Page 74 - Silence in Intercultural Communication

Chapter 3. The sociocultural context 61

was frequently taken by the lecturers in my research (see Chapter 4) and is also
found in existing literature on intercultural education in Australia (cf. Ballard &
Clanchy 1991; Braddock et al. 1995; Milner & Quilty 1996).
Even though there appears to be a certain minority of teachers who give stu-
dents opportunities to learn to express themselves in the classroom and to ask
questions more freely, a teacher-centred pedagogy with no space for students to
express their own ideas is still prevalent in Japan. Yoneyama (1997) says:

The extremely autocratic mode of education of Japan has trained them [students]
to be receivers of the knowledge given by teachers, not to ask questions, not to
contradict or criticise teachers, and ultimately not to think but just to listen and
swallow what they are told. (p. 86)
Although Yoneyama’s view may appear extreme, there appears to be a gap in what
‘knowledge’ means in Japan and in Australia, and this gap seems to be reflected
in the different types of pedagogy in Australian and Japanese classrooms, conse-
quently affecting the types of talk considered appropriate there. If students are
trained to accept and believe that their teachers present the absolute and true
‘knowledge,’ it is likely that they face difficulties in adapting to the Australian edu-
cation system (Ballard & Clanchy 1991; Milner & Quilty 1996).

3.4.3 Norms of relevance

As explained in Chapter 2, what is considered to be relevant in intercultural en-
counters in terms of communicative acts and content of communication may have
an impact on participants’ behaviour in terms of the silence-talk continuum. It ap-
pears that here again there are differences in Japanese and Australian classrooms.

3.4.3.1 Approach to topics
In Japanese classroom communication, as Matsuda (2000) suggests, students’ ex-
periences outside the classroom and in the personal world often appear to be ir-
relevant to knowledge gained in school. Yoneyama (1997) argues:

In Japanese schools where teacher-centred pedagogy is dominant, the student is
discouraged from relating knowledge to individual experience – as someone who
has her/his ‘own’ views, ideas, needs, emotions, and experiences, and mobilises
these resources to interpret, modify, analyse, create, and play with the knowledge.
(p. 143)

Indeed, at Fuji High School and Tokyo High School, the content on which stu-
dents were working was rarely treated as applicable or relevant to the students’