Page 212 - Silence in Intercultural Communication

Chapter 6. Re-interpreting silence in intercultural communication 199

It was also pointed out that silence could be used to express, or was perceived
as a sign of, deference, but that it is possible that misunderstanding may occur
when such silence is interpreted as rude behaviour.
Then, there was a tendency to see silence as a reflection of a ‘shy’ personality.
The problem was that this image did not always reflect personality outside the
classroom. Silence was also interpreted as representing a negative attitude to stud-
ies. In some cases, silence was regarded as an indication of a lack of commitment
to and engagement in the classroom, and the case studies revealed that this lack
did exist to a certain degree in the case studies.
This is not an exhaustive list of the silences found in intercultural communi-
cation, but it offers some guidance on analytic focus in studies of silence in inter-
cultural communication, as well as in the classroom context.

6.3 The roles of factors affecting silence at different levels
of social organisation

I turn now to the multi-layered model for interpreting silence in intercultural
communication. As described in Chapter 2, the model is organised around three
domains of communication – linguistic, cognitive and socio-psychological – and
three levels of social organisation – individual, situational and sociocultural. I will
now explicate this model with the findings of the studies presented in this book.

6.3.1 Individual level

At the individual level, while there was a general view among the Japanese students
that low levels of language proficiency hindered their classroom participation, the
research findings suggest that different types and levels of silence resulted from a
lack of fluency or a lack of familiarity with specific knowledge in the relevant topic
area, and that silence may result in part from interaction between the individual’s
language proficiency and the immediate topic in the classroom. In terms of per-
ceptions of language proficiency, second language anxiety seemed to contribute to
silence, since both Japanese students and Australian lecturers (Chapter 4) raised
self-perceptions of low levels of language proficiency as a factor. However, in the
three case studies (Chapter 5), although the students were aware of the silences
due to particular types of language problems, the role of second language anxiety
did not emerge. This may be partly because Tadashi and Aya already had spent
substantial lengths of time in Australia, and Miki was a postgraduate student who
had spent a year as an exchange student in a BA program before.