ABSTRACT
This chapter adopts the view of institution as practice or process, and considers how institutionalised routines are constitutive of both the success and failure of cross-cultural communication. It discusses the terms identity, role and voice and associated concepts, as well as tropological processes in the construction of voice. The chapter shows in the concrete case study of a multiparty international encounter how these notions get played out on the conversational grid of turns at talk. It suggests that cross-cultural miscommunication is not the result of a failure at the discrete linguistic or propositional level, but is the outcome of the interaction of identity, role and voice within a general attempt both to see reality as what it is and also as something else. In this complex dynamic, institutional discourse emerges as both the enabling and the disabling power of history to generate trust in the creation of a joint present.
