Page 103 - Silence in Intercultural Communication

90 Silence in Intercultural Communication

ness strategies are applied when there is relatively less threat to face. With higher
threat to face, negative politeness strategies are appropriate.
As the Japanese student commented above (in (34)), Australian students of-
ten express a critical attitude to lecturers, which suggests that they may assume a
less hierarchical relationship with their lecturers. Whether or not a comparatively
egalitarian relationship is reflected in interaction between students and teachers
in a real sense, Australian students may have been socialised into classroom prac-
tices in which they are expected to show a critical attitude to learning, to question
knowledge and to negotiate with the teacher (cf. Chapter 3).
Thus, Australian classroom participants and Japanese students appear to have
different politeness orientations, which impact on the participants’ preferences as
to performance/non-performance of certain speech acts. According to Thomas
(1983), such a mismatch of schema and interpretive frames is a cause of ‘cross-
cultural pragmatic failure’, where interactants from different cultural backgrounds
misunderstand or miscommunicate intended meanings. Thomas (1983) identi-
fies two types of pragmatic failure: (1) pragmalinguistic failure and (2) socioprag-
matic failure. In pragmalinguistic failure, the “attitude of the speaker towards the
information” is not mutually understood, while in sociopragmatic failure, it is the
“intended illocutionary force and/or attitude of the speaker to the hearer,” which
is not mutually understood. (ibid.: 101) The type of mismatch in schema and in-
terpretive frame between Japanese and Australian students mentioned above can
cause sociopragmatic failure. Thomas (1983) claims:

It is cross-cultural mismatches in the assessment of social distance, of what con-
stitutes an imposition, of when an attempt at a ‘face-threatening act’ should be
abandoned, and in evaluating relative power, rights, and obligations, etc., which
cause sociopragmatic failure. (p. 104)
In their schema and interpretive frame of classroom interaction, Japanese stu-
dents may find the level of threat to their own face in the act of speaking higher
than their Australian counterparts do. However, there are also Australian stu-
dents who do not participate or who find it difficult to participate (Chapter 5),
and it is possible that the Japanese interviewees may have overgeneralised ideas
about their Australian peers.