Discursive Grouping in a Virtual Forum: Dialogue, Difference, and the “Intercultural”

This paper engages with the notion of intercultural dialogue by exploring how participants in a virtual forum constructed difference and whether this difference fostered or prevented dialogue. The questions in this paper are grounded in dialogue scholarship which regards difference as an opportunity for dialogic transformation. The analysis illustrates that interlocutors mostly confirmed group locations through identity terms, truth talk, and distrust, which prevented dialogue. However, the data also exemplifies moments of dialogic alignment. The discussion reflects on the concept “intercultural” and cautions not to overemphasize the cultural at the expense of other meanings which are important to interlocutors.