Page 80 - Silence in Intercultural Communication

Chapter 3. The sociocultural context 67

While students are generally not expected to be voluble and articulate in Ja-
pan, at Fuji High School and Tokyo High School, there were teachers who made
attempts to involve students in coherent spoken interaction for learning. How-
ever, students were reluctant to speak ‘publicly’ in class. Within the ‘public’ sphere
of the classroom lessons, teacher-student relationships are not only hierarchical
but also distant, reflected in most cases by a lack of rapport or even communica-
tion breakdown.
Silence in Japanese classrooms is a part of classroom culture which is accept-
ed as unmarked. Thus, as shown above, when a ‘marked’ attempt to use spoken
interaction as a resource for learning is made, difficulties are experienced both by
the teacher and the students.