Page 63 - Silence in Intercultural Communication

50 Silence in Intercultural Communication

3 Student 1: Matsuda did.
4 Teacher: How was it? The reason I want to ask is because some MPs
5 raised an objection against it. Right. Ms. Ono.
6 Ono: I was moved.
7 Teacher: Touched. Did you find it repulsive?
8 Ono: The unpleasant bloodshed scenes, Ms. Morita watched
9 but I didn’t.
10 Teacher: How about you, Ms. Morita?
11 Morita: Scary.
12 Teacher: Scary. But you were moved?
13 Morita: Well, not really. People have different reactions, right?
14 Teacher: Do you think there is a possibility that people may imitate this?
15 Ono: Nobody would I think.
16 Teacher: How about you, Ms. Morita?
17 Morita: Mm?
18 Teacher: ((explains her question))
19 Morita: Well it’s too scary to imitate.

In this excerpt, a student, Ono, says “I was moved” in response to the teacher’s
question (lines 4 to 5). In line 7, the teacher acknowledges the response, and then
asks a more specific question “Did you find it repulsive?” to elicit further com-
ments from her. The same attempt by the teacher can be found in line 12, after
another student, Morita, produced a single-word response “Scary” in line 11, and
a longer response of two sentences was elicited. Thus, the interaction pattern in
this excerpt differs from I-R-F in that it is Initiation-Response-Acknowledge-
ment plus expansion initiator. The teacher’s expansion initiator turns seem to be
successful in eliciting further responses from the students, but the students’ re-
sponses are still kept at a minimum turn length of no more than a one turn con-
struction unit (TCU), the minimal unit to construct a turn (Sacks et al. 1974). As
the film was highly violent yet had a significant social and political message, the
teacher aimed to have students think about this controversial aspect. However,
the unelaborated responses of the students gave her no other option but to keep
asking questions, gradually getting to the point of the discussion. In line 14, the
teacher asks the student about the social impact of the film (“Do you think there
is a possibility that people may imitate this?”), to which Ono answers directly,
without elaboration. Without asking the reason for Ono’s response, the teacher
then moves on to Morita. However, Morita does not seem to have been attending
to the earlier interaction, as she asks for clarification with “Mm?” which obliged
the teacher to repeat her question. As can be seen in this excerpt, the teacher does
not always wish to take control of the interaction but nevertheless at times has to