Page 124 - Silence in Intercultural Communication

Chapter 5. Performance and perceptions of silence 111

unafraid to ask questions when necessary. (long pause) I think he should make
a success of his career as a positive personality.
Throughout the interview, however, Mr Fuller used defensive strategies, such as
providing a long account of the subject as being set up in an emergency and his
lack of sufficient preparation for teaching it. Unlike Ms. Hardy, Mr. Fuller was
careful in deciding what to say, spoke slowly with occasional long pauses, and
avoided making judgemental comments expressing stereotypical images of cer-
tain cultural groups.
His only comment concerning Tadashi’s participation in the class, “He seems
to be unafraid to ask questions when necessary”, is carefully worded, not describ-
ing or negatively evaluating Tadashi’s silence. In performance, however, Tadashi
had asked a question once, in a one-on-one situation, about how to obtain a news-
letter the lecturer had mentioned. Tadashi’s own reflection of his participation in
this class was that he was “listening almost all the time”.
In sum, Tadashi appears to present the image of the silent Japanese student
represented in the Japanese students’ accounts in the interviews in Chapter 4.
Although Tadashi was described by others as a conscientious, punctual student
with a good attendance rate, he was passive and silent as far as the quantity of his
classroom participation was concerned.

5.3.2 Case Study 2: Miki

In the classes observed in Case Study 2, there were generally three major types
of communication. Firstly, there was straight lecturing by the lecturer, Dr Telfer,
which was almost never interrupted by the students. Secondly, there were oc-
casions for students to present their papers, which was also a one-way delivery
of talk. Finally, class discussions took place after each student presentation. Due
to the monologic nature of the first two types of classroom communication, the
third type of classroom communication was selected for data analysis in this case
study. Furthermore, the quantity of the students’ own or others’ participation af-
ter presentations was considered separately, as the nature of the presenter’s role
meant that students tend to speak more in their own post-presentation discus-
sion. Contributions by two female and two male students other than Miki were
considered for video coding analysis. This sample group had three Anglo-Austra-
lians and one female Filipino Australian who were all native speakers of English
educated in Australia. The participation of other students, who had Chinese, Ko-
rean and Japanese backgrounds, was coded but not included in the sample group
for comparison since it is beyond the scope of the case studies.