Page 126 - Silence in Intercultural Communication

Chapter 5. Performance and perceptions of silence 113

modest contribution in Regular Discussion had more impact on perceptions of
her silence. This is supported by Dr. Telfer’s comment expressing her surprise that
Miki delivered her presentations without “obvious signs of nervousness” despite
her silence in Regular Discussion:

(6) [Interview: Dr. Telfer]
From my experience of Australian students, if you had an Australian student
who doesn’t say anything, then that usually indicates that they are feeling
unconfident, so if I had a Japanese student who doesn’t say anything, and who’s
quite confident, um...it’s a bit of surprise.

In Dr. Telfer’s view, those who do not participate actively, in a normal seminar-type
lecturing situations tend to be “shy” and “unconfident.” She further mentioned her
surprise at the “outstanding work” (in her written assignment) of a Korean MA
student who did not say anything in class. It seems that there is a strong reliance on
classroom participation in evaluating students’ overall academic ability, which was
also implied in the comments by Ms. Hardy in Case Study 1 (Section 5.4.3, inter-
view comment 36 below). On the other hand, Japanese student interviewees indi-
cated (Chapter 4) that they feel unfairly judged by lecturers because of their silence
in the classroom. This is not unexpected if we consider the value placed on written
communication in Japanese classroom practice, as described in Chapter 3.
Aside from frequency of participation, the results indicate that Miki pro-
duced long turns. Her average turn length in Regular Discussion is 14.0 seconds,
which is the second longest in the sample group. Interestingly, the student with
the longest average turn length was Tony, who spoke least frequently in the sam-
ple group, with the longest turn of 72 seconds. This however, can be explained in
terms of personal principles of participation. Tony mentioned in his follow-up
interview that when other people are talking, he waits until they finish speaking,
because he does not like interrupting and overlapping. Tony was actually almost
never observed to interrupt or overlap others, while other native English speak-
ers in the sample group did so. Significantly, however, Tony was still included in
the “confident type” of students by the lecturer. As for Miki, her longest turn was
66 seconds and the next longest 51. The only noticeable difference between Tony
and Miki, which may explain the different perceptions of their performances, was
that the ratio of volunteered turns was 86% for Tony but 58% for Miki (see Sec-
tion 5.4.3 for more details of participant structures). Thus, as far as the quantity
of participation is concerned, it appears that the frequency, and voluntariness of
participation in Regular Discussion affected others’ perceptions of Miki’s silence.