ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is to outline how cultural discourse analysis (CuDA), a theory and methodology developed within the ethnography of communication in the field of communication, enables cultural analysts to study intercultural contact and the transcultural circulation of communication practices, resources and discourses. I regard CuDA as an ethnographic methodology that is particularly useful for identifying and analysing cases centred not only on particular social groups and their unique communication practices but also on observable contact between or among groups and the contexts (institutions, organisations, socio-political and economic arrangements, etc.) that facilitate contact. First, I describe how CuDA methodologically recalibrates the ethnography of the communication approach by shifting the unit of analysis from the speech community to cultural discourses, which opens up the approach to cross-cultural contact and mobility. Second, I discuss why and how this recalibration prompts the researcher to pursue new lines of inquiry and to attend to particular kinds of communication theory. Third, I draw attention to some of CuDA’s implications for data collection and analysis. Fourth, I discuss key limitations resulting from the unequal distribution of research resources and make an argument for a possible future extension of the approach by rethinking the nature and dynamics of speech economies.
