Page 133 - Silence in Intercultural Communication

120 Silence in Intercultural Communication

20 Tamara: =Mm ↑hm.
21 Lect: The bell curves? (1.0) so I can only get
22 uh certain number between ninety in a
23 hundred,=
24 Tadashi: =Mm:.=
25 Lect: =and eighty in a hundred.
26 Tadashi: Mm:.
-> 27 (0.5)
-> 28 Tadashi: Yes in a (0.4) standard (.) or criteria
29 referencing, .hhh u:m as long as the students
30 performs well, (0.2) you can (.) you can
31 have as many (0.2) students as possible (0.5)
32 in say (0.3) between ninety to one hundred.
Despite his control of technical terms and grammar, he remained, and was per-
ceived to be, silent. As we will see in the following section, there were significant
‘delays’ in his turn-taking behaviour, and as in Miki’s case, he was also found to be
vulnerable to interruptions and missed opportunities. However, as we see in the
above excerpt, his speech does not have long intra-turn pauses as did Miki’s, and
with his fluency and command of English within his turns, it would be more rea-
sonable to interpret his silence as being strongly affected by Japanese approaches
to classroom communication. These approaches appear to have overridden his
language proficiency.
The discussion above suggests that there is no direct correlation between lex-
ico-grammatical competence and silence when participants are at an advanced
level, especially in terms of perceptions of silence. However, as argued, fluency
still counts to a certain degree, because dysfluency tends to leave more space for
interruption and to support self-selection moves by native speakers. On the other
hand, dysfluency can be compensated for with topics exclusively familiar to Japa-
nese students, as was the case with Miki. Furthermore, a more fluent speaker such
as Tadashi can be silent due to cultural, personal or immediate contextual factors,
and even a highly fluent speaker such as Aya can be silent in certain contexts in
which command of a specific genre of language is required. The role of language
proficiency, which tends to be overlooked in discussing silence in a multicultural
classroom, is important, but should not be overemphasised.

5.4.2 Norms of turn-taking

As discussed in Chapter 2, issues for researchers who investigate silence in intercul-
tural communication include whether rates of turn-taking and normative lengths