Page 42 - Silence in Intercultural Communication

Chapter 2. A review of silence in intercultural communication 29

terviews in English with Japanese and Mexican students focusing on Japanese stu-
dents’ underelaboration. However, their sample group is extremely small (three
participants from each group, one from each group representing each proficiency
level out of three), and findings are not consistent, particularly with the advanced
level Japanese speaker. Despite this, Young & Halleck (1998) still suggest that the
Japanese interviewees tend to make the interviewer “work harder” (p. 374). They
also claim generalised patterns even though findings across proficiency levels are
inconsistent. Thus, the role of proficiency in underelaboration is unclear.
It has been shown that the stereotype of the ‘silent Japanese’ is deep-rooted
in the tradition of research on Japanese language and culture. It was also shown
that explanations are given for this silence in terms of its association with Japa-
nese cultural values and key social themes. Furthermore, these explanations are
often seen as ways to ‘understand’ or ‘solve the problems of’ Japanese speakers of
English when they engage in interaction with English native speakers. What tends
to be argued, however, is that the silence of Japanese speakers of English is more
to do with a consequence of pragmatic failure (see Thomas 1983) or transfer of
Japanese communicative style than surface linguistic competence (e.g. Anderson
1992; Lucas 1984; Maynard 1997; Ross 1998).
Whether this claim is valid or not, the problem is that the silence in com-
munication in Japanese by native speakers of Japanese has not been studied suf-
ficiently from an empirical perspective (Miller 1994b, 2000). Critiquing a large
body of applied linguistics literature which draws on sociocultural differences to
explain problems in teaching Japanese students, Kubota (1999) argues:

In these arguments, authors tend to create a cultural dichotomy between the East
and West, constructing fixed, apolitical, and essentialized cultural representa-
tions such as groupism, harmony, and deemphasis on critical thinking and self-
expression to depict Japanese culture. (p. 9)

She goes on to argue that one should approach these generalisations critically and
seek evidence that can challenge these stereotypes. It seems, however, that global-
isation and increased opportunities and demand for intercultural communication
has given the relative silence of Japanese marked attention, and the problematisa-
tion of this silence has made Japanese themselves aware of the silence attributed
to them. In this regard, Harumi’s (1999) study in interaction between Japanese
native speakers and English speakers of Japanese as a second/foreign language,
that is, the reverse situation, is valuable. The results of her study show that British
learners use silence in their communication in Japanese, although Harumi argues
that the British students’ silence was often accompanied by explicit non-verbal
expressions such as eye-gaze, posture or head movements, showing “willingness
to participate” (p. 183). As for the Japanese learners of English, based on interpre-