In this example the whole shaded bloc of line 2 to 5 could be omitted and there would not be a trace left of a misunderstanding. The shaded bloc constitutes a kind of minor subdialogue consisting of a repair cycle. Line 2 can be regarded as the repairable, as an indication of a mishearing, in line 3 is the immediate correction of the misunderstood item, and lines 4 and 5 comprise the reassurance by the mishearer and the ratification of the correction by the corrector. The misunderstood item in line 2 is identified as such in the next line in that it is corrected; it is furthermore made intonationally salient. Speaker S says 'ENTfristed' in line 3 thus putting contrastive weight on the exact source of misunderstanding. Note that the misunderstanding is not identified as such by the wrong ratification by speaker H in line 2, but in the retrospective identification through the position of the repair turn in relation to the repairable in line 3. The misunderstanding sequence at my Gothenburg hotel was exactly of the same kind. The occurrence of a misunderstanding is thus located in a vertical order of sequentiality.

(MU 1a) Extended variant: The misunderstood segment may be reconstructed by virtue of identifying or localizing it as such and may even become specified by an explicit 'diagnosis' (i.e., realization of the features of the problem in question) or 'anamnesis' (i.e., case history) of the misunderstanding's trajectory. Such explicit diagnoses could be formulations "I think we have a misunderstanding there," or "That's not what I meant," or "I don't mean X, I mean Y" etc.. A 'case history' we find in examples where explanations or accounts are given that explain why the misunderstanding occurred: "That was metaphorically meant, not literally. You missed that point," or also interculturally: "That's the way we do it" etc.

(MU 2) There is an immediate recognition of a misunderstanding, which is indicated by a repair at the next possible opportunity, but there is no return to the status quo ante. The misunderstanding itself becomes a resource of continuation.

(MU 2a) Extended variant: The misunderstood segment may be reconstructed by virtue of identifiying or localizing it as such and may even become specified by an explicit 'diagnosis' or 'anamnesis' of the misunderstanding's trajectory. Note: the more extended the misunderstanding's trajectory, the less likely is a return to the status quo ante; instead, a continuation based on the misunderstanding is more likely.

(MU 3) There is a gradual recognition of a misunderstanding, which may be indicated by disturbances in the flow of the conversational course, by signs of incoherence, by detours or recyclings (repetitions, paraphrases, circumlocutions, 'talking down'-effects), by unresponded repair initiations, by suddenly or gradually developing traces of verbal, nonverbal, or paralinguistic insecurity, or, simply by the indication or registration of what Erickson and Shultz (1982) have called 'uncomfortable moments', until one interlocutor becomes aware that some kind of misunderstanding has occurred. What may follow is the further treatment as described in MU1 and MU2 (including their extensions). But note: the more distant the recognition of a misunderstanding, the more effort is necessary to repair it and the less likely there will be an easy return to the status quo ante. Furthermore, the more distant the recognition, the less probable is the exact localization and identification of the site of misunderstanding, particularly when the misunderstanding has built up over a whole stretch of turn-by-turn development.

(MU 4) There is a gradual recognition of a misunderstanding, which may be indicated by disturbances in the flow of the conversational course, in signs of incoherence, by detours or recyclings (repetitions, paraphrases, circumlocutions, 'talking down'-effects), by unresponded repair initiations, by suddenly or gradually developing traces of verbal, nonverbal, or paralinguistic insecurity, or, simply by the indication or registration of 'uncomfortable moments,' until the misunderstanding is somehow recognized but does not get treated as described in MU1 and MU2. That is, the misunderstanding will not be clarified by way of a repair with reference to the misunderstanding's anamnesis. It will, however, be solved. That is, interlocutors will overcome the misunderstanding without ever getting to its roots. Hence, there is no trajectory of the misunderstanding to be reconstructed, but rather particular lost threads of discourse will be made to fit together. This, of course, is also a kind of repair. It's like solving a complex mathematical problem without comprehending the individual steps that led to the solution. For the last two kinds I want to give an example, which I have taken from Williams (1985:170f.):

Example 2: Canvassing

Participants to this encounter are IT, a counsellor at the Australian Commonwealth Employment Service, and the client V, a Vietnamese man, who is enrolled in a job-finding training scheme. IT obviously misinterprets V's "doing canvassing" (line 2f.). It is not taken as the description of the kind of work that is done in the factory but is demonstrably understood in the sense of canvassing for a job in that factory (line 6a). As this interpretation is not questioned, the misinterpretation is not clarified. Thus, however, the factory where V is offered a job remains underspecified from what follows a step-by-step inquiry into the specifics of this alleged offer. As V's answers do not seem to observe the maxim of quantity (Grice 1975), IT keeps on inquiring into more and more details. Even in the exchange in line 11 and 12 where "canvassing" is linked to the factory the misunderstanding is not solved but the confirmation check reveals another misinterpretation because "canvassing" does not refer to the name of the factory but to a production process. Here we have a second misunderstanding, of course. So finally, when the more general "canvassing" gets specified (or generalized) by "that makes beds" (line 23a) this does not clarify the first misunderstanding. It eventually leads to an understanding without ever having made the misinterpreted item a repairable.

The shaded and indented sequences of the exchange parts are all dependent on IT's assumption of being underinformed, whereas V's brevity may be based on the assumption of having given sufficient information. We just receive a whole subdialogue subdivided into various repair sequences (including another misunderstanding), hierarchically dependent on each other, without, however, getting to the repairable.

If we skip the whole subdialogue and imagine this exchange as smooth and uninterrupted, all that is left is the following:

Back to the typology:

(MU 5) There is a gradual recognition of a misunderstanding, which may be indicated by disturbances in the flow of the conversational course etc., in signs of incoherence, by detours or recyclings (repetitions, paraphrases, circumlocutions, 'talking down'-effects), by unresponded repair initiations, by suddenly or gradually emerging traces of verbal, nonverbal, or paralinguistic insecurity, or, simply by the indication or registration of 'uncomfortable moments,' until the communication comes to a halt, dissolves, breaks down or is reinitiated by a change in topic. This is exactly the kind of misunderstanding Gumperz and his colleagues have worked on, to wit: "Lack of shared background knowledge leads initially to misunderstandings, but since contextualization conventions are not shared, attempts to repair these misunderstandings fail and conversational cooperation breaks down" (Gumperz 1995:120).

(MU 6) There is no obvious recognition of a misunderstanding, although an outside observer regards it as a misunderstanding; or one of the participants may have received particular information afterwards (even long time after) that leads her to reassess the interaction (or parts of it) as a misunderstanding. The interaction in question remains, however, untouched by this discovery or reinterpretation.

(MU 7) To an outside observer there is no manifestation and no indication that a misunderstanding has occurred, yet one interlocutor (or even both interlocutors) may have the feeling that either she has or was or they have or were misunderstood. So the misunderstanding may have been noticed but remained unnegotiated.

Of course, some reservations have to be added to this apparently clearcut division of misunderstanding types. One is that there is a gradation of variants between MU 2 and MU 3. Likewise, the differentiation between the covert and the latent type will be analytically useful, but the deeper we get into the minutiae of the interactional structure, the more likely we are to find hints of doubts in understanding and hints of these doubts being negotiated (as we will see in example 3 below). In particular, the Gumperzian approach of conversational inferencing, based on contextualization cues and conventions, gives ample evidence of how even the mismatching of one or several contextualization cues could develop into a disastrous interactional trajectory. These cues are at least analytically detectable as negotiated matters of discourse.

One thing has to be reemphasized and makes the continuum character of this typology clear: The further a repair attempt of some misinterpreted item or sequence is away from its alleged source, the less explicit will be its manifestations. Eventually, there will be no manifestations at all; there will be solely stronger and weaker indications instead, of misunderstanding. This also means that with weaker manifestations and with more distance from the repairable that is the item or sequence misunderstood, reconstructions of the misunderstanding will be more difficult.

Furthermore, and now I come to a very crucial point in my argumentation, speaking of 'misunderstanding' so far is in some way irritating or even misleading, because a misunderstanding comprises much more than an isolable item or intention or activity type or whatever it is that was misunderstood. Speaking of misunderstanding comprises its recognition, its possible manifestation or indication, the reconstruction of its trajectory (by diagnosing, identifying, localizing and even by reconstructing the motives of its occurrence); however, in actual practise it is often hard to gauge where a misunderstanding commences unless the case is so clearly manifest as in MU 1. A misunderstanding ceases where interlocutors either regain their status quo ante or come to a smooth continuation according to criteria of coherence. So, as we can see in MU 3 to MU 5 the misunderstanding will be quite extended or it will never end until the exchange collapses or is reinitiated.

Note that there are hence two kinds of misunderstanding at issue: a whole stretch of talk with an alleged beginning and end, as a speech event in its own right that is structurally and interactionally describable, and a particular (often identifiable) encoding or interpretation that is the alleged reason for the whole event. The latter I will call the core misunderstanding. The core in MU 1 was clearly the mishearing of the item "unlimited" (line 1) and it is this item which was made subject of the sequence to follow.

The misunderstanding event, on the other hand, comprises the whole grey-shaded sequence of the examples cited above. The core of the example for MU 4 was IT's misunderstanding V's "doing canvassing" (line 2f.). IT showed his (or her) misinterpretation in line 6a by the ratificatory statement "So you've been canvassing for work," which was, however, not corrected. The subdialogues that were created by the core misunderstanding comprise the managing (or handling) of this misinterpretation.

Whereas in "Canvassing" there was no identifiable core for the interlocutors the manifestation of the misunderstanding normally refers directly to the segment being misinterpreted. It is here that the misunderstanding really begins and that there is a transition back to the previous line of the prior interaction focus, which is where it ends.

Thus when I speak of 'misunderstanding' I either mean the whole misunderstanding trajectory as an event in its own right or the alleged identifiable core: so any misunderstanding in situated communication comprises the 'misunderstanding event' as a frame and embedded in it the – more or less identifiable – 'core misunderstanding.' Note that the frame only exists by virtue of the core; the core however is not identifiable, localizable and repairable without the frame event because these activities are all part of the frame.

* * *

Let me summarize so far: A misunderstanding in a talk exchange is not simply a diffuse mismatching of alleged intention failure, but it is a sequence, a short or quite extended one, even open-ended one where a mismatching is retrospectively negotiated and most often repaired. Misunderstandings have a beginning and an ending. The beginning is sometimes not reconstructable. Misunderstandings furthermore reveal a particular sequence of activities which may even comprise a whole corrective cycle, the repair itself, sometimes including a diagnosis with varying specificity, even an anamnesis more or less explicit, furthermore comprising the mutual ratification of being back on the right track. It will include moves such as giving explicit relief to the producer of a misunderstanding or giving apologetic accounts or the like.

All this, I want to repeat, is part of a misunderstanding. This is why I talk about misunderstanding as an event in its own right.

Now another difficulty arises. Taking into account this division into core and frame event, it is quite impossible to differentiate it in cases of such covert misunderstandings as in MU 4 and MU 5 types. It is here that I suggest that intercultural communication could be treated as something substantially different from other forms of communication (which for reasons of contrastive simplicity we may call 'intracultural'). That is, one criterion of intercultural communication is to regard covert misunderstandings or maybe particular kinds of covert misunderstandings as indicative of mismanaging differences or discrepancies in terms of sociocultural knowledge. The works of John Gumperz give ample evidence that it is the mismatchings of the interactional structure's minutiae where misunderstandings based on cultural and sociocultural conventions are characteristic of interethnic interactions, like those between Britons with an Anglo-Saxon background and those with an Southeast Asian background. One possible hypothesis to derive from these findings is that covert types of misunderstandings are more frequent in encounters between speakers with different first language or different dialect backgrounds or simply with native and nonnative speakers. The "Canvassing" example is surely of the last kind. It is mainly characterized by native/nonnative-speakership problems, but also by institutional rules of conduct and by the imbalance of power; a 'pure’ culture component is less obvious here.

So far, however, I do not know of any comparative research convincingly claiming that particular kinds of misunderstanding were more frequent or typical in particular kinds of encounters, such as between speakers with different cultural, ethnic or linguistic background as compared to encounters without such background differences. My own research rather supports the view that misunderstandings are all-pervasive and ubiquitous, in all kind of encounters. Hence, we are hardly justified speaking of 'intercultural communication' in terms of misunderstandings occurring in particular kinds of encounters as is done in so many intercultural approaches. Furthermore, I do not know of any intercultural research where misunderstanding is clearly defined before being applied to an alleged intercultural encounter. What, we have to ask, do overt, covert and latent misunderstandings have in common, then, except for being commonly labelled 'misunderstanding' by the observer? As to the latent (and non-negotiated) one, we have to ask if it can be regarded as a misunderstanding in its own right when it is in no way obvious to participants that it has occurred at all?

What all types of misunderstandings seem to have in common is the illusion of understanding up to a certain point, which may be discovery or discomfort. The overt one implies in particular the illusion of a first understanding being retrospectively falsified; the covert one the illusion of understanding being bit by bit questioned and gradually dismantled; the latent one the illusion of understanding being questionable and falsifiable only by an outside observer (or a participant looking back like an outside observer). The two former ones will give the interaction in question – as we have seen above – a particular imprint in the real time of the interaction, i.e., it heavily affects the interaction's dynamic, whereas the latter will be made a narration of conflict ex post fact. Note that the latter does not impinge on the parties' actual involvement, whereas the other two will show some kind of negotiation, will create side sequences or sometimes even dialogues within dialogues, i.e., misunderstanding subdialogues.

I have already warned against regarding the different MU-types as in any case clearly distinguishable as to interactional structure. I have shown elsewhere that manifestations and indications that lead an interlocutor to infer that a misunderstanding may have occurred are highly differentiated and that they range on a manifestation continuum starting from such clear cut statements such as "I think you misunderstood so and so" to slight indications such as an extended halting of a pause or a doubtful look (Hinnenkamp 1998). Furthermore, we have to ask what "immediate" or "gradual recognition of a misunderstanding" means at all. We as observers infer an interlocutor's recognition from what we observe from what participants demonstrably indicate as (mis-)understood, or, in terms of John Gumperz, how they contextualize a potential misunderstanding (Gumperz 1982a; 1992a, b). As the constitution of context is done retrospectively as well as prospectively, the questioning of a context that has been seen as valid so far leads retrospectively to the identification of the immediate cause for the suspicion of context erosion or change and also anticipates the remedial action to be necessary for defending or for adaptation or for repair.

Contextualizing is routine work. The context indications we give are highly conventionalized (cf. Gumperz 1982a; 1992a, b). We have as many interactional means for this at our disposal as there are layers and properties of our interactional structure. Without creating contexts for our interaction, we would not be able to understand each other. The existence of different contextualization conventions is one of the many reasons for misunderstanding. As people from different cultural backgrounds also may have different conventions of contextualizing and framing, it is here that we find reasons for intercultural misunderstandings. This of course does not inform about the interactional structure of a misunderstanding. Neither does it inform about the particular context of a misunderstanding event and the work required to create it.

One question deriving from this is whether the suspicion or recognition of a misunderstanding also leads to a particular context of a misunderstanding event, and furthermore if such a context is inferable to all parties involved. As we have seen in the first example, it took both interlocutors to manage the misunderstanding and get back to the status quo ante. In the moment that H gives evidence that he misheard "entfristet (unlimited)" by responding with "Befristet- naja (Limited- well)", the misunderstood locutor corrects it immediately to "ENTfristet (UNlimited)" (and thus of course demonstrating "immediate recognition"), followed by the misunderstander's correct (and maybe astonished) repetition, thus ratifying the correct version. This again is followed by the confirmation of the correct uptake "Entfristet, mhm (Unlimited, ya)". – That is, there is a reciprocal reassurance of the correct item before returning to the status quo ante. Both interlocutors have been involved in this process, both have followed the rules of a corrective cycle, and both have created a corrective context, thus ensuring that "What they are talking about to each other (right now)?" is actually the same (again) (cf. Auer 1986).

The momentary mismatch of topic may, however, have an impact on other contexts as well. As we can see in the "Canvassing" example the interrogation of the Vietnamese client becomes quite harsh, and it is only by virtue of V's initiative of specifying IT's question "The place in (+) in (+) down near Fremantle?" (line 21) by "In West O'Connor" (line 22) that communication regains normality (in the cooperative sense). Because so far not only the thematic "What are we talking about to each other (right now)?" was at disposal but also the schema of what kind of activity they were involved in ("What are we doing with one another (right now)?") and certainly also the schema of power, the unequal distribution of interactional rights and obligations (cf. "What footing are we on (right now)?") (Auer 1986).

So far I have developed a typology of misunderstandings by macrosequential criteria and ordered them into three basic types which I labelled in accordance with Linell (1995) "overt," "covert," and "latent." I furthermore started to describe misunderstanding as an event in its own right that very often has a clearly identifiable beginning and end and that has always – unless it is latent – its own trajectory, sometimes closed and sometimes open, i.e., open ended or transformed into a new subject of its own. Misunderstanding as an event has a core, which is sometimes retrospectively localized or identified, and it has a frame or trajectory, which is the side sequence or even subdialogue following by virtue of the treatment or negotiation of the core misunderstanding. The less identifiable the core the more likely is an extended negotiation phase. Ideally, the end of a misunderstanding event is constituted by the uptake of the prior thread of conversation, cleared, of course, of its misunderstandability. I have named this the return to status quo ante. Finally, I have argued that misunderstanding as an event in its own right brings about its own conventionalized context, that is one of remedial action, initiating a sequence of acts best described by the term "corrective cycle" (cf. Goffman 1971).

The problem of remedial attempts as part of the misunderstanding event has been alluded to by John Gumperz when he stated that "Lack of shared background knowledge leads initially to misunderstandings, but since contextualization conventions are not shared, attempts to repair these misunderstandings fail and conversational cooperation breaks down" (Gumperz 1995:120). Here I will follow a different line of argumentation in that I want to show that at least some remedial practice of misunderstanding may be based on shared background knowledge, as well. Lack of shared background knowledge – say for example as to cultural praxis – may well be repaired by relying on a common stock of conventionalized routine, which one we might label in contrast to the cultural praxis 'institutionalized discourse praxis.'

As I have started this essay with a critique of the uncritical blending of misunderstanding and intercultural communication, it is now time to put the different threads of my findings and argumentation together and – armed with a much more differentiated notion of misunderstanding – to show that the bringing about of interculturality solely by virtue of connecting culturally different backgrounds of interlocutors with a misunderstanding cannot be taken for granted anymore.

Let me concentrate on one particular example of misunderstanding by which I will elaborate on some of these last points. I will try to show three things: (1) How a misunderstanding creates a fully developed corrective cycle as part of the misunderstanding event, (2) how a misunderstanding may create a subdialogue without disrupting the main dialogue, and (3) how a misunderstanding event may be linked to interculturality – or how not.

The example to follow presents a videotaped sequence of 18 seconds from a university workshop on Intercultural Communication. The sequence is depicted on three levels: (a) The transcript of the verbal part – being made up of 7 different 'activities' within the main interactional focus; (b) a selection of 10 pictures (as drawings) of the nonverbal activity of the two protagonists B and F which depict a nonverbal misunderstanding subdialogue parallelling the verbal exchange; and finally (c) a kind of non-technical retelling of the depicted scene's story. The focus of the sequence (and the picture sequence) lies on the two main interactants B and F. What the pictures do not show (the video does) is the scenery's situative embedding. Fourteen students plus one teacher sit in a semicircle. B is a male student, to his left sits the male teacher F. B is about one head taller than F. To the left of F there are 5 students, to the right of B 8 students, among them the male participant A. The composition of the seminar is multinational. The actual subject is taboos.

Example 3: "Der entschwindende Becher" (The vanishing plastic cup)

((Picture 3))

Picture 1 Picture 2

Picture 3 Picture 4

Picture 5 Picture 6

Picture 7 Picture 8

Picture 9 Picture 10

Obviously there is a conflict there between the cup holder F and his neighbour B. The misunderstanding is a purely nonverbal one. As a simple narrative it could be told like this:

Note that part of the story is a reconstruction by the nonverbal account given by B. Without his account we would not have had an indication what he had intended.

The core misunderstanding lies in the contingent acts of grasping the cup from in between F's thighs and F's defensive (and actually reconquering) reaction to it. But the trajectory of the misunderstanding comprises much more, as we now know. It comprises also the whole corrective cycle to follow and is terminated by the institutional renormalization of the two protagonists, B and F, short interactional relationship which is based solely on the conflict over the plastic cup's position. The example is of the extended MU 1-type of misunderstanding (cf. above). There is no certainly no explicit diagnosis here but the anamnesis is as explicit as a nonverbal one can be. It includes what B actually intended to do, it is of the kind: "No, what I meant is actually this, etc."

The transcript cited is a wonderful example of how a misunderstanding creates a fully developed corrective cycle as part of the misunderstanding event. It is only after F turns his gaze in the direction of B's face and laughs a brief moment (picture 5) that B commences his remedial work in the classical way by indicating regret or repentance by expressing shame (picture 6), followed by an explicative and apologizing account (picture 7). F responds nearly simultaneously with a soothing release by stretching his left hand palm-side down over in the direction of B's right thigh, slightly moving it up and down twice without touching B's thigh, thus performing symbolically the light thigh slap (picture 7). Such a gesture is well conventionalized as a nonverbal device for people sitting next to each other, at least among same-sex interactants or good friends. Its function is friendly, non aggressive, often positively supportive and soothing. It may be even culturally conventionalized. B's repair continues when he puts his hands very pointedly on his thighs as if he wanted to place his hands under public control (picture 8). Putting his hands behind him then is both a further demonstration of discipline and also the transitional phase to regain possession of his hands (picture 9), which is followed by the full adaptation to the 'standard' listener position (picture 10). It is this repositioning which puts a definite end to the misunderstanding event – at least for B. From now on, B is fully back to the main interactional focus, and his reintegration marks the end of a nonverbal subdialogue.

The following chart tries to recapitulate the sequence as a full-fledged misunderstanding event.

[Note that 'move' is not identical to numbers of picture sequence or main line activities (1) - (7) in the verbal transcript.]

During this whole event, F does not opt out of the main activity as does B, who turns his full attention to the emerging nonverbal subdialogue of the misunderstanding sequence. F treats the misunderstanding en passant, he gives indications of release but at the same time selects next speaker (picture 7).

This speaks in favour of routinely handling misunderstandings so that the subdialogue emerging may not even disturb main line activities but do get embedded in the course of the conversation. The routinized management of misunderstandings speak more over in favour of being part of implicit sociocultural knowledge and hence to its susceptibility to intercultural conflict (exactly in the way Gumperz was quoted above); it also speaks in favour of a more generalized interactional device irrespective of sociocultural background. Ff course, it is here that we have to ask how culture comes about in misunderstanding events (of this kind).

This leads me to the very last point, also closing a kind of circle of my argumentation. The sequence described depicts a scene from a multinational group discussion. F is German, B Turkish. So far I have concentrated on the misunderstanding process itself, leaving interactants' ethnic and/or cultural background completely out of consideration. This is mainly due to the focus on the misunderstanding event itself, i.e., its interactional structure, without referring to pragmatic or sociolinguistic or intercultural constraints which would lead to the reasons and motives for a misunderstanding, a focus I have neglected so far in favour of macrosequential structure. For a scholar of intercultural communication the misunderstanding could be easily traced back to cultural differences in terms of territorial dealings so that a neighbour's territory – at least among same sex – is regarded as more easily accessible under certain preconditions. One such precondition might have been the moral or aesthetic inadequacy of placing a plastic cup in the crotch. Another one might have been motivated by reasons of a kind of protective politeness, preventing F's spilling the juice in the plastic cup on his trousers. All these reasons, of course, as well as F's reason for putting the cup between his thighs could well be accounted for by personal preferences irrespective of cultural background. Even if we interpret the warding off of B's intrusion between F's legs as defence against an outside surprise access, we will not get any further by interpreting this as particularly culture bound.

There are some more particularities within the corrective cycle which may also be regarded as signalling interculturality. One such cultural phenomenon could be interpreted in B's 'shame-signalling reaction'; just characterizing it as such may be culturally biased, of course. An even stronger hint for intercullturality may be B's multiple repairs. One could ask if B really understands F's soothing gesture as a signal for terminating the misunderstanding. Couldn't he have (mis)understood this gesture as a request to place his hands on his thighs and hence only did so in compliance to F's request? Then of course there is the light laughter that comes up among the other participants. It is not clear whether the laughter is in reaction to the plastic cup scene; it may at least be interpreted as such by B, which would give him multiple addressees for his remedial endeavours and could hence account for the third repair attempt.

The latter point alludes to another important precondition not exploited so far: the institutional one, which emphasizes the role relationship between F and B and their rights and obligations to be deduced from that. F is a teacher, B a student. What kind of light does this fact shed on the cup scene? Doesn't it make the territorial intrusion even stronger? Or does it legitimate the intrusion because a teacher's spilled cup in his genital area could be much more embarrassing than with a fellow student? What is the particular relationship of B and F?

If we consider another precondition, namely the prehistory of the scene discussed here, then we find some indications of a less formal relationship, one where slight touches including the 'light thigh slap' have occurred before. Additional information does not contradict cultural constraints because in awkward moments such as here the institutional relationship may regain dominance. Nor does it, however, support an exclusively intercultural interpretation of the scene.

A communicative exchange is not intercultural by virtue of interactants being from different cultural backgrounds. Nor is it intercultural by virtue of a misunderstanding between interactants from different cultural backgrounds. Even if territoriality or the treatment of taboo zones or any other cultural reason is responsible for the core misunderstanding, then we still might find that a treatment of it is a cooperative endeavour irrespective of the participants' cultural backgrounds. The sociocultural knowledge necessary for constituting a repair context as part of the misunderstanding event or in reaction to a core misunderstanding seems to be reciprocal. Contextualization questions such as "Are we talking to each other (right now)?", "Who's talking to whom (right now)?", "What are we doing with one another (right now)?", "What are we talking about to each other (right now)?" and "What footing are we on (right now)?" (cf. Auer 1986) are all answered in the same way during the course of the misunderstanding event although their mutual validity, so to speak, had been out of force for the misunderstanding's core, i.e., for the moment of territorial conflict. Note that most of these context-defining questions were handled on the main line level of the exchange as well as on the subdialogical level, one verbally and nonverbally, the other purely nonverbally (at least for F). Finally, B's positioning of himself so that he is the same height as F – even though he is a head taller than F – is to be seen as a physical response to the question "What footing are we on (right now)?"

* * *

What can be most strongly deduced from this example (as well as from the other ones as well) is that a different interpretation or inference that initially led to a misunderstanding might be solved and clarified by a common repair, even if the misunderstanding may be interculturally based (which we often cannot determine). So, the discussion of "The vanishing cup" transcript will certainly not suffice as empirical evidence of the universal validity of repair-within-misunderstanding events. What I intended to show in the discussion of my examples and in particular with the "The vanishing plastic cup" example was to unfold a methodological reflection on the delicate issue of misunderstanding in combination with that other delicate issue called 'interculturality.' If some scholars think that they can easily combine the two, they are very likely to fall victim to a methodological shortcoming.