Ikuko Nakane

Silence in intercultural communication : perceptions and performance

How and why is silence used interculturally? Approaching the phenomenon of silence from multiple perspectives, this book shows how silence is used, perceived and at times misinterpreted in intercultural communication. Using a model of key aspects of silence in communication – linguistic, cognitive and sociopsychological – and fundamental levels of social organization – individual, situational and sociocultural - the book explores the intricate relationship between perceptions and performance of silence in interaction involving Japanese and Australian participants. Through a combination of macro- and micro- ethnographic analyses of university seminar interactions, the stereotypes of the ‘silent East’ is reconsidered, and the tension between local and sociocultural perspectives of intercultural communication is addressed. The book has relevance to researchers and students in intercultural pragmatics, discourse analysis and applied linguistics.

Negotiating silence and speech in the classroom

Abstract Students from East Asian countries studying at universities in the West are often found to be ‘silent’ or ‘reticent’ in the classroom, and this has been widely described as due to cultural differences in classroom practices and in approaches to knowledge underlying them (Braddock et al. 1995; Ballard 1996; Jones 1999; Liu 2000). However, few attempts have been made to examine interactive situations in the classroom from a micro-analytic perspective. This paper discusses classroom case studies of three Japanese students which involve analysis of recorded classroom interaction and follow-up interviews with the Japanese participants, Australian lecturers and peer students in mainstream university courses in Australia. Through the follow-up interviews, all the Japanese students were found to be perceived ‘silent’ by their lecturers and peers, although the analysis of classroom interaction revealed that the level and type of the silence varied. The findings suggest that the Japanese students’ participation in the classroom is heavily influenced by immediate contextual factors such as the topic, participant structures (Phillips 1972, 1983), and most of all, co-participants’ perceptions and performances. The paper offers an alternative view on the silence attributed to Japanese students, namely that silence can be coconstructed in ongoing negotiation of participation in the classroom.

Language Rights in Japanese Criminal Courts: Bridging the Gap Between Legal Professionals and Language Professionals

Abstract Since the 1980s, Japan has seen a sharp increase in the number of non-Japanese-speaking background defendants in criminal trials. This has posed a major challenge to the Japanese justice system, which must ensure non-Japanese defendants’ rights to receive a fair trial in a language that they are able to understand and use fluently and accurately. Drawing on the author’s fieldwork in Japanese criminal courts and close linguistic analysis of actual court exchanges, contextualised with reference to the existing literature on court interpreting in Japan, I first discuss the issues of access to and quality of court interpreting which may have an impact on the language rights of non-Japanese defendants. Through this discussion I explore what sociolinguists can offer the judiciary in order to raise awareness of language rights. I argue that understanding the language ideologies that have an adverse impact on the non-Japanese-background defendant’s language rights in the bilingual courtroom can contribute to policy changes.

“Is it the case that … ?”: Building toward findings of fact in Japanese criminal trials

Abstract This article explores the adversarial nature of Japanese criminal court proceedings by analyzing functions of the questions with X to iu koto ga arimasu ka? (‘Is it the case that X took place?’), based on courtroom discourse data and trial manuals for legal professionals. To discuss the roles of lawyers’ questions with the projection with the frame “Is it the case that … ?” in witness examination, the projection’s ideational, textual and interpersonal functions are analyzed drawing on Halliday’s systemic functional approach to discourse. By analyzing sequential roles of the projection, the article highlights the ways in which it serves as a story-construction device, as well as a signpost marker towards exposing inconsistency in witness’s testimony. The analysis also reveals that the dual ideational meanings of the projection – one everyday and the other technical – may leave lay participants unaware of its legal purposes, thus creating a potentially problematic lay-professional communication gap. The discussion of the interpersonal aspect suggests the projection’s role to neutralize coercive force of leading questions as well as to index an identity of legal authority. The paper concludes that while projection “Is it the case … ?” seems to symbolize the adversarial nature of Japanese criminal trials, its neutralizing effect and arbitrariness in use also imply the pseudo-adversarial and hybrid orientation.

Police Interviews and Interpreter Mediation

To locate this book in the relevant fields of research, this chapter gives an overview of research into police interview discourse and interpreter-mediated legal discourse. It introduces the institutional frameworks which shape police interviews, as well as sociolinguistic perspectives on police interview discourse as a genre. The chapter then discusses research into interpreter mediation as interaction and interpreted discourse in the legal context.

Mediated Responses and Balance of Power

This chapter explores the impact of interpreter mediation on suspects’ tellings of their versions of events. Since all the suspects in the data set denied the allegations against them, conflicting versions of events are manifest in the interview discourse. However, the way in which the versions of the events are constructed is at times made more complex by the process of interpreting. How this occurs is demonstrated in this chapter by focusing on turn-taking in tripartite interaction and suspect-resistance strategies.

Setting the Scene: The Police Interviews and the Interpreting

This chapter addresses some of the background information relevant to the discussion of data in the book. It first outlines the source of the police interview data used in the analysis and then gives details of interpreter accreditation procedures, including their code of ethics, and discusses the accreditation levels of the interpreters who participated in the interviews.

Miscommunication and Repair

This chapter addresses how miscommunication is dealt with by the three participating parties in police interviews. ‘Miscommunication’ is defined by Wadensjo (1998, p. 198) as ‘lack of fit between the sense aimed at by one interlocutor, and what is displayed by another as the sense made of the current message’. This definition effectively captures the type of phenomena which interpreters, within their professional capacity, may feel a need to prevent or rectify. The term ‘miscommunication’ is therefore used to refer to the phenomena discussed in this chapter and the concept of ‘conversational repair’ is adopted as the a key analytical unit, as repair is an attempt to address threat to interactional alignment such as problems of understanding (Sacks et al., 1974; Schegloff, 1992; Schegloff et al., 1977). By examining repair sequences, this chapter aims to explain how interpreter mediation may impact on the trajectory of interview discourse when a problem is perceived and addressed by the interlocutors. The following sections explore the factors that make repair a precarious interactional activity which is susceptible to further miscommunication or to problematic influence on the construction of evidential accounts.

Introduction: Tripartite Police Interview Interaction

There is no doubt that the police interview is an important part of the legal process. Through it, information relevant to the case is gathered and becomes part of the evidence presented and tested in court. In criminal cases, the interview is considered one of the most important methods available to police for investigating the facts (Gudjonsson, 1992). The police interview therefore has crucial dual roles: evidential and investigative (Baldwin, 1993; Haworth, 2010; Johnson, 2006).

Mediated Questioning and Balance of Power

In studies of storytelling in courtroom discourse (Bennett & Feldman, 1981; Jackson, 1991; Maley & Fahey, 1991; Snedaker, 1991), interaction is viewed as a process of ‘reconstructing realities’, in which competing versions of events are presented (see also Gibbons, 2003). While they may not be so much of a battle as courtroom interaction, Johnson (2006) argues that police interviews contain narrative elements, claiming that there are ‘free-narrative and elicited narrative sections’ that are co-constructed interactively (p. 669). This chapter explores the impact of interpreter mediation on questioning in police interviews, approaching questioning and questioning strategies as an integral part of constructing police versions of events in relation to alleged crimes. The focus of analysis is on how the mediation affects the level of control that police interviewers have over interview discourse. Construction of realities on the part of suspects will be examined in the next chapter.