ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the relationship between culture and discourse. It focuses on how a situated understanding of cultural practices informs studies of interaction in both classroom and nonclassroom contexts, and how discourse practices revealed in interaction studies inform us of the role of culture as an active process of meaning construction. The chapter discusses studies of interaction with a cross-cultural or sociocultural perspective that the readers can interpret and understand the data. Austin attempted to distinguish the two terms by denoting the successful achievement of understanding with the term "intercultural" while reserving the term "cross-cultural" to only the act of crossing back and forth between two cultures. The sociocultural approach to language use and meaning is relevant to the present study because of its emphasis on the role of contexts, or the spatiotemporally bounded moments, in understanding and interpreting interlocutors' interactive practices and resources.
