‘Is it okay to eat a dog in Korea…like China?’ Assumptions of national food-eating practices in intercultural interaction

There is a small body of research which shows how intercultural communication is constituted in and through talk-in-interaction, and can be made relevant or irrelevant by interactants on a moment-by-moment basis. Our paper builds on this literature by investigating how cultural assumptions of national food-eating practices are deployed, contested and co-constructed in an online, voice-based chat room. Using conversation analysis, findings show how assumptions about cultural practices sequentially unfold in a setting where the interactants are strangers. Additionally, we show how assumptions about cultural practices can be used for rhetorical purposes, and can be treated as simple and complex in a single exchange. Abstract Keywords: interculturalityconversation analysissocial interactioncultural practicescultural assumptionsmembership categorisation analysis Acknowledgements We would like to thank two anonymous reviewers and the editor for their helpful comments on a earlier draft of this paper. Thanks also to staff and students of Newcastle University and University of Hawai'i at Mānoa for sharing their analytic suggestions and ideas during data sessions. Any remaining shortcomings are our own. Notes 1. Please see articles and books referenced for more detailed descriptions of ethnomethodology, its principles and approach to social research. Put briefly, ethnomethodological research focuses on the methods and procedures undertaken by social members in the local management and accomplishment of social understanding. Two of its main research tools are conversation analysis (CA) and membership categorisation analysis (MCA). CA is the study of social action as manifest through talk (and other conduct). Its research focus is on the sequential organisation and order of social interaction. MCA's interest is in the presumed common-sense knowledge of social structures. MCA's research focus is the study of the categories members use in organising and understanding their social world. CA and MCA are very much mutually supportive methodologies and one is invariably used in order to inform the other. 2. Translated from Japanese (‘ja nihon no eega wa mita koto arimasu ka?’), in which there was no (and seldom is) use of a personal pronoun. 3. A reviewer of an earlier draft of this paper suggested that the inclusion of China may be evidence of an invocation of a multinational membership category ‘Asian countries’, with the in-built implication that Asian countries share category-bound attributes and practices. It is felt that there is insufficient evidence to support this in our data, but future research into notions of multinational categories and subsequent category-bound practices may be warranted. 4. This would appear to be June's interpretation/version of an idiom which expresses the belief that in China, many ‘unusual’ items are considered edible: ‘the Chinese will eat anything with four legs that is not a chair, and anything that flies that is not an airplane’. 5. Within Korean society, it is often argued by those who are in favour of eating dog meat that it provides strength and virility. 6. It may be worth noting that James’ claim of having ‘bear soup’ may be erroneous, and be due to a mistranslation from Korean. ‘Beef soup’ in Korean is known as ‘gomtang’. ‘Tang’ translates into English as ‘soup’ and, while ‘gom’ on its own would translate as ‘bear’, in this case it refers to the extensive boiling process under which the soup is prepared. 7. Egbert (Citation2004) looks at regional and linguistic category membership in interaction, and labels this as ‘intercultural’. To our knowledge, all other research on interculturality has looked exclusively at national cultural identities and differences.