Page 101 - Silence in Intercultural Communication

88 Silence in Intercultural Communication

working on his project. Any hidden criticism or disagreement may not surface
and therefore may not be noticed by lecturers, but if it emerges, for instance in
written assignments, it may lead to a serious sociopragmatic failure. Whether or
not relatively less power difference between students and lecturers is realised in
actual classroom discourse, in the Australian university context, where critical
thinking is encouraged (e.g. Ballard 1996; Ballard & Clanchy 1991; Matsuda 2000;
Milner & Quilty 1996), expressing critical views or disagreement with classmates
or the lecturer is regarded as a sign of engagement and enthusiasm in learning as
well as a way of showing academic competence.
As to the second comment, this student indicated he had confidence but he
often found himself accepting lecturers’ propositions without question. He com-
pared himself with Australian students, saying “you know I find myself weak.”
In lecturer responses to the questionnaire, a ‘critical approach’ was frequently
seen as lacking in Japanese students:

(35) I find that they have difficulty with adopting a critical perspective. They tend to
seek a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answer to a question and this is not possible from a
sociological perspective. They tend to learn by rote rather than critical inquiry.
This holds them back behind Australian educated students. [LQ25]
(36) Writing is reasonable. Grammar is strong. But critical thinking skills often
prevent these students from achieving high grades. [LQ4]
If students are expected to perform orally in order to display their critical think-
ing skills in Australian university classrooms, failure to perform in this respect
would be seen as inadequate by lecturers.
‘Silence’ in these cases of disagreement may not simply be a total lack of ver-
bal communication. Rather, it is not performing a certain speech act. This type of
silence is discussed in Berman’s (1998) study of Javanese women who refrained
from speaking out their protest against their employers, since their society ex-
pected its women to keep this silence. (Some of them were later shown to be em-
powered by breaking this silence.) In a similar manner, Japanese student silences
in response to confrontation can also be explained by their social expectations of
communicative behaviour in teacher-student encounters. As demonstrated in the
previous chapter, questioning or critically commenting on the subject matter in
Japanese classrooms is unusual, principally because of the non-negotiable nature
of knowledge for which the teacher is the authority. An awareness of this Japanese
attitude towards knowledge was reflected in comments about Japanese students
by some lecturers in my questionnaire study: