Page 64 - Silence in Intercultural Communication

Chapter 3. The sociocultural context 51

continue asking questions if students do not elaborate their comments or attend
to the ongoing interaction.
In most classes, students’ turns were short, typically consisting of one word
or phrase. Students generally did not hold the floor for more than one TCU, even
though there was no threat of other students trying to take the floor at a possible
completion point. This tendency was also observed by Ross (1998) and Young &
Halleck (1998) in their studies of oral English proficiency interviews conducted
with Japanese interviewees. They argue that Japanese interviewees do not feel a
need for elaboration, as it is desirable not to say more than necessary, and also as it
is desirable not to go into disclosure of anything to do with personal matters. The
‘minimalism’ in students’ responses to the teacher’s questions in Japanese class-
rooms may also reflect these preferences.

3.2.4 Turn-taking in the classroom: Timing management

As discussed in Chapter 2, differing levels of tolerance for silence between speak-
ing turns in interaction have been considered as one of the sources of intercul-
tural misunderstanding (e.g. Scollon 1985; Tannen 1985). If Japanese students
in Australian classrooms bring with them a norm of turn-taking which includes
longer inter-turn pauses than that of Australian students or lecturers, then it is
important to take this into account when examining silence in Japanese-Austra-
lian interaction. In my data from either of the two Japanese high schools, there
is almost no instance of simultaneous talk at the point of turn. The scarcity of
simultaneous talk in Japanese classrooms can also be explained by the strong ten-
dency for students not to interact among themselves publicly in the classroom.
There is simply no competition for the floor, as students’ voluntarily participation
is extremely rare. On the other side of the coin is the frequency of silent pauses
between turns. One of the extreme cases is the long silence in Excerpt (3) above
(Class 2, Classical Japanese at Tokyo High School), where the teacher waited for
about twenty five seconds before the nominated student responded. In fact, what
would be an inter-turn pause in teacher-student interaction often becomes a si-
lent response. This type of silence appears to be a common face-saving strategy
in Japanese classrooms, which will be discussed in more detail in Section 3.3.2
below.