SILENCE IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE EDUCATION: FACE-TO-FACE AND COMPUTER-MEDIATED COMMUNICATION IN THE JAPANESE CONTEXT

Intercultural Pragmatics 7-3 (2010), 517–531 1612-295X/10/0007-0517DOI 10.1515/IPRG.2010.023 © Walter de Gruyter

Book reviews

Eva Alcón Soler and Maria Pilar Safont Jordà (eds.). 2007. Intercultural Lan-guage Use and Language Learning. Dordrecht: Springer. Pp 287.

Reviewed by M. Luz Celaya

Teachers and researchers (also students) interested in the topic of intercultural competence will be eager to read this volume as soon as they finish the excel-lent introduction by the two editors; at least, this is what happened to me! Apart from the fact that the volume offers a considerable amount of new information on quite a recent topic, it has several important qualities already present in the table of contents and the introduction: a careful and well-reasoned organization of the contents, high-quality contributions, and a cohesive way of dealing with different perspectives.

In the introduction and in Chapters 1 to 3, both the framework and main premises of intercultural language use and learning are explained. Canale and Swain’s Model (1980) and later versions by other researchers provide the theo-retical basis in some of the chapters, but each the author offers her or his own interpretation of the issue. Thus, Juliane House (Chapter 1: “What is an ‘Inter-cultural Speaker’?”) deconstructs the term to finally state in her conclusion that an intercultural speaker “is a person who has managed to settle for the In-between , who knows and can perform in both his and her native culture and in another one acquired at some later date” (19). She also admits, however, that in the real world we might consider associated issues such as culture shock and identity crisis which do not appear in the definition. An original point in the chapter is that House proposes to use the concept of “hybridization”, traditionally used in literary and cultural studies, to define the intercultural speaker.

Chapter 2 by Eva Alcón (“Linguistic Unity and Cultural Diversity in Eu-rope: Implications for Research on English Language and Learning”) is an excellent review of studies and surveys that reflect what it means to be an in-tercultural speaker in Europe. The author defends the position of English as a

(InDesign 17 June 2010 1:23 PM) WDG (155x230mm) TimesNewRoman J-2305 IPRG, 7:3 (KN) PMU:(KN/W)02/06/10 pp. 517–532 2305_7-3_05_brev (p. 517)

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Lingua Franca in Europe (ELF) from the idea that English is used in the Euro-pean Union as a language for communication, not for identification, a key con-cept, to my mind, to understand the studies presented in other chapters and also to understand differences in contexts around the world (see, for instance, Chapter 10). After the revision of several studies in this line, which show that English should not be regarded as a threat to multilingualism, Alcón (as House in Chapter 1) posits herself in line with a Hybridity Hypothesis of English language use. The chapter finishes with a very realistic, interesting and useful Research Agenda on the use of English in Europe.

Chapter 3 (“Rethinking the Role of Communicative Competence in Lan-guage Teaching”) by Marianne Celce-Murcia deals with the author’s and other researchers’ models of communicative competence, mainly Canale & Swain’s (1980), as the basis for a new model proposed here with six components of competence and a new set of relationships between them. After the explanation of each competence, Celce-Murcia discusses the implications of the model for language pedagogy; this link with real classrooms is an excellent basis to the chapters that follow.

As the editors state in the introduction, Chapters 4 to 7 deal with English as a Lingua Franca. Mª José Coperías is the author of Chapter 4 (“Dealing with Intercultural Communicative Competence in the Foreign Language Class-room”) where, after a revision of Canale & Swain’s Model (see also Chapter 3), there is a proposal to replace the “native speaker” by the Intercultural Speaker (IS) as a reference point for the foreign language learner. The rest of the chapter is devoted to a) revisions of studies and the author’s and other re-searchers’ proposals for implementing Intercultural Communicative Compe-tence (ICC) in the classroom, b) the new role of teachers and students, and c) features of already-existing textbooks and teaching materials that do and do not promote cultural awareness. I would like to point out two interesting issues raised by Coperías; one is the need for the learner’s own culture and other cultures to be present in textbooks; the other is the discussion of the widely held idea that teaching materials should aim at specific communities.

A case study on the use of ELF in the foreign language classroom of a third language is presented in Chapter 5 by Anne Ife (“A Role for English as a Lin-gua Franca in the Foreign Language Classroom?”). The participants are 35 learners of Spanish L3 with varied L1s (including English) in a British univer-sity; they were divided into two groups according to the teacher (English speaker, near bilingual in Spanish in Group 1; Spanish speaker, near bilingual in English in Group 2). Through very clear examples, Ife discusses the use of ELF in relation to input and to classroom interaction. The author humbly con-cludes that her study represents a first step in understanding ELF in a SLA contexts; obviously, further research with a larger population and other con-texts would enrich the findings, but, to my mind, the fact that Ife’s study is a

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(InDesign 17 June 2010 1:23 PM) WDG (155x230mm) TimesNewRoman J-2305 IPRG, 7:3 (KN) PMU:(KN/W)02/06/10 pp. 518–532 2305_7-3_05_brev (p. 518)(InDesign 17 June 2010 1:23 PM) WDG (155x230mm) TimesNewRoman J-2305 IPRG, 7:3 (KN) PMU:(KN/W)02/06/10 pp. 519–532 2305_7-3_05_brev (p. 519)

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very well designed piece of research, that it covers 10 different L1s (although some with only one participant) and that two different teachers are involved, makes her study a very original and valuable contribution to the book and to the field of Intercultural Language Learning.

Chapter 6 (“Writing-to-learn in Instructed Language Learning Contexts”), by Rosa M. Manchón and Julio Roca de Larios, is an excellent reflection on the usefulness of L2 writing for language learning. After a first section that points out the recent debate on the introduction of writing in school programs, the authors explain and discuss several aspects of the composing process in L2 as well as their pedagogical implications. Manchón and Roca de Larios present a comprehensive review of research on the problem-solving nature of L2 com-posing when generating text with a special focus on their own research carried out over a period of 10 years and summarized in Section 6.3.1., which is one of the best research insights into L2 writing processes published recently.

Jasone Cenoz deals with pragmatic issues in Chapter 7 (“The Acquisition of Pragmatic Competence and Multilingualism in Foreign Language Contexts”). After a brief introduction devoted to the advantages of multilingualism, Cenoz defines the terms pragmatic competence, cross-cultural pragmatics and IL pragmatics and reviews several studies. There follows a revision of research on the acquisition of pragmatic and discourse competence in first language acqui-sition as an introduction to the revision of studies on IL pragmatics and on the effects of instruction. Finally, Cenoz focuses on a specific issue of IL pragmat-ics, that of the interaction between languages when a third language is ac-quired; the author reports on three studies on requests by Blum-Kulka and on a previously-published study of her own to reach a conclusion that opens promising paths for further research: the fact that “multilinguals could use the same underlying conceptual base and develop an intercultural style which ex-plains the similarities of their requests in different languages” (135).

The rest of the volume (Chapters 8 to 13) is devoted to empirical studies with English as the target language. Jean-Marc Dewaele’s contribution (Chap-ter 8: “Interindividual Variation in Self-perceived Oral proficiency of English Users”) begins with a clear, up-to-the-point review of the literature on six so-ciobiographical variables that have been found to affect the acquisition of com-municative competence. Dewaele carried out a study with 475 multilinguals with 18 different L1s belonging to 3 families (Slavonic, Romance and Ger-manic) (although 8 of them have less than 5 participants) who belong to his own web questionnaire database. The aim was to analyze the effect of the fac-tors previously reviewed (context of acquisition, L1, onset age of learning, frequency of use, gender, age, and education level) on a score of self-perceived proficiency in speaking and understanding spoken English. This chapter re-presents a milestone in a still unexplored area; further research with first languages from other families or a different L2 may lead to interesting cross-

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cultural comparisons. The clever design of the study in line with the new tech-nologies allows for relatively fast data collection for future research.

Chapter 9 by Maria Pilar Safont (“Pragmatic Production of Third Language Learners: A Focus on Request External Modification Items”) focuses on the use of mitigation devices by learners of EFL (N = 80) to analyze differences between bilingual and monolingual learners and to check the effects of profi-ciency by comparing a beginner and an intermediate group. First, the request head act and peripheral modification items are clearly described and several studies on both proficiency-level effects and on the pragmatic production of third language learners are reviewed. A thorough statistical analysis together with an excellent discussion lead Safont to conclude, as predicted in her two hypotheses, that bilinguals outperform monolinguals in the global use of exter-nal modification items and that intermediate learners present an advantage over beginners. Although the author acknowledges certain limitations of her study, the careful design and analysis make this chapter a very valuable contri-bution to the field of pragmatics in Third Language Acquisition.

Robert J. Fouser (Chapter 10: “North Korean Schools in Japan: An Observa-tion of Quasi-Native Heritage Language Use in Teaching English as a Third Language”) presents a case study in a completely different context to the rest that appear in the volume: North Korean schools in Japan. The purpose of the study is to analyze sociolinguistic trends in language use in a classroom where English is taught as a foreign language in a special type of school in Japan, “Chongryun” schools, where Korean is used as the means of instruction to maintain Korean identity and Korean is seen as a heritage language (reasons to be found in Fouser’s descriptive sections). The detailed description of the con-text, the school system, the materials used to teach and, generally speaking, the historical overview as linked to the education system in Japan is excellent per se but also in the way it contributes to the purpose of the whole book on inter-cultural language use. Fouser clearly defends the system in “homogeneous Japan” (204) as a successful way for language maintenance.

Chapters 11–13 deal with the act of requesting from three different perspec-tives in the context of EFL. In Chapter 11, Patricia Salazar (“Examining Miti-gation in Requests: A Focus on Transcripts in ELT Coursebooks”) reviews studies on the effects of instruction in the pragmatic competence of ESL and EFL learners to then focus on requests and peripheral modification with an excellent description of the issue. In the second section, the author presents a study that analyses the presence of mitigation devices in requests in the first ten transcripts of five textbooks used for Tourism students (a number which is ac-knowledged by the author herself as a drawback of the study); the instances are classified according to the taxonomy in Alcón et al. (2005), taking into account the instances of combinations of mitigators as well. The results show that text-books do not always match real discourse. The chapter closes with a few real-

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istic pedagogical implications to improve pragmatic development in the for-eign language classroom.

In Chapter 12 (“The Presentation and Practice of the Communicative Act of Requesting in Textbooks: Focusing on Modifiers”), after an excellent review of pragmatic input from textbooks in the foreign language classroom, Esther Usó-Juan analyzes modifiers in requests, as in the previous chapter, but with a focus on the activities for learners. As Salazar in the previous chapter, the au-thor concludes that pragmatic input is insufficient in the classroom and, conse-quently, proposes alternative activities to practice requests at three different stages (presentation, recognition and production). Chapters 11 and 12 taken together will offer interesting insights to in-service teachers.

The last chapter in the volume is by Alicia Martínez-Flor. Chapter 13 (“An-alysing Request Modification Devices in Films: Implications for Pragmatic Learning in Instructed Foreign Language Contexts”) also deals with request modification devices but the analysis is carried out in 10 films chosen by Mar-tínez-Flor. A total of 134 request moves were identified with a total of 342 modification devices. Contrary to the analysis in the two previous chapters, films showed all types of modifiers, as we can see in the examples the author provides in section 4. The last section reflects upon the pedagogical implica-tions of the analysis and offers very good proposals to help learners develop pragmatic competence through the use of films.

Intercultural Language Use and Language Learning will prove a turning point in the area. Due to its high quality and its various perspectives, the only thing I missed was . . . more pages!!!

References

Alcón, Eva, María Pilar Safont & Alicia Martínez-Flor. 2005. Towards a typology of modifiers for the speech act of requesting: A socio-pragmatic approach. Revista Electrónica de Lingüística Aplicada (Rael) 4: 1–35.

Canale, Michael and Merrill Swain. 1980. Theoretical basis of communicative approaches to sec-ond language teaching and testing. Applied Linguistics 1(1): 1–48.

Nakane, Ikuko. 2007. Silence in Intercultural Communication. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Pp 239.

Reviewed by Stephanie Houghton.

Despite the general appeal implied by its title, the central theme of the book is the silence of Japanese students in Australian classrooms. Rather than rejecting

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the commonly held stereotype of silent Japanese students in western class-rooms, the author proposes an analytical model for interpreting silence in inter-cultural communication more generally. The book thus represents a challenge to the stereotype of “the silent east” (203) by encouraging more developed and differentiated thinking about silence itself. Ultimately, the author is taking a stand against dichotomous thought perceived in the academic literature on si-lence that not only polarizes east and west but also potentially reinforces the negative stereotypes of silent Asians. This approach resembles that of Lee (2001) who argues that a false dichotomy in citizenship paradigms is set up by stereotyping the east as collectivist and the west as individualist. Both Lee (2001) and Nakane (2007) attempt to explore the subtle relationships can be found between seemingly contradictory concepts with a view to undermining east-west stereotypes.

The main body of the book is organized in six chapters that are preceded by a series of acknowledgements by the author and a list of transcription conven-tions, and followed by a list of references and six short appendices. The book is completed by an author and subject index. The chapters relate as follows. In the introductory chapter, Japanese students are identified as a sub-group of si-lent Asians, whose silence in western mainstream classrooms in the US, UK, and Australia is frequently mentioned in the applied linguistics literature. This is followed by a review of studies on silence in intercultural communication in Chapter 2, which concludes by problematizing the stereotype of “the silent east” (203) and presenting the analytical model. Chapters 3 to 5 then present three separate studies focusing on silence in high school classrooms in Japan, Japanese student perceptions of silence, and the classroom silence of Japanese students in Australia. Data analysis from the second and third studies ulti-mately generated the analytical model presented in Chapter 2 that was also used as a conceptual framework with which to analyze data generated in the first study presented in Chapter 3. Silence in intercultural communication is then reinterpreted in Chapter 6 in the light of all the previous chapters with reference to the analytical model, when the stereotype of “the silent east” (203) is finally revisited and research implications are considered.

The general appeal implied by the book title lies partly in the Chapter 2 re-view of silence in intercultural communication where, having provided an overview of the forms and functions of silence, literature on silence from inter-cultural and cross-cultural perspectives is reviewed. Here, the author looks beyond Asia to take a more global view of silence highlighting its importance to Finns, Athabaskan Indians, and Australian Aborigines, for example. The specific issue of silence in Japanese communication is then approached through sections on silence in multicultural classroom contexts and the silence of over-seas students from Asia in the Anglo-mainstream classroom. At the end of the chapter, the various threads of discussion are drawn together under the

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umbrella heading “overview of silence in intercultural communication” before the analytical model for interpreting silence in intercultural communication is outlined.

The analytical model is located at the conceptual interface between com-munication and social organization, each of which is split into three main parts, such that socio-psychological, linguistic and cognitive domains of communi-cation overlap the individual, situational, and socio-cultural levels of social organization graphically represented in three concentric circles. Ultimately, the author goes on to argue in Chapter 6 that any combinations of the various sub-components of these six parts can come into play in particular instances of Japanese silence, undermining stereotypes in the process. Chapters 3–5 define and elucidate the nature of the various sub-components, as the analytical model is used to structure both presentation and discussion throughout.

The general appeal implied in the book title also partly lies in the analytical model itself, since it is framed in generic terms consistent with the academic literature that also allow for consideration of culture-specific meanings. This is particularly evident in the first study described in Chapter 3 that sought insight into culturally patterned norms of students educated in Japan. For example, when considering classroom silence in relation to politeness and face-work, as sub-components contained within the socio-psychological domain of commu-nication of the analytical model, Nakane suggests that the Japanese concepts of uchi [in, inside, internal, private, hidden] (Maynard 1997: 32) and soto [out, outside, external, public, exposed] (Maynard 1997: 32) explain silence in terms of politeness and communication in the Japanese classroom, since offi-cial learning processes in the classroom in the soto mode are characterized by student silence and resistance to speaking (55).

As Japanese words without direct English equivalents, the concepts of uchi and soto may be used to polarize east and west. Maynard (1997: 32) uses them to contrast Americans and Japanese by suggesting that whereas Americans tend to feel less threatened by residual difference of opinion, the Japanese tend to feel stressed by unplanned conflicts in the soto relationship. Nakane, how-ever, attempts to bridge the apparent conceptual gap by relating the discussion of uchi and soto dynamics to the notion of participant structures as sub-compo-nents of the linguistic domain of communication, identifying them as soto modes of communication in the Japanese high school classroom. In this way, Nakane attempts to mediate between explanations of classroom phenomena framed within the Japanese conceptual framework (i.e., uchi and soto) and more generic categories used in the academic literature (i.e., politeness, face-work and participant structures).

While the analytical model succeeds in this sense, the first study may be best placed after the other two studies to show how the analytical model arising from them can be used to analyze and interpret specific examples of classroom

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silence. A simple application of the model in this way would afford no protec-tion against researcher bias, however, and the author does seem to fall victim to this in Chapter 3 when considering the linguistic domain of Japanese class-room silence in terms of the lack of voluntary student participation, and the prioritisation of both teacher-centered lecturing and the written mode of com-munication. While the language used is largely descriptive, and the author’s own view of the patterns identified is not clearly stated, negative commentary is occasionally drawn in from other authors in passing, but sometimes rele-gated to the status of footnotes without apparent justification.

For example, Nakane relegates Matsuda’s (2000) suggestion that the ten-dency toward the written mode of communication in Japanese high school classrooms reflects a concept of non-negotiable knowledge to a footnote (45). Although the issue resurfaces in the main thread of discussion, especially in relation to critical thinking (63, 65, 88, 154 and 161), the author generally takes a rather normative view, never taking a clear position with regard to the point itself, but ultimately recommending increased use of the written mode of communication to overcome the problems posed by classroom silence (206). The gradual slippage from interpretation of what is into what should be re-mains unaccounted for as negative criticism of the Japanese way seems to be avoided. The counter argument that the first study is ethnographic in nature is difficult to make since insider-perspectives upon the data gathered during classroom observation were not sought. Data were instead interpreted by the researcher using the analytical model as a conceptual framework, and this is where the difficulty seems to lie.

The very notion of criticism itself seems to pose problems not only to the Japanese research participants but to the author throughout the book. When considering the cognitive domain of Japanese classroom silence, the positivis-tic approach to knowledge is linked to slow classroom interaction and Japanese norms of relevance, where it is noted in particular that critical or contradictory comments or disagreements are rarely found in the Japanese high school class-room, perhaps due to face-threat. The author’s position with regard to the com-peting Japanese and Australian educational approaches remains unclear as at-tempts are made to shift empathetically and non-judgmentally between cultural camps to show how each may evaluate the other negatively.

Generally, the discussion of critical approaches to education seems shallow enough to suggest that the fundamental terminology has not even been grasped by the author. Terminological slippage in the use of the word “critical” indi-cates that the author sometimes takes it to mean the mere expression of dis-agreement (66, 88 [lines 7, 32], 157, 189 [lines 22–23] and 192 [lines 1, 9, 14, 15–16]) amounting to little more than the performance of a certain speech act (88). These are indications that the author has yet to take on board the body of thought implied by the term “critical thinking” (18, 60, 88 [lines 5, 13, 15, 17,

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19] and 94 [line 26]). A similar tendency in Japanese university students to interpret the word “critical” merely in terms of the expression of the negative was also found in Houghton’s (2007) study when attempting to develop critical cultural awareness (Byram 1997; Guilherme 2002) in Japan.

Nakane’s apparent failure to fully grasp the concept of “critical thinking” may arise partly from the fact that, unlike students, lecturers themselves were not interviewed about comments they made in their email questionnaires in the second study presented in Chapter 4. Thus, the author never seems to have established in any real sense what lecturers meant by terms such as “critical enquiry” (88) and “developmental potential” (89), or where the merits and demerits of their arguments lay. Thus, the educational philosophies shaping lecturer responses to the classroom silence being investigated by the author were not fully investigated. The same can be said for the high school teachers in Japan whose classes were observed in the first study. This is not to say that the author does not in fact take a critical approach in the book. Considering Sumner’s (2002 [1907]: 632–3) definition of criticism as the examination and test of propositions of any kind which are offered for acceptance, in order to find out whether they correspond to reality or not, and bearing in mind his recommendation of the sharpening of the critical faculty as the only antidote to ethnocentrism, which includes stereotypes (Bennett 1993: 30–46), Nakane’s approach is clearly critical insofar as she is attempting to bring the weight of empirical evidence to bear upon ethnocentrism in the academic literature in the form of negative stereotypes of “the silent east” (203).

Paul and Elder (2002: 135–141) track the historical roots of critical thinking back to the ancient Greeks. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word “critical” derives from the Greek kritikos [to be able to make judgments]. It is noted on the Center for Critical Thinking website that the word “critical” derives etymologically from two Greek roots: kriticos [discerning judgment] and criterion [standards]. Critical thinking thus implies the development of discerning judgment based on standards. It is here that the main tension seems to lie between Japanese and critical approaches to education. This tension sur-faces clearly in some responses to Kohlberg’s (1969) stages of moral develop-ment. Kohlberg’s suggestion that harmony-based morality systems (with their relational emphasis upon politeness and social harmony for example) are at a lower stage of moral development than those based on rationality, is criticized by Gilligan (1982) and Tronto (1987) who insist upon equal recognition of the ethics of care and social harmony that sometimes characterize Asian or indig-enous societies (Crain 2000: 168–169). But while Nakane’s apparent failure to grasp the body of thought implied by the word “critical” may be seen as a weakness of the book, the role played by silence and talk within seemingly different educational philosophies presents not only an interesting, but an im-portant, potential avenue for future research of this type. Discussion about the

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relative merits and demerits of competing academic values, and the roles of silence and talk within them, deserve consideration if the work is to be persua-sive to educators on all sides.

For example, the role that talk plays within critical approaches to education is highlighted by Crain in relation to the work on moral development, which in turn grew out of Piaget’s work on cognitive development. Crain (2000: 155–156) notes that moral development is thought to emerge from our own thinking about moral problems as mental processing is stimulated by social experience, discussion and debate, which motivate us to come up with new, more compre-hensive positions as our views are brought into question. Crain (2000: 166) notes that the cognitive conflict at work in Piaget’s concept of equilibration through which the child takes one view, becomes confused by discrepant infor-mation and then resolves the confusion by forming a more advanced and com-prehensive position is thought to be at play in the dialectic process of Socratic teaching through which students give a view, the teacher asks questions to get them to see the inadequacy of their views, which motivates them in turn to formulate better positions. From this standpoint, Nakane’s recommendation (206) of increased use of the written mode of communication to overcome the problems posed by Japanese classroom silence remains unpersuasive. Simi-larly, Nakane often explains the silence of Japanese students in terms of polite-ness but indeed, the critical thinking movement challenges the very concept of politeness as an unjustified receptacle of power through Fairclough’s (1995) work on critical language awareness, for example. The link between power and discourse is indeed another area that remains underdeveloped in the book by the author’s own admission (101–102).

Chapter 4 presents the study on student and teacher perceptions of silence. While the latter perceptions were explored rather superficially by email ques-tionnaire and supplemented with the results of a different study, the former were explored more systematically by semi-structured interviews and focus group interviews with pairs of students who were friends or classmates. Within the linguistic domain of communication, factors contributing to silence include language proficiency, norms of turn-taking and participant structures. Within the socio-psychological domain, politeness orientations identified include face-saving strategies such as the maintenance of positive face of self and sav-ing the face of the other. Within the cognitive domain, speed of reaction, norms of relevance emerge as key factors, along with both intentional and uninten-tional forms of silence.

The link Nakane draws between silence and the maintenance of positive face of self as a face-saving strategy, which surfaces again supported by case study data in Chapter 5, is of particular interest in relation to the apparent Japanese silent resistance to critical educational approaches. Nakane contrasts the standard interpretation of politeness strategies as ways of saving the ad-

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dressee’s face with data emerging in her study that indicated silence was em-ployed by the Japanese research participants to protect their own positive face. Houghton (2007) also found that many Japanese research participants resisted making public evaluations of others, citing Japanese cultural preferences as the reason. The desire for self-protection from the potential negative evaluations of others seemed to be a main problem with many students clearly comparing and contrasting self and other during critical evaluation exercises, but avoiding or refusing to evaluate publicly as they tried to hide their true thoughts and feelings. The desire for self-protection, perhaps from the potential negative evaluations of others, seemed to thwart critical evaluation in some students. Out of the following possible evaluative flows, F seemed to present itself as a problem when Houghton’s students were asked to do C and D.

A: Self evaluates self (positive)B: Self evaluates self (negative)C: Self evaluates other (positive)D: Self evaluates other (negative)E: Self is evaluated by other (positive)F: Self is evaluated by other (negative)

But looking to the cross-cultural literature, B seems to attract the research at-tention of researchers seeking to account for the apparent East Asian tendency towards self-criticism over self-enhancement (Heine 2001). Whereas North Americans seem to respond to negative input by employing various self-enhancement biases according to Heine, students in the Houghton (2007) study seemed to avoid triggering negative input by hiding their honest evaluations of others. But Heine also suggests that concern for evaluations by others may be worth exploring in relation to Japanese self-criticism, an issue considered by Miyahara et al. (1998) who suggest that what appears to be other-centered styles of communication in young Japanese may actually be ego-maintenance and face-saving strategies, rather than genuine concern for others feelings, al-though concern for others feelings may still be another reason why some Japa-nese people are reluctant to state their opinions (Naotsuka et al. 1981: 175).

In addition to sensitivity to potential negative evaluation and consideration for others, other pivotal issues in Houghton’s (2007) study appeared to be hon-esty and directness. Students claimed that Japanese people speak directly with people they trust precisely because they trust them, but need time to establish that trust. This seemed to explain why many students found it easier to speak directly in class as they got to know each other better, even if they had felt initially uncomfortable. This affected teacher-student relations too. One stu-dent, for example, cut parts out of her student diary entries before sending them to the teacher early in the course, but sent everything toward the end once her relationship with the teacher was more established. Withholding diary

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entries until the relationship had been established could be classed as a written form of silence linked with the establishment of a relationship of trust. This all highlights the possible relevance of closeness of relationship to honest self-expression in Japan, which takes us back to Nakane’s discussion of uchi and soto dynamics in the Japanese high school classroom considered earlier. Thus, Nakane’s findings in this section (84–87) seem to be very much in keeping with the findings of some researchers in other fields exploring similar issues.

The third, and main, study presented in Chapter 5 takes an empirical look at whether Japanese students are actually silent in class and the construction of their silence in both perception and performance. Taking a case study ap-proach, three Japanese participants were observed in class before data were analyzed using conversation analysis techniques to ascertain the amount of verbal contribution, the degree of pressure to participate and the quality of participation in terms of move type. Finally, stimulated recall interviews were conducted to explore research participant perceptions of silence emerging in the data. Various linguistic, socio-psychological and cognitive factors contrib-uting to silence are identified backed up with stretches of case study data but let me dwell on the cognitive factors of knowledge schema, topic and shared knowledge (173–177) since the work of Edward T. Hall (1976) is a glaring omission from the discussion.

It was noted in the introduction that both Lee (2001) and Nakane (2007) at-tempt to explore the subtle relationships can be found between seemingly con-tradictory concepts with a view to undermining east-west stereotypes. Hall’s work can be approached via Heine (2001) who takes a similar approach to Nakane and Lee by moving away from Hofstede’s (1980) distinction between individualist and collectivist culture to more differentiated consideration of independent and interdependent selves. Heine (2001) suggests that when pro-cessing information, East Asians tend to focus on information in the environ-ment, but North Americans focus more on individual dispositions, which echoes Hall’s distinction between high and low-context culture. According to Hall (1976: 101), “high-context transactions feature pre-programmed informa-tion that is in the receiver and the setting, with only minimal information in the transmitted message.” Thus, communication can take place through the me-dium of silence in a high-context culture, as people rely upon shared under-standings in interpretation highlighting the link between silence and contextual information and increasing the importance of both.

In contrast, in low-context culture, “most of the information must be in the transmitted message in order to make up for what is missing in the context” (1976: 101), and this increases the importance of explicit verbal communica-tion. Since shared understandings are lost when one moves out of a group, the need for low-context communication increases as one moves into new contexts until shared understandings can be developed to support high-context commu-

528 Book reviews


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nication. Insofar as Nakane herself is breaking the silence she is studying by articulating it, her book itself may indicate such a shift is underway on her part. But the same cannot perhaps be said of some of the Japanese research partici-pants since the lack of shared knowledge between Japanese and Australians seems to generate more, not less, silence on their part. Whilst Hall’s seminal work is not referred to in Nakane’s list of references, it is hoped that his ideas can be considered in relation to the studies in the future.

In Chapter 6, silence is re-interpreted in the light of all the previous chapters. Having clarified the definition of silence, categorized it into eight types and identified its functions and meanings, Nakane sets about breaking the stereo-type of “the silent east” (203) in two ways. First, in keeping with the general title of the book, generic features of silence are drawn out of the study on Japanese participants to make statements about silence in intercultural com-munication in general, implying that features of Japanese silence are to be found outside the Japanese group. Next, she draws the reader’s attention to diversity within the Japanese student group itself, by revealing individual and contextual factors emerging in the data. Nakane illustrates how various sub-components of the analytical model can come into play in individual students at the individual, situational and socio-cultural levels of social organization in a clear rejection of sweeping generalizations. The main conclusion from the research as whole seems to be that while Japanese students are likely to be, and perceived to be, silent to some degree, much variation is also to be found and in particular, the performance of individual students is greatly affected by evolving, immediate, contextual factors. The general approach taken in the book seems to follow the view of Hamilton and Uhles (2000: 469) that “in-creasing the perception of within-group diversity can in turn diminish the per-ceiver’s ability to make sweeping generalizations about the group, thereby undermining one of the hallmarks of stereotyping.”

While I endorse this line, Nakane’s list of implications for improved inter-cultural communication in the concluding chapter is, however, weak enough to warrant exclusion from the book in my view. Since none of the three studies focused specifically upon teaching or learning strategies, her recommended strategies amount to little more than increasing teacher and student awareness of likely mutual perceptions and the recommendation of common-sense teach-ing approaches such as giving students more time to prepare before speaking. The fact that the author never really came to grips with the competing educa-tional philosophies implied by the book renders the recommendation of in-creased reliance upon the written form of communication particularly unper-suasive as noted earlier. But more seriously, some recommendations are made without proper justification.

Specifically, Nakane recommends the reader to recognize positive aspects of silence in the classroom that were never fully elucidated in the book, which is

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suggestive of the kind of bias noted in relation to Chapter 3 discussion. Nakane (18, 207) draws upon points made by Rowe (1974), La Forge (1983) and Ja-worski & Sachdev (1998, 2004) for support, but Rowe’s point that wait time affects performance in a mono-cultural setting cannot automatically be classi-fied as a positive effect of silence, unless the implication that increased wait time improves the quality of response is stated explicitly, which it is not. And La Forge’s point that silences can be used facilitatively in learning a foreign language if teachers adopt cultural silence with a view to enhancing the quality of written work, in recognition of the fact that leaders in Japanese society tend to be silent, requires further elaboration. The work of Jaworski & Sachdev, also drawn upon in support of the point (207), is not referred to elsewhere in the text in this regard and indeed, the recommendation for the reader to recognize pos-itive aspects of silence in the classroom is not based upon Nakane’s own re-search at all and nor is it well informed by educational theory or findings of any sort.

In sum, while the book focuses primarily upon the classroom silence of Jap-anese university students in Australia, its general appeal lies partly in the global review in Chapter 2 and partly in the generic nature of the model proposed. The book succeeds in its main aim of challenging east-west stereotypes and while discussion of the link between silence, talk, and academic values within com-peting educational philosophies remains underdeveloped and terminologically challenged, the issue presents itself as an interesting and important avenue for further investigation in the future.

References

Bennett, Milton. 1993. Towards Ethnorelativism: A Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensi-tivity. In R. Michael Paige (ed.), Education for the Intercultural Experience, 21–73. Maine: Intercultural Press.

Byram, Michael. 1997. Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence. Cleve-don, England: Multilingual Matters.

Crain, William. 2000. Theories of Development: Concepts and Applications. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

Fairclough, Norman. 1995. Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language. London, England: Longman.

Gilligan, Carol. 1982. In a Different Voice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Guilherme, Manuela. 2002. Critical Citizens for an Intercultural World: Foreign Language Edu-

cation as Cultural Politics. Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.Hall, Edward. 1976. Beyond Culture. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books.Hamilton, David & Neville Uhles. 2000. Stereotypes. Encyclopedia of Psychology 1. 466–470.Heine, Steven J. 2001. Self as Cultural Product: An Examination of East Asian and North Ameri-

can Selves. Journal of Personality 69 (6). 881–905.Hofstede, Geert. 1980. Culture’s Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values.

California: Sage.

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Houghton, Stephanie. 2007. Managing the Evaluation of Difference in Foreign Language Educa-tion: A Complex Case Study in a Tertiary Level Context in Japan. Durham, England: Durham University Doctoral Thesis.

Jaworski, Adam & Itesh Sachdev. 1998. Beliefs about Silence in the Classroom. Language and Education 12 (4). 273–292.

Jaworski, Adam & Itesh Sachdev. 2004. Teachers’ Beliefs about Students’ Talk and Silence: Con-structing Academic Success and Failure through Metapragmatic Comments. In Adam Jaworski, Nikolas Coupland & Dariusz Galasinski (eds.) Metalanguage: Social and Ideological Perspec-tives, 227–244. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Kohlberg, Lawrence. 1969. Stage and Sequence: A Cognitive-developmental Approach to Sociali-zation. In David A. Goslin (ed.) Handbook of Socialization Theory and Research, 347–480. Chicago: Rand McNally.

La Forge, P.G. 1983. Counseling and Culture in Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Pergamon Press.

Lee, Wing On. 2001. The Emerging Concepts of Citizenship in the Asian Context: Some Reflec-tions. Keynote presentation at the International Forum on New Citizenship Education Policies in Asian Context. Hiroshima University, Japan. October 29–31.

Maynard, Senko. 1997. Japanese Communication: Language and Thought in Context. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Miyahara, Akira, Min-Sun Kim, Shin Ho-Chang & Kak Yoon. 1998. Conflict-Resolution Styles among Collectivist Cultures: A Comparison between Japanese and Koreans. International Jour-nal of Intercultural Relations 22 (4). 505–525.

Naotsuka, Reiko & Nancy Sakamoto. 1981. Mutual Understanding of Different Cultures. Tokyo: Taishukan Publishing Company.

Paul, Richard & Linda Elder. 2002. Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Profes-sional and Personal Life. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

Rowe, Mary Budd. 1974. Pausing Phenomena: Influence on the Quality of Instruction. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 3 (3). 203–224.

Sumner, William Graham. 2002 [1907]. Folkways: A Study of Mores, Manners, Customs and Mor-als. New York: Dover Publications.

Tronto, Joan. C. 1987. Beyond Gender Difference to a Theory of Care. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 12. 644–663.

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(InDesign 17 June 2010 1:23 PM) WDG (155x230mm) TimesNewRoman J-2305 IPRG, 7:3 (KN) PMU:(KN/W)02/06/10 pp. 532–532 2305_7-3_05_brev (p. 532)

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SILENCE IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE EDUCATION: FACE-TO-FACE AND COMPUTER-MEDIATED COMMUNICATION IN THE JAPANESE CONTEXT

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