Cross-cultural communication （98）　

98) Back-channeling
When you go to an English conversation school in Japan, they will teach you how to back-channel relatively early on. They will teach you two back-channel responses: “A-ha” to mean yes, and “A-a-a” to mean no, but the back-channel response that Japanese people use overwhelmingly more often is the yes response of “A-ha”. Certainly, if you respond with an 'a-ha' after the other person has said something in English, you have at least agreed with what they have said, and it is certain that the other person will continue speaking in English and the conversation will continue for a long time. I think that the reason that this response is taught at English conversation schools at the beginning is to reduce the amount of silence and increase the amount of conversation on the part of the English teacher.

However, from my own experiences so far and from listening to English interviews on news programs, I think that English speakers don't use back-channeling as frequently as Japanese people. I suspect that this is because English speakers have a stronger sense of self than Japanese people, and so they don't so readily accept what the other person is saying unconditionally.

If that is the case, how can we respond in English discussions so that we can compete on the same level as the other person? The answer is to respond with a high level of self-awareness, saying things like “I can agree with you on this point, but not on that point. However, in order to do this, you also need to improve your English listening skills, and you need to be able to speak with a logical flow. However, if you are studying English, I don't think you will be much use unless you improve your skills to this level.

During the 1990 Gulf Crisis, I stayed in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia for a month as the head of the Japanese medical team. At that time, I was interviewed by a reporter from the Stars & Stripes, a US military newspaper. Then, I was a little confused because the American reporter kept saying things like “I understand” and “OK” in response to what I was saying. Perhaps he was trying to make it easier for me to speak English as a foreign language. Generally speaking, military reporters are half spies, and they are well-versed in the Japanese temperament and spoken English, so I think it was a communication technique to make it easier to interview.

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