Classroom language ecologies are increasingly diverse as a result of mobility, migration, and information technology. In these spaces, interlocutors may draw upon shared linguistic and cultural resources but also bring in others. Prime examples are additional-language (AL) classrooms, where there is a shared target language, but where students may have different first languages from their classmates and teacher. In this chapter, we review empirical research on interaction in multilingual classrooms in approaches such as ethnography, translanguaging, and conversation analysis (CA), and discuss methods and findings in relation to the growing field of intercultural pragmatics (IP). Additionally, we offer an empirical illustration from video ethnography research in multilingual English AL classrooms in Sweden. With a CA approach, we demonstrate how a group of students participating in a vocabulary game manage an instance of diverging understandings of an English word. We show how, in resolving this interactional trouble, participants draw on the target language English and the societal/school language Swedish, and we discuss the observations in light of the IP concepts of salience and common ground. Finally, we argue that classroom studies detailing social actors’ language repertoires by using audiovisual data are essential in advancing our understanding of multilingual AL classrooms.

Building on concepts introduced by Edward Stewart in the original 1971 edition of American Cultural Patterns: A Cross-Cultural Perspective and expanded by Milton Bennett and him in its 1991 revision, this chapter presents an observational framework for comparing typical forms of “perceptual representation” among a broad range of regional cultural groupings. The underlying idea is that sensory stimuli can be experienced at various levels of abstraction, and cultural groups that need to coordinate meaning and action will represent experience in ways that systematically differ from some other groups. The labeling of different modes of perceptual representation is presented as an etic observational category, which means that the category is not suitable for describing single cultures or individuals. Etic categories allow observation of the interaction among cultures – both the abstract dynamic of contrasting cultural patterns and the concrete interactional space that is opened when people with different cultural worldviews attempt to communicate. For intercultural professionals, etic categories allow useful comparisons among cultural worldviews for purposes of training and coaching. For participants in cross-cultural encounters, etic categories can form doorways into the experience of alternative worldviews. That empathic experience allows events to be perceived differently and the resulting alternative experience to guide more interculturally adaptive behavior.