Page 39 - Silence in Intercultural Communication

26 Silence in Intercultural Communication

Japanese native speakers than between native English speakers, Japanese speakers
show orientation to ‘no gap’ in English.
How then do we make sense of the claims about long pauses and slow speech
rate of Japanese speakers? The various arguments presented above seem to come
from observations and analysis made in different contexts in terms of participants’
proficiency, levels of public exposure and formality of speech events. Therefore
these contextual factors must be taken into account when considering silence. As
Anderson (1992) points out, if a Japanese student is called on by a native English
speaker EFL teacher in a classroom, embarrassment or nervousness from having
to speak in public may bring about a longer pause rather than transfer of com-
municative style in L1. On the other hand, a one-on-one conversation between a
native speaker of English and a Japanese student in an informal setting may lead
to a removal of inhibition and we may observe shorter and less frequent pauses.
More inquiry using empirical approaches and more detailed reports of studies
which carefully take variables into account are necessary.

2.6.3 Silences as speech acts

Silence as communicative acts, or more accurately, “formal exponents of acts”
(Enninger 1987: 286), is another form of silence which has been discussed exten-
sively. As introduced earlier in this chapter, silence which realises illocutionary
force to perform a speech act seems to exist almost universally (Jaworski 1993;
Saville-Troike 1985; Sifianou 1997). It seems, however, there are types of speech
acts often performed by Japanese with silence which have drawn special attention
in existing research. Disagreement and rejection are commonly mentioned types
of speech acts which tend to be performed through silence in Japanese (Clancy
1986; Enninger 1987; Maynard 1997; Nakane 1970; Ueda 1974). Enninger (1987)
notes that the Japanese discourse system does not follow Levinson’s (1983) state-
ment that dispreferred seconds are more morphologically marked than preferred
seconds, and are often preceded by a delay (i.e. gap), as dispreferred seconds “do
not always take an elaborate formal exponent” (Enninger 1987: 294). Enninger
goes on to say that this use of silence for dispreferred seconds “such as declines,
refusals” (p. 294) serves to avoid loss of face. This suggests that silence is used
as an ‘off-record’ politeness strategy (cf. Brown & Levinson 1987). He refers to
Nakane (1970):

One would prefer to be silent than utter words such as ‘no’ or ‘I disagree.’ The
avoidance of such open and bald negative expressions is rooted in the fear that it
might disrupt the harmony and order of the group.
(Nakane 1970: 35, cited in Enninger 1987: 295)