Abstract

This paper will carry out a theoretical and empirical inquiry into the ways in which the ‘discourse of thirdness’ is constituted within the field of intercultural studies. It will firstly critically review the autochthonous conceptualisations of the Third Space and other metaphors of ‘thirdness’ in language education. It will then use corpus analysis techniques to analyse a collection of research papers from the preeminent journals in the field, in which the terms ‘Third Space’, ‘third place’ and ‘third culture’ occur. The paper will conclude by relating the empirical findings back to the autochthonous writings.