“If you think this sounds very complicated, you are correct”: Awareness of Cultural Difference in Specialized Discourse

Starting from a brief sketch of key terms in intercultural and interdiscourse perspectives, the chapter focuses on types of differences that may be foregrounded in ‘border’ communicative situations, i.e. situations that cut across cultural boundaries. The author argues that the notion of cultural identity can only be studied within the framework of a system of multiple identities that are manifested in discourse. Two main situations are analysed in terms of: a) the language codes used and the role they play in the communicative event; b) the types of identities involved in the interaction, including the patterns of symmetry/asymmetry in participant identities and c) patterns of tension between identities; the acculturation vs hybridization attitudes shown. The study focuses on the textual realization of participants roles and relationships and highlights the need to consider the types of identities involved, the patterns of symmetry/asymmetry in participant identities and the patterns of tension between identities. Idenities are taken to be scalar: they relate to the extremes, but never fully coincide with either, moving between local and global, expert and non expert, insider and outsider, or any other way in which we represent ourselves as both inner and outer members of communities.The study of textbook adaptation helps to explore the interplay between national and disciplinary cultures. Interdiscourse communication proves to be aimed at acculturation in the professional community: textbook writers show great awareness of the need to mediate knowledge, but also of the readers’ need to be accepted in the disciplinary/professional community. The case of business correspondence in English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) helps to explore the interplay between corporate and national culture in ELF business settings and the specificities of this kind of communicative situation.Effective communication may be the result of heightened awareness of multiple identities in the participants, which leads them to strategies of hedging and boosting differences. If emphasizing what people have in common plays down possible differences in community membership, in a multi-membership perspective, emphasis of one type of difference may play down difference in another type of community membership. Study of border communicative situations reinforces the view that all dialogue is in a way intercultural.