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

“Selecting the right people and right topic to discuss” should be added as a
method in the topic avoidance strategy. We should find the right people with
similar backgrounds as ours to interact. Or we should discover the common
interest among our interlocutors in order to maintain the conversation for a
longer time. I had to avoid private topics and look for a topic that was
practical and interesting.
Pei Pei in her first interview gave her reason why she refused to use “keeping silent”
in order to make the topic change:
When applying “no response,” I perceived that I felt guilty; I believed that I
had to inform the others more obviously about my need and reason for
changing topics. I should directly tell him/her that I was not attracted to the
ongoing topic, or I did not know much about the topic. Just “keeping silent”
did not pass the information that the topic was wrong. Additionally, I worried
that I might offend my partners if I just “kept silence.”
Just as Ling Mei had, Pei Pei, in her second interview, pointed out that when
changing the topic, politeness must be addressed:
It was essential that we engaged in a polite way when recommending the
others to change topics. I believed that I should apologize for the need for
changing a topic. This is like Japanese people, who like to say “Sumimasen”
85