ABSTRACT
In this chapter we offer a précis of research conducted on intercultural communication in Spanish and present an analysis of the construction of interculturality between speakers of Spanish in contemporary contexts resulting from globalization. The review of the studies conducted on the topic deals, on the one hand, with research carried out from a contrastive pragmatics angle where the prospective contact between different Spanish lingua-cultures has often been predicted on the basis of cross-cultural research; and, on the other, with constructivist studies of encounters between speakers of different Spanish-speaking backgrounds in transnational settings. The latter focus on interactions between speakers who are culturally different but share the same basic language. Their differences may reside in their ethnic composition, the varieties of Spanish they speak and their access to resources, among others. These speakers have in common the fact that they have had limited contact with one another in the past. We illustrate the way in which interculturality emerges in these exchanges and is made relevant by the participants by offering previously unexamined instances of contact between speakers of Spanish in globalized communicative settings such as service encounters in call centers and contexts of voluntary migration.
