Page 154 - Silence in Intercultural Communication

Chapter 5. Performance and perceptions of silence 141

for Japanese students and an opportunity for native speakers to display academic
competence.
The close analysis of turn-taking in the case studies above also suggests an
important issue in relation to the Japanese students’ comments, discussed in
Chapter 4. In the interviews, the Japanese students indicated that they participate
exclusively when they are nominated and they do not participate in free-for-all
open discussions. However, there were a number of instances in which Japanese
students remained silent when they were nominated. This means that the Japa-
nese students may not perceive such silence as ‘marked’ (while the Australian
students and lecturers may do so).
Finally, it should also be noted that in the case studies it was mostly a limited
number of Australian students who tended to dominate classroom discussion
and to silence Japanese students (whether consciously or from supportive inten-
tions). In Case Study 1, these students were Kylie, with Dave and Michelle to a
lesser extent; in Case Study 2, Molly, and then Bill; and in Case Study 3, Henry. It
should be mentioned that, from my own experiences and personal communica-
tions with lecturers, Australian students sometimes complain when a small group
of students dominate classroom discussions. Therefore, the role of proficiency in
English as well as cultural differences in norms of turn-taking should not be over-
emphasised. Silence was jointly created in the case studies, often as a consequence
of interaction among the lecturers, the Japanese students and a small number of
dominant Australian students. This also suggests that Japanese students’ inter-
view comments (Chapter 4) reflected their overgeneralised image of the voluble
Australian versus the silent Japanese.

5.4.3 Participant structures

Silence and talk in the classroom are closely related to participant structures,
which are “ways of allocating student involvement” (Philips 1983: 79). As already
detailed earlier in Section 5.2.3, students’ turns were coded using categories of sit-
uations in which turn-taking took place: (1) bidding for the floor; (2) open floor
and (3) individually offered floor. As far as the first and second categories are con-
cerned, in most classes in the case studies, there was a general tendency for more
turns to be taken through ‘bidding’ than in ‘open floor.’ With regard to the third
category, generally fewer turns were taken through individual selection by others
than through all other methods. Since self-selected turns were rarely observed
in the Japanese high school classroom study (Chapter 3), and Japanese students
in Australia indicated that, unlike their Australian peers, they tend to participate
through nominations by the lecturer (Chapter 4), it seems worth examining the