In our class discussion of spoken discourse, we talked a lot about spoken responses. These responses were sounded. What about silences though? Silences is a common response. Can it be considered a kind of response when discussing spoken discourse?
I ask this because I'm sure we've all had encounters of awkward silences in conversations. For me, it was a rather disastrous one which was interpreted very wrongly. It was a long time ago, my first lesson with a new teacher, an American:
Teacher (T): I think perhaps this part should be played like this.
Me: -silence- (Totally disagreed because it sounded bad but still nods head)
T: What do you think?
Me: -long silence- uh huh.
This is a scenario that repeated itself for months until my teacher couldn't stand it anymore. He asked why I was always so quiet, and never questioned the way he interpreted music even when I thought it sounded bad. He thought that I was simply being rebellious. It was then that I realized he was intentionally trying to make me respond with all those ridiculous interpretations. But being Chinese and having had Chinese teachers all my life, I was used to following the teacher's instructions, accepting it as correct and never to outwardly go against the teacher in a master-disciple relationship. What I thought was polite behaviour was actually perceived as rebellious!
This particular teacher has a teaching studio of around 20 Asians. At first, he always used wonder why Asians were so unresponsive, like "stone people". He would always wonder aloud why we were so talkative along the hallways but so frustatingly quiet in front of him. He used to interpret this silent behaviour as arrogance, rebelliousness, or that we were terrified of him. In time though, we changed and he eventually came to understand this Asian reticence as a form or respect for the teacher.
I was always told to keep quiet when I'm not sure what to say, this way I will never say anything wrong or offend anybody. This has proved to be a fallacy. Silence is actually already a form of response. and it could be a wrong reflection of our intentions, depending on who we are talking to.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
A good account of how different cultural groups interpret silence in interactions: deference in the oriental perspective and arrogance, rebellion or even rudeness in the western perspective.
ReplyDeleteSilence in classrooms is really frequent in Singapore... although i suspect the reason is less of respect/afraid of offending the teacher, but more of being passive in general, perhaps? Hmmm.
ReplyDelete- chiew shan
being a north american on exchange in singapore i can completely understand where the teacher and yourself were both coming from as you both have grown up with different beliefs. i have witnessed quite a few of these experiences back home in Toronto.
ReplyDeletei guess this story goes to show that silnece can be used as a response, but can very often confuse or send mixed messages because of its vagueness. Perhaps it is better to communicate and respond with speech, so that you can express exactly what you mean.
I agree with you about how as Asians, we feel a certain sense of hierarchy when with seniors/elders and tend to stick with silence instead of outright disagreeing. Unfortunately while silence is used as a communication tool, its interpretation is very much cultural/ situation-based so it has a high risk of generating misinterpretation.
ReplyDeleteoh wow, very interesting reflection! yeah my mum has always told me that "no one will think you are dumb if you don't say anything" ("dumb" here referring to being a mute, not criticising one's intellect). all the way until jc, education in school has more or less been a silent one. only in uni has asking questions and being responsive (therefore the class participation points haha) been really seriously super duper encouraged. but i think that sometimes it's also because people don't feel comfortable yet in their classes, perhaps cos they don't know the teacher / other classmates yet.
ReplyDelete