Many factors contribute to the minority achievement gap, and intercultural communication is one of them. Although research repeatedly examines miscommunication due to differences among cultures in classroom communication, this study focuses specifically on communicative competency in these multiethnic settings. This thesis documents “minority talk” – language and communication's changes in the increasingly multicultural youth setting, sharing features of minority variations of English, code switching, and ratifying such language use. I discuss participation, language sharing, nonverbal communication, and identity in the multicultural classroom's community of practice. I place special importance on the changes in communication between a single cultural group and the intercultural youth community, and conclude that future research must focus on multiethnic youth classroom settings and teacher education must be expanded to include understanding of communicative differences between cultures. I finally recommend that school policies reflect such further education of teachers.

(Intercultural Communication, Ethnography of Education, Discourse Analysis, Classroom Communication, Culture and Communication, Education Policy)