Page 69 - Silence in Intercultural Communication

56 Silence in Intercultural Communication

soto mode of communication: “Japanese teachers and students were good at play-
ing the role of teacher and students. They don’t behave as they are.” (p. 62)
In the soto mode of communication in class, only two participant structures
are found in Japanese classrooms: on one hand, the teacher casts a question to
the whole class; and on the other, the teacher nominates one student to speak. In
the first structure, the teacher is often faced by students’ collective silence. This
is face-threatening to the teacher as an instructor who needs to elicit answers to
achieve the goal of education and at the same time to be in control (cf. Gilmore
1985). In cases of the use of this structure in my data, the teacher was observed to
either provide an answer or incorporate it into their own statement turn, produc-
ing another question or more typically answering the question themselves. Below
is an example:

(9) [Tokyo High School Class 5 Modern Japanese]
1 Teacher: It says “resolution”. What “resolution” do you think is it?
2 (pause – around 2.0)
3 Teacher: Yes, ( ) K’s resolution, What resolution is it?
4 (pause – around 2.2)
5 Teacher: I think this has a lot of meanings. ((T explains))
6 What do you think, everyone?
7 (pause – around 3.0)
8 Teacher: Okay, it’s time [to finish the class]. This “resolution” is very
important.

Those questions in the above example, however, were not clearly posed as ques-
tions; that is, they were not asked with a strong rising intonation with the teach-
er’s eye gaze and posture directly addressing the students. Thus it was ambiguous
whether students were expected to respond, or the questions were an explanatory
strategy on the part of the teacher. However, the teacher’s silent pauses may be an
indication of his expectation of responses from students. In fact, in other classes
questions to the whole class were often met with silence. In the English class be-
low, long silent pauses persisted following the teacher’s questions:

(10) [Tokyo High School Class 3 English]
(The teacher writes on the board: ‘Happy New Year’ and has students repeat. Then,
writes dates around Christmas and New Year time on the blackboard.)
1 Teacher: Does anyone know special names for these dates?
2 (pause – around 10.0)
3 Teacher: Special names for these dates?
4 (pause – around 5.0)
5 Teacher: Christmas Day. How about this day? ((pointing to one of