Page 48 - Silence in Intercultural Communication

Chapter 2. A review of silence in intercultural communication 35

be used in order to present different types of silence found in my studies and to
demonstrate the relationship between perceptions of silence and negotiation of
participation in the classroom. However, I will briefly go through the factors in
the model in the following section.

2.8.2 Inter-relationship between the two dimensions of the model

As already mentioned above, the framework for interpreting silence developed in
my research consists of three domains of communication: linguistic, socio-psy-
chological and cognitive, which overlap with one another in certain aspects. In
the linguistic domain of communication, lexico-grammatical competence, fluen-
cy and language processing time of each individual are important factors affecting
the silence and talk in intercultural communication. At the situational level, the
language chosen as a medium of communication may also have an impact. In my
study, participants from one group (Japanese native speakers) interact using their
second language, English, while those from other group are native speakers of
English. This entails a possibility of longer pauses to formulate sentences required
by the Japanese participants and more difficulty may be experienced by them
in participating fully and spontaneously. However, the level of proficiency var-
ies among participants, and second language speakers have differing strengths in
their linguistic competence, which should be carefully taken into consideration.
For example, some have a high level of command in terms of lexico-grammar,
while others may have a better command in terms of fluency.
At the sociocultural level, norms of interaction, such as the expected timing
of turn-taking and other interactional moves, may be interculturally incompatible
and therefore become a source of marked silence (and marked talk) perceived by
participants. As we have seen above (Section 2.3), interactants from some socio-
linguistic backgrounds who may feel comfortable with relatively longer inter-turn
pauses may find it difficult to interact with people from speech communities in
which shorter inter-turn pauses are preferred, as they feel forced into silence be-
cause of the fast pace of turn-taking.
Silence and talk can be considered with notions of participant structures (Phil-
ips 1972, 1983) and preferred modes of communication. Participant structures,
according to Philips (1972, 1983), refer to the way participation is distributed and
organised in various social encounters, and how such distribution and organisa-
tion of participation may vary across different speech communities. Thus, when
people from different speech communities interact, there may be incongruence in
the ways they distribute talk and silence. In Philips’ study of Warm Springs Indian
Community, schoolchildren were not familiar with the Anglo-American style of