Page 68 - Silence in Intercultural Communication

Chapter 3. The sociocultural context 55

5 himo chikazuitete, kigenno iichijikan mae ni yattotorikumi
hajimete,
day was approaching, and I started to work on this an hour before
the due,
6 ( ) sutoorii wa kangaete tsukuttande sorewa yoyuu nandesukedo,
( ) I created my own story, so that is not a problem, yes.’
7 hai. Owarimasu. wakarimasen.
‘That is all. I don’t know.’
8 Teacher: Sorewa jibun de tsukuttano, soretomo
‘Did you make that [re: M4’s old-fashioned notebook] yourself, or’
9 Student: Iya, kattanndesu.
‘No, I bought it.’
Despite the effort of the teacher to motivate the students to have fruitful discus-
sions, as he explained in detail later, students neither spoke spontaneously nor
volunteered for comments and employed only polite forms. This may be because
the basic one-by-one micropresentation structure created an atmosphere of for-
mal public speaking. Earlier in the same class, in a more informal situation where
students’ work was being passed around the class for appreciation and the teacher
was talking to small groups of students, a more relaxed, casual conversation with
only the plain style was observed:

(8) [Tokyo High School Class 1 Creative Writing]
1 Student 1: Sensei, kurippu nakunattenndakedo.
‘Teacher, my clip is missing.’
2 Teacher: E? Saisho tsuitetayo nee. Anosa, koreno dekai no dokka ni nokotte
nai?
‘Uh? Originally it was there um. Look, can’t you find a bigger one
of this somewhere?’
3 Student 2: Shiranai
‘I don’t know’
4 Student 3: Shiranaai
I don’t know’
It is possible to see that public and private contexts, namely uchi and soto contexts,
and role relationship between teachers and students, are realised and negotiated
by shifting communication styles in Japanese classrooms. In terms of silence, it is
important to realise that the official learning processes in the classroom, which is
in the soto mode, is characterised by students’ silence and resistance to speaking.
An Australian student’s comment from Kato’s (2001) study aptly describes this