Page 34 - Silence in Intercultural Communication

Chapter 2. A review of silence in intercultural communication 21

speaker to transfer the message clearly. Due to this “burden placed on the listener,”
Japanese students “may be too embarrassed about not having understood the mes-
sage to request clarification” (Anderson 1992: 106). In relation to this avoidance of
speaking in public, compensatory strategies by Asian students have been reported.
These strategies are to ask questions either of their classmates privately or of the
lecturer after class (e.g. Anderson 1992; Braddock et al. 1995; Thorp 1991). Such
strategies are often viewed negatively by lecturers (Thorp 1991).
As we can see above, these explanations for silence of Asian students in West-
ern universities and in EFL programs which emphasise the role of cultural values
and sociocultural norms of discourse in students’ native culture and language are
dominant in applied linguistics and education literature. However, there is a dan-
ger in setting up a dichotomy between Asian and Western cultures and falling into
a deterministic view on the non-participation phenomenon (cf. Kubota 1999, see
2.6 below for details). Littlewood (2000) also reveals that the dominant percep-
tions of Asian students as passive and submissive does not mean that they “want
to sit in class passively receiving knowledge” (p. 33), and Willing (1988) states that
no direct correlation can be found between ethnic or cultural background and
learning styles. Neustupný (1985, 1995) warns that the importance of participants’
modification behaviour as well as perceptions of one another in actual ‘contact
situations’ should not be overlooked in understanding intercultural encounters;
that is, in intercultural contact situations where participants from different lan-
guage and cultural backgrounds interact, modifications or correction are likely to
take place if participants notice deviations from norms of communication (Mar-
riott 2000; Neustupný 1985, 1995). Gumperz (1982) also claims the importance of
ongoing interaction as an evolving context and a basis of judgement for interpre-
tation and message formation. Asian students who join mainstream classrooms
at colleges and universities in Western countries go through numerous contact
situations and are gradually socialised into the new academic environment. They
also bring diverse experiences of exposure to English and to the academic envi-
ronments of English speaking countries. Therefore, caution has to be exercised in
discussing the silence of Asian students so that one does not overlook the factors
immediately associated with ‘contact situations’ as well as other variables such as
affective factors and personal histories which students bring with them.
Furthermore, discourse analysis of turn-by-turn management of talk as evi-
dence of Asian students’ silence is scarce in existing studies. Asian students are
not always sitting in class in complete silence. It is important to examine what
they actually do in the classroom when they have opportunities to speak, or when
local peer students are speaking. If Asian students feel “overwhelmed by native
English speakers in class” (Liu 2000: 165) whereas local students show an “ac-
tive participation mode” (ibid.: 183), we need to know how turn management is