Page 62 - Silence in Intercultural Communication

Chapter 3. The sociocultural context 49

(F), is often seen as part of the “traditional” classroom context (Drew & Heritage
1992: 15).
In another example from the same school, in the Modern Japanese class, the
teacher spent the beginning of the observed session discussing the films which
students had been recommended to see during the New Year holidays. Although
the students were encouraged to contribute, no one volunteered except for a cou-
ple of students who appeared keen but received teasing from other students. As a
result, the teacher nominated students one by one to elicit comments from them.
They mostly spoke in a short turn in a reluctant manner. No instances of ‘public
interaction’ between students were observed, although there were low-key shigo
(‘private chats’) among students sitting together throughout the session.
As seen above, interaction between the teacher and the students is overwhelm-
ingly teacher-initiated. However, teachers who value students’ opinions and en-
courage their participation mentioned that the lack of responses from students
was a ‘problem.’ Students’ lack of motivation or interest in participation may be at-
tributed not only to the control exercised by teachers through the teacher-centred
pedagogy but also to the “utilitarianism and pragmatism” needed for survival in a
meritocracy which “persuades students to accept, tolerate and endure alienating
features of school” (Yoneyama 1999: 146).

3.2.3 Turn-taking in the classroom: Interactional roles

As we have seen above, the way turn-taking is typically organised in Japanese
classrooms can be best described as fitting the I-R-F model (Sinclair & Coulthard
1975). It is important to note here, in terms of comparison with Australian class-
room discourse, that there is overwhelmingly little student voluntary participa-
tion in Japanese classrooms. This pattern of interaction suggests that the teacher
exercises power and control over students, and this does seem to be the case to a
certain degree. However, in some cases such as Excerpt (6) below, teachers, par-
ticularly those who frequently encourage students to participate and share their
ideas, often attempt to get students to expand their responses in the third position
instead of closing the sequence with an evaluative move such as “Okay” or “All
right.” In the exchanges below, the class is discussing a controversial film called
“Battle Royal,” which involves secondary school student violence and survival on
a remote island to which they have been sent with weapons to kill one another.

(6) [Tokyo High School Class 4 Modern Japanese]
1 Teacher: All right, I know there were people who saw Battle Royal,
2 has anybody seen it?