Page 132 - Silence in Intercultural Communication

Chapter 5. Performance and perceptions of silence 119

32 Miki: So (0.4) the (1.0) interviewer, (0.2)
33 came to her (0.2) family, and a:sked
34 (0.2) why (.) why, like that- that was a
35 program.
36 (0.2)
37 Bill: [Mm.]
38 Miki: [The]n uh they wanted to kno:w why the
39 girl was behaving like that,(.) and
40 mother- mother (1.2) sho- she said
41 mother said she was trying to (0.5)
42 scold her,
43 Molly: [scold],
44 Miki: [ so ]
45 ?: Mm huh,=
46 Miki: = and uh but (0.2)she does because:
47 the girl doesn't listen to her, she
48 stopped.
In this stretch of talk, Miki managed to take a long turn, possibly because of its
narrative structure. However, there are a number of long intra-turn pauses (lines
15–18), fillers and word searches (lines 16–26). This dysfluency in Miki’s speech
suggests that she would be more vulnerable to interruptions or missed opportuni-
ties in a faster exchange of comments, as we will see in the conversation analysis
of classroom interaction in Section 5.4.2 below.
While Miki’s case suggests that Japanese students’ silence in interaction with
Australian students is in part due to a lack of fluency, Tadashi’s case seems to
suggest a role of transfer of L1 communication style for silence (Enninger 1987;
Lehtonen & Sajvaara 1985, 1997; Scollon & Scollon 1981; Scollon 1985; Sifianou
1997). Tadashi was, from a quantitative perspective at least, the most silent of the
three Japanese students, despite a positive evaluation of his proficiency by his lec-
turers as well as the raters. He did not have the native-like fluency of Aya, but in-
stead, seemed to possess control over the technical and academic language which
Aya did not seem to manage. Here, he is talking about different types of assessment
systems in the school curriculum in the Curriculum and Examinations class:

(11) [Interaction: Tadashi, Curriculum and Examinations]
-> 15 Tadashi: Ah yes. u:m (thi:s) norm reference. (0.4) norm
16 references you can get (0.4) o:nly certain
17 percentage of students (0.3) in: (0.4) yes
18 that (0.3) bell curve thing?
19 Lect: ((writes on the board 3.2)) that’s right.=