Page 153 - Silence in Intercultural Communication

140 Silence in Intercultural Communication

312 (0.4) °High school ( )°. (0.3) Yeah.
-> 313 Aya: Mm.
314 (1.0)
-> 315 Aya: Okay the la:st question? (.) What role
316 did university controlled public
317 examinations play in the early state high
318 schools.

Looking at the excerpt, it seems that the temporary rapport established through
the exchange between Aya and Dr. Lucas directly before the shift led to Aya’s quick
and decisive move. As we can see in lines 293 and 294, Aya volunteered a com-
ment and received feedback from Dr. Lucas. She has also been backchanneling
(lines 299, 316 and 313) to maintain the two-way interaction. Thus, it is possible
that “the turn order bias” which Sacks et al. (1974: 713) describe as “last being
next speaker” had been at work through the exchange between Aya and Dr. Lucas.
It is also possible that she was more certain about the appropriate location of the
topic shift, since she was the one who raised the issue. This observation in turn
suggests that in other contexts of shifts in her tutorial paper, it may have been dif-
ficult for Aya to be in control because she rarely participated in discussion except
for reading out her questions.

5.4.2.5 Summary: Norms of turn-taking
When interaction following the nomination of Japanese students was examined,
there were a number of cases where ‘delay’ in reaction led to their silence. When
the ‘delay’ occurred, it was often interpreted as a sign of a ‘problem’ by Australian
students and lecturers, who tried to compensate for this ‘problem’ by modifying
or paraphrasing the questions, or providing responses on behalf of the Japanese
students.
The difficult question, however, was the interpretation of ‘delay.’ It may have
been caused by the Japanese students’ lack of proficiency, individual differences
in cognitive processing, or sociolinguistic unfamiliarity with the fast rate of turn-
taking. To make the question of ‘delay’ even more complex, some instances of
‘delays’ are more likely to be ‘silent responses’ intended to mean “I don’t know the
answer” or “I don’t understand.” This leads us to a discussion of silence in relation
to politeness, which will be presented in Section 5.5 below.
If there is a mismatch between the cause of silence and the interpretation of
silence by the peers or the lecturer, the Japanese students are likely to be either
silenced or to experience loss of face. If the cause of silence and the interpreta-
tion match, then native-speakers’ moves will serve as both a face-saving strategy