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Chapter 6. Re-interpreting silence in intercultural communication 203

nating between silence for cognitive processing time and silence as an aspect of
sociocultural practice. Self-reports of the participants seem to be a reliable source,
but they need to be complemented with an analysis of interaction data.
At the intersection of the cognitive and socio-psychological domains, the im-
pact of norms of relevance was considered. Topics and interactional moves which
are considered relevant or practised as norms in the Australian classroom differ
from those of the Japanese classroom. Such differences may affect silence in inter-
cultural situations, in that participants may remain silent about certain types of
topics, or avoid performing certain speech acts which are accepted or even valued
in the other context.
Finally, in the socio-psychological domain, a consideration of sociocultur-
ally framed orientations to face and politeness systems allowed elucidation of
constructions of silence in intercultural communication. This was shown by the
divergent assumptions regarding classroom role relationships held by Japanese
students and their Australian lecturers and peers. If the role relationships and
the normative assessment of appropriate politeness strategies in the context of
interaction show different patterns across the cultural groups in question, and if
such differences in patterns involve volubility and taciturnity as politeness strate-
gies, it is likely to lead to the silence of one group and to cause frustration to both
groups.
It should be noted that not all the variables in this model affect the silence
observed in each instance of intercultural communication. Instead, as revealed
in the case studies, different sets of variables are likely to contribute to each par-
ticipant’s silence to a varying extent and to result in different degrees of silence.
This leads us to the next section, where I will reconsider the stereotypical image of
‘the silent East’ by drawing attention to the interaction between perceptions and
performance and the impact of the immediate context of interaction.

6.4 Rethinking ‘the silent East’: Perceptions and performance

6.4.1 Perceptions, performance and the role of context

Japanese student perceptions about classroom communication in Australia, as
found in the ethnographic interviews, reflected the stereotypical dichotomy of
‘silent East versus articulate West’. However, as I have sought to demonstrate in
this book, when actual performance was scrutinised and compared with the per-
ceptions, a much more intricate picture emerged.
The results of the studies discussed here have shown that Japanese students in
Australian universities are likely to be, and are perceived to be, silent, and that this