Verbal listening behavior in conversations between Japanese and Americans (original) (raw)
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In intercultural communication, discourse convention differences have often been used to explain misunderstandings and negative stereotyping. What is polite in one culture is not in another. politeness theory claims universalism: their analysis framework supports a concept of politeness that applies to any culture. If so, however, how can people then perceive a polite move in one culture as impolite in another? For instance, many silent periods by East Asians (>10 sec.) or Finns might be considered as a waste of time by Americans, whereas the Dutch might consider the numerous interruptions by Italians as impolite. A possible explanation might be that all cultures share the need for politeness to accommodate a listener, but that different cultures have different (non-)verbal means to express this.
Language & Intercultural Communication, 2017
This study analyzes the conversational styles (Tannen, 2005) of two dyads who engaged in a semester-long, video-mediated telecollaboration between Japan and America. While one dyad expressed the greatest satisfaction and developed the autonomy to continue the project beyond the curricular requirement, the other dyad expressed the greatest frustration, requiring a pedagogical intervention. To examine how the two dyads' different experiences could be attributed to turn negotiation patterns, the English portion of the second interaction session was analyzed. The results showed that for the unsuccessful dyad, silence, which was used by the Japanese EFL learner as a contextualization cue, triggered the American student's hyperexplanation to get the Japanese partner involved in conversation. However, such a high-involvement strategy, only resulted in producing fewer opportunities for the Japanese partner to contribute to the conversation (i.e., vicious cycle). In contrast, successful turn negotiation of the other dyad enabled them to share knowledge schema, improve recipient design (Erickson, 1986), and adjust their speech accordingly. Such personalized speech, in turn, led to the co-construction of conversation (i.e., virtuous cycle). Based on these observations, I conclude that " missed communication " (Ware, 2005) may entrench attribution of negative personal traits unless appropriate scaffolding/intervention is provided.
This paper examines the divide between Japanese and U.S. business communication strategies as it manifests in interpersonal interactions and offers solutions for improved cross-cultural discourse. Often, the divides that arise during exchanges between Japanese and American communicators are due to the misreading of cultural norms specific to each culture. The author calls out three fundamental components of Japanese national culture that represent potential challenge areas for Western communicators when not addressed properly. These challenge areas were selected based on the author’s personal experiences accrued while living and working in Japan. It is hoped that a distillation of the cultural components associated with each scenario will help advance the conversation about the challenges involved in cross-cultural communication while simultaneously fostering a more accurate understanding of the manner in which Japanese and American cultures interface communicatively. Keywords: Japan, communication, business, culture.
Language in Society, 2006
This is a study of the interface between power and politeness as manifested in verbal disagreements. It begins with a number of chapters devoted to a discussion of the key concepts that define the author's theoretical conceptualization of social interaction. These concepts are power, communication, relational work, and politeness. The author then applies the model to four (transcribed) interactions. The first, and most extensively analyzed, is a dinner conversation among friends and acquaintances. The second is an organizational meeting in a physics laboratory. The final two come from official transcripts of a radio interview of President Clinton and Supreme Court proceedings relating to the vote count in the U.S presidential elections of 2000. Common to them all, in the author's view, are instances of disagreement. Theoretically, interactants are understood to engage in two broad functional types of discourse: transactional and interactional. The former is defined as "optimally efficient transmission of information," and the latter aims at the "establishment and maintenance of social relationships" (pp. 50-51). These discourse types are understood to overlap functionally, and their overall meanings are interpreted through a process of "contextualization." Committed in general to a theory of the culturally constructed nature of social "reality" (45), the author embeds interactants in a complex web of sociocultural constructs. She thus locates the interactants' contextualization efforts at the intersection of event frames and norms. These are understood to incorporate knowledge of the "what, where and when" of event types as well as cultural knowledge, both conscious and unconscious, about social identities, gender, speaking styles, history, and the unfolding interactional context itself (57). Contextualization thus takes place when interactants judge behavior against this cultural world of frames and norms and classify it as particular kinds of events that are, more broadly speaking, negative or positive, marked or unmarked, and appropriate or inappropriate (48). In addition to this general list of contextualizing influences, the author also, and somewhat problematically, relies on more familiar academic ideological constructs. In the constant struggle between providing information and negotiating
The management of everyday English interactions in the Japanese branches of European multinationals
2018
English is not only used in business and commercial activities within the borders of Europe, but is also used in the overseas branches of European multinationals, such as those in Japan. This chapter focuses on the everyday use of English in the Japanese subsidiaries of European multinationals, as reported by non-European, non-native English-speaking employees, and will attempt to shed light on some of the issues relating to English use at work. By applying Language Management Theory, the types of English-related problems non-European employees are sensitive to and their attempts to overcome these problems will be highlighted. It will be shown that rather than problematizing just linguistic proficiency-related problems, employees appear to more readily note and negatively evaluate deviations relating to pragmatic and other sociolinguistic (mis-)uses of the language. Although they may note a variety of deviations relating to English, the power constraints of the workplace, however, o...
Displays of concession in university faculty meetings: Culture and interaction in Japanese
Pragmatics, 2001
In light of the tendency in studies of Japanese discourse and communication to account for patterns of social interaction in terms of cultural concepts such as wa (Aharmony@), omoiyari (Aempathy@), and enryo (Arestraint@), this report sets out to demonstrate how much of an endogenously produced, local achievement social interaction can be in Japanese. To do so, the techniques and principles of conversation analysis are employed to describe how a particular social action, the expression of concession to statements of opposition, is produced by participants in a set of Japanese university faculty meetings. Although it is suggested that the very direct and explicit design of the concession displays could be explained in terms of concepts such as wa and/or enryo, it is nonetheless argued that the interactional significance of this action can be best understood by undertaking a detailed, sequential analysis of the interaction. The analysis itself is divided into two parts: First it is demonstrated that the concessions are products of the participants= close attendance to and monitoring of the details of the unfolding interaction; second it is shown that instead of turning to predetermined cultural concepts to account for the trajectory of the interaction, it is possible to understand the concession displays by situating them within the flow of the interaction itself.
2016
This study focuses on first-time encounter conversations in intercultural settings. The data that were analyzed were three English data sets between two Japanese and two English native speakers and two Japanese data sets between two Japanese and two English native speakers. The previous studies (Tsuda et. al., 2015; Shigemitsu, 2015) suggest that Japanese speakers and English native speakers have different perspectives as to the ideal conversation. This paper illustrates how their L1 (first language) affects the discourse when they speak in FL (foreign language). The Japanese tend to take the listener's role; when other participants start to talk, they easily relinquish the floor. As English native speakers expect to gain new knowledge in most conversations, this behavior by the Japanese does not satisfy English native speakers. The study also shows evidence of some minor problems in the data. Many ESL situations in Japan have claimed that the reason why Japanese English learners are often not ideal at speaking within intercultural settings is that people in Japan are shy, but this paper claims that the different discourse styles exhibited in conversations within intercultural settings may on their own cause an underdevelopment of Japanese speaking skills in English. 2. Previous studies This study focuses on the conversational style differences between Japanese and English. The study was motivated by observable Japanese ESL (English as a second language) situations. Many of the learners of English have good ability in reading, grammar, and vocabulary. Some hardworking learners are also good at writing and listening. However, with speaking, the situation is different. According to Terauchi et al. (2008), based on their questionnaire to thousands of Japanese businessmen, "Japanese people tend to listen to the others talk and miss a timing to say their own opinion" and "Japanese people feel difficulties in objecting during the discussion." Moreover, Terauchi et al. (2008, 2013) concludes that Japanese behavior is influenced by their reserved attitude. On the other hand, Tsuda et al. (2015) provides refuting claims. The reason why Japanese people feel difficulty in speaking English, according to Tsuda, is due to the discourse style differences between English and Japanese. According to results of interviews of both English native speakers and Japanese speakers participating in conversation, some of the Japanese participants categorize themselves as listeners in conversation. They say that they like to listen to other people's stories and do not like to talk much. While listening, they seldom ask questions or do not object. A few participants say that asking questions is an impolite behavior. Therefore, their cultural norms may be in evidence as they speak in English. Otani, M., Iwata, Y., & Shigemitsu, Y. (2016) analyzed first encounter conversations by male participants. They picked up common features from their British data, American data, and Australian data. They focused on listeners and
東京工芸大学工学部紀要 人文 社会編, 2007
This presentation aims to clarify Japanese pausing systems and to reveal their functions in ordinary conversation. In order to extract the functions of Japanese pausing, this research compares four sets of four parties' conversational data and also analyzes their following-up interview. To focus on the Japanese, pausing functions as 1) 'ruminating about what the speaker is talking about,' 2) 'showing that they are listening and encourage the speaker to continue' and 3) 'waiting to be given more information or a turn'. Japanese also customarily believe that raising a new topic by oneself or asking questions to the current speaker is an offensive behavior. Therefore, pausing is interpreted as a rapport building strategies to show that listeners are considerate the speaker and encourage the speaker to talk at the speaker's own pace. In order to assess the ongoing conversation and to be careful when to slot in their own turn, they need some length of pause. My claim here is that a strategy which is courteous in one language is sometimes inadequate in other languages. If there were any misunderstandings between native and non-native speakers in one language in the setting of intercultural communication, different practice of pausing might be influential keys for successful or unsuccessful conversation in intercultural communication. The result of this research can be used to raise people's awareness towards multilingual societies in which adjustments to different cultural norms are required. It therefore has application to educational purposes.