercultural' within a large British university. The study finds that although the term 'intercultural' is frequently used in multiple forms, it is often aligned with the dominant discourses of the neoliberal university system in order to become an…

This paper considers how, in the process of positioning that is implicit in every interaction, all of us employ multiple and often competing narratives when we talk about cultural identity and our relationships with new cultural environments. In interviews with newly arrived postgraduate students about their experience of travelling to study…

Internationalisation is high on the agenda of higher education institutions across the world. Previous research on national and local policies surrounding this phenomenon has identified different discourses of internationalisation which may have an effect on practices such as student mobility. In order to understand better the role of student…

This paper is based on research done on intercultural communication at Greenmarket Square in the heart of Cape Town, South Africa. The Square is well known as a market for informal traders (mainly from other parts of Africa), local people and tourists from all over the world. Using originally collected discursive evidence from market traders, the…

This study explores the ways in which English-speaking immigrants negotiate new linguistic and cultural landscapes. I examine immigration and intercultural communication in a more complex and nuanced manner by researching the ways in which expatriates or "high-end" immigrants relocate and interact with host cultures. I conducted 11…

In gatekeeping interviews, candidates must rely on narrative strategies to demonstrate their suitability for a position. This includes the ability to project in their accounts "an institutional self." Compares native and nonnative English-speaking candidates and considers how culturally based differences in communicative background affect the…

Having grown up in an age of rapidly developing electronic communication technology, today's students come to higher education with high levels of comfort and familiarity with computer-mediated communication (CMC, hereafter). The students' level of comfort with CMC, coupled with CMC's promises of enabling supplemental class discussion as well as…

This paper is concerned with the impact that public and political discourses on the issues of language and ethnicity in Germany have on integration. It suggests that a combined effect of factors such as the traditional concept of "Germanness", peculiarities of Russian Germans' "cultural identity" and certain aspects of German…