A Dissertation by GRACE HUI-CHIN LIN Submitted to the Office of ...

I just kept my silence in a group. I might be able to make a topic shift by
keeping silent when I was in a paired discussion. In a group, my keeping
silent without facial expression became a kind of pretending. I pretended to
listen to the speaker, kept smiling, and looked at the speakers’ face. At the
same time, I laughed when everybody was laughing.
Sung Ru echoed the relationship between her growing background and her
concepts offered above. Sung Ru stated that she was very much influenced by one of
her elementary school teachers, who encouraged her a lot. This art teacher provided
her some good books to read when she was in fifth grade. Through the books, she
learned to think for the others and love the others as think for and love ourselves.
Therefore, she was embarrassed to force her classmates always to follow what she
wanted to discuss.
Cheng Chih Chen
Cheng Chih reflected on his perceptions about the importance of the topic
avoidance strategy. As with all the other respondents, he addressed that he did not
deem that “keeping silent” was proper. He believed that there were two conveniences
in topic avoidance, which were a more motivation-inspiring conversation and a
longer interaction. Also, he considered that the right topic could be found according
to the interlocutors’ backgrounds. In the first interview, Cheng Chih talked about the
advantages of the topic avoidance strategy:
When chatting in class, changing topics was a useful strategy. The
communication could be smoother and more provocative if we were able to
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