The Language Teacher
December 2002
"How Do I Respond?": A Survey of Interpersonal Aspects of English in Japanese High School Oral English Textbooks
Yasumi Gee Murata
Nagoya University of Foreign Studies
Transactional and Interpersonal Use of Language
Language is interpersonal as well as transactional (Berendt, 1981, 1991, 1998; Hori, 1998). That means we may speak with a specific in mind goal to achieve, such as finding out bus departure or arrival times, or inviting friends to dinner, or reserving a flight to Sydney, but we may also speak just to have a chat with someone with no particular goal in mind. Chatting on cellular phones is a favorite pastime for young people in Japan. Chatting with a friend on the phone or over lunch is fun. We call acquaintances just to find out how they are. We enjoy chatting because it reassures us that we are liked and feel some kind of bond existing between us and the people we are talking with.
For a business person with international dealings, it is vital to be able to conduct various business tasks in English, thus a business English textbook usually follows a functional syllabus with chapter topics such as arranging a meeting, complaining, making a phone call, understanding directions, etc. A Japanese businessperson, however, once confided to me that although his study of business English had prepared him to conduct business negotiations in English without much difficulty, he really dreaded the time when he had to socialize with his business partners in English. He apparently did not know how to converse socially in English!
Students learning English in an English speaking country may encounter a similar problem. They may understand the teacher's directions quite well in class, can buy stamps in a post office and order a meal in a restaurant, but in a cafeteria they may not be able to enjoy conversing with newly acquainted native English speakers. This is because in such conversations we are not trying to achieve a specific goal such as buying postage stamps, but are instead trying to build up friendships by showing a positive attitude towards other people. The next section considers why interpersonal language is so important.
Emphatic Responses
One effective device frequently employed in English to indicate to the speaker a positive attitude from the hearer appears in the form of emphatic response. Boxer (1993) gives the following example which clearly demonstrates failure by the Japanese person (NNS) to show a positive, supportive attitude to her English native partner (NS).
NS: My plane trip [to Japan] was pretty difficult, I mean it wasn't direct from New York to Tokyo or anything. I had to go to Toronto...
NNS: Mm hmn.
NS: I had to go to Toronto and then I had to spend a night in a hotel in Toronto, and then I had to get to the airport again the next day, and go to Vancouver and switch planes, and I mean, that's a lot of traveling, and I was really tired.
NNS: Yeah?
NS: and then when I got to Tokyo after I had been traveling for 20 hours I had to catch a cab into Tokyo station...
NNS: Uh huh ...
NS: Then get another cab and find my way, you know, and I had to explain to the taxi driver where my hotel was because he didn't know where it was.
NNS: Right, uh huh ... Where did you stay?
[after a few exchanges about the hotel]
NS: It's so funny, I sit here going on and on and you just say, "uh, huh," it's like I'm in an interview or something. (p.292)
The last comment made by the NS obviously indicates some dissatisfaction or frustration felt as a result of not receiving the kind of responses she wanted or expected to hear. Both parties would have felt better and consequently closer, if the NNS had used more emphatic responses clearly showing sympathy for her conversation partner.
To know that using emphatic responses--back channeling--is helpful for building a good relationship in English conversations is especially important and significant for beginning learners whose linguistic abilities often put them in the role of listener rather than speaker. This significance motivated the following survey of what kinds of responses are introduced in a random selection of Ministry-approved Japanese high school oral English textbooks.
Emphatic Responses in Textbooks
I examined eight high school oral English textbooks, which were available in a bookshop at the time of survey (see Appendix for a list of textbooks). Included in the survey were three A level, four B level and one C level oral English textbooks. Oral Communication A classes in high school aim to teach students how to carry out everyday or survival English. Such textbooks usually begin with self introductions and go on to topics like inviting, suggesting, declining, finding information at the airport, and so forth. Oral Communication B is geared to towards developing listening ability, whereas C deals with higher level production skills in English such as debating, public speech, and discussion.
Table 1 lists all the emphatic responses that appeared in each textbook. With the exception of Progressive A, the range and number of emphatic responses is quite limited. I should point out that the main author of Progressive A is a sociolinguist and that throughout the textbook cultural tips including different linguistic habits such as including the speaker's name in conversation to make it sound nicer are specifically highlighted for students. It is apparent that in Progressive A a deliberate effort was made to teach the interpersonal aspect of English.
In comparison, Table 2 shows the emphatic responses found in New Interchange Intro and 1, both of which were authored by native English speakers. The authors may not be consciously aware of the function of emphatic responses, but one can see from the table that New Interchange Intro and 1 introduce much more diversified emphatic responses. Learners, therefore, would have more opportunity to learn how to respond in a conversation when they study using New Interchange Intro and 1, than they would using most of the Japanese Ministry-approved oral textbooks.
Table 1. List of Emphatic Responses in Japan-Produced Textbooks
Oral Communication A
Evergreen A |
Progressive A |
Hello There! A |
Oral Communication B
Birdland B |
Evergreen B |
Progressive B |
Sailing B |
Oral Communication C
Hello There! C |
Table 2. List of Emphatic Responses in New Interchange
New Interchange Intro |
New Interchange 1 |
Emphatic Response as a Positive Politeness Strategy
Emphatic responses are part of positive politeness in English. Positive politeness is understood as keeping or attending to the positive face of the hearer (Brown & Levinson, 1987) and it has the effect of bringing out a sense of solidarity or camaraderie between the speaker (S) and the hearer (H). Brown & Levinson (p.102) advocate three broad positive politeness strategies. These are to
- claim common ground with H;
- convey that S and H are cooperators; and
- fulfill H's want (for some X).
Each strategy is further broken down into more concrete linguistic behaviors, and giving emphatic responses belongs to the first strategy to claim common ground with H. Other positive politeness linguistic forms in this strategy include the use of In-Group Identity Markers and Jokes. Murata (1998) found that not only were few emphatic responses included, but the use of In-Group Markers and Jokes was generally low in Japanese- authored textbooks as well.
Summary and Conclusion
Although the Japanese Education Ministry's new guidelines for teaching communicative English in public senior high schools came into effect from April 1994 (Goold, et al., 1993), the current survey found that the importance of the interpersonal aspect of English does not seem to be fully recognized yet. In all but one of the textbooks examined here, giving emphatic responses to the speaker, a simple and most useful device for fostering rapport, was limited in variety and frequency.
Perhaps this is a reflection of the Japanese style of communication where such back channeling expressions as usso! and maji are normally used only in the context of talking with peers and not with strangers or others not of similar social stature. Precisely because these back channeling expressions do exist in Japanese, once taught the English equivalents and their significance for English interaction, Japanese learners will find them easy to use. They then will be able to avoid the discomfort felt by the Japanese student and the American friend quoted earlier.
As an English learner myself who once did not know how to respond to an English speaking person's stories, I would like to see a shift toward a more explicit teaching of the interpersonal strategies in Japanese high school, and other textbooks.
References
Berendt, E. A. (1981). Some aspects of language function in dyadic discourse: Clarification and relationship bonding. Descriptive and Applied Linguistics, 14, 1-11. (Available from Japan International Christian University, Tokyo)
Berendt, E. A. (1991). Conversation from a cross-cultural perspective and implications for language teaching. Studies in Language, 14, 161-170. (Available from Kanagawa University, Center for Foreign Language Studies, Yokohama, Japan)
Berendt, E. A. (1998). Interpersonal communicative goals in Asian English textbooks: What are students learning to do? Asian Englishes, 1(1), 138-151.
Boxer, D. (1993). Complaints as positive strategies: What the learner needs to know. TESOL Quarterly, 27(2), 277-299.
Brown, P., & Levinson, S.C. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Goold, R., Madeley, C., & Carter, N. (1993). The new Monbusho Guidelines. The Language Teacher, 17(6), 3-5.
Hori, M. (1998). Eigo niyoru shitashisa no hyoumei to sono imi [Expressions of friendliness in English and their meaning]. Paper presented at the JACET 37th Annual Convention, Okayama, Japan.
Murata, Y. (1998). Koko no kyokasho niokeru positive politeness no atsukai. [Positive politeness in Japanese secondary textbooks]. Paper presented at The JACET 37th Annual Convention, Okayama, Japan.
Appendix
Surveyed Textbooks
Birdland B. (1998). Tokyo: Buneido.
Evergreen A. (1998). Hiroshima: Daiichi Gakushusha.
Evergreen B. (1998). Hiroshima: Daiichi Gakushusha.
Hello there! A. (1998). Tokyo: Tokyo Shoseki.
Hello there! C. (1998). Tokyo: Tokyo Shoseki.
New interchange 1. (1997). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
New interchange intro. (2000). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Progressive A. (1998). Tokyo: Shogaku Tosho.
Progressive B. (1998). Tokyo: Shogaku Tosho.
Sailing B. (1997). Osaka: Keirinkan.
Yasumi G. Murata received a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the Australian National University, Canberra. In March, 2002, she left full time work and now teaches part time at different universities in and around Nagoya. Her current research interests include pragmatic transfer from L1 to L2 and the miscommunication caused by such transfer, particularly from the perspective of politeness.
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