ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the implications of disability-as-culture(s) for intercultural communication (IC) research and pedagogy. "Disability" is socially constructed in ways that affirm dominant expectations and values. It explains the conceptual overlap between intercultural communication studies and disability studies. The chapter reviews the current IC textbooks to identify the place of disability cultures in this literature. IC textbooks are beginning to include the perspectives of disability cultures alongside the traditional cultural categories linked to race, ethnicity, nationality, class and gender. The chapter identifies the ways of bringing voices and representations of disability cultures into the IC classroom. It describes how four key intercultural terms are illustrated in the IC classroom, drawing from disability cultures: "Alienation–Inclusion Dialectic"; "passing"; "co-cultural identity"; and "intersectionality". Disability cultures have gained a presence in IC scholarship, which is due to three key shifts: the expansion of the notion of culture; intersectional understandings of identity and affiliation; and context as an emergent site of cultural performance.
