Page 92 - Silence in Intercultural Communication

Chapter 4. Perceptions of silence 79

(18) I: How do you find it [the question time]?
M1: Well, how to say, because it’s about education, um, it’s kind of problem if
someone asks me a question. (giggle). I don’t know very well. ... I know
the basics, but if someone asks me a difficult question, I’d go like,
‘Please ask the lecturer.’ [2:96-98 M1]

The giggles in extracts above seem to imply that the students are aware of the
more active role they are expected to take as presenters.
In the case of student presentations (6) and teacher-centred lecturing (7), in-
terview comments indicated that these are the times when students, as a group,
listen. When asked to describe large lectures in lecture theatres, Japanese stu-
dents remarked that “there are people who want to ask questions to the lecturer.”
From the Japanese student perspective, this verbal participation of students is a
marked behaviour, whereas silence is assumed to be unmarked. This again can be
explained by the almost nonexistent questioning and volunteering by students in
Japanese classrooms (Chapter 3):

(19) Even though it’s a lecture, people ask heaps of questions. Also, there is a lot
of interaction between the lecturer and the students, how can I explain,
people ask questions one after another even though it’s a lecture. [27:136 F3]

The concept of participant structures makes it possible to examine different de-
grees of silence. The Japanese student comments on when to speak and when not
to speak suggest that their silence would be unlikely to occur in participant struc-
tures such as the teacher nominating a student individually or small group discus-
sion. On the other hand, in an open class discussion, discussions after a student
presentation, and straight lecturing, silence is more likely to be observed. There
also seems to be an awareness among Japanese students that they are expected to
participate more actively in whole class discussions and post-presentation than
they tend to do. At the same time, being silent during lectures is assumed to be
unmarked.
In interpreting these different degrees of silence in different participant struc-
tures, two dimensions can be useful to consider: pressure to speak and public ex-
posure. First, it seems that the level of pressure to speak affects the occurrence of
silence in that being called upon places a student under a lot of pressure, while an
invitation to the whole class for comments or responses does not entail such pres-
sure. This can be explained by the notions of adjacency pairs (Levinson 1983; Sche-
gloff & Sacks 1973) and preference organisation (Pomeranz 1984; Sacks 1987). In
one-on-one conversation, relevant responses are expected from the addressee for
a request or a question, and therefore silence will be unexceptionally assigned a
meaning as a ‘dispreferred response,’ although this interpretation is based on the