Cultural difference as a resource for arguments in institutional interactions

ABSTRACT This article analyzes how institutional members orient to cultural difference during arguments in meeting interactions. Membership categorization analysis (MCA) of 21 h of audio-recorded conversations from eight months of fieldwork with an Asian American Chamber of Commerce illustrates that participants oriented to cultural difference as a resource when building, supporting, or opposing arguments about institutionally related activities. Participants constructed cultural differences between cultural categories or participants oriented to cultural difference as a taken-for-granted fact and used this fact to support their arguments. Overall, this study contributes to theorizing intercultural communication through illustrating how cultural difference is a discursive phenomenon. MCA of participants’ interactions reveals nuanced, complex ways that cultural difference routinely constitutes institutional life.