Scale making in intercultural communication: experiences of international students in Chinese universities

ABSTRACT This qualitative study investigates the lived experiences of interculturality among international students enrolled in a top-rated comprehensive university in Shanghai and a key provincial university in China’s hinterland. Based on an analysis of narrative interviews with 20 international students from different sociocultural backgrounds, the study examines how the international students’ intercultural experiences are simultaneously constrained and facilitated by the linguacultural resources distributed among interactants in the universities and cities. The results suggest that the international students’ intercultural experiences differ in substantial ways, mediated by varied distributions of sociolinguistic resources which are closely associated with their academic socialisation through English, local interactional norms, relevant career opportunities, and linguistic norms for everyday interaction with both Chinese students and local residents in the two universities. It is also found that international students play agentive roles to construct and negotiate scales among the sociolinguistic resources at their disposal, in order to create meanings for and reflect upon their lived experiences of interculturality in relation to their previous and prospective life trajectories.