Studies indicate that cultural properties of texts affect reading at the content and textual levels. However, research has not adequately addressed the effects of the cross-cultural pragmatics of discourse on readers. Therefore, this study explored whether or not cultural factors play a role in reading comprehension by comparing Turkish and American readers' reactions to a Turkish editorial. Participants read a Turkish editorial, and marked the places where they found it difficult (to understand the content), different (from what they would have expected in an editorial), or effective (in terms of various discourse features, such as being well articulated). Then, a "stimulated-recall interview" (a retrospective protocol) was conducted. The findings revealed that American participants had more difficulty and saw more differences than did the Turkish participants, and that cultural differences have more effect on content meaning and word sentence rather than at a textual level (related to the organizational features). (Contains 1 table.)