Topic confusion in English‐Asian discourse

ABSTRACT: Most communication between Asians and Westerners takes place in English. This misleads us into believing that little translation work is required for East and West to understand each other. Nevertheless, when speakers of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese use English there is a tendency for them to introduce topics in ways which are unexpected from the point of view of English‐speaking Westerners. The Asian inductive, or delayed, introduction of topics leaves Westerners confused about what the topic is. Conversely, Westerners introduce topics early in a conversation. This deductive pattern strikes the Asian as abrupt or rude while the Asian pattern tends to feel evasive or ‘inscrutable’ to the Westerner. Since these patterns of topic introduction are largely unconscious, conversants are not able to locate the source of their confusion in the discourse structure and so have the tendency to blame their conversants. Some of the stereotypical attitudes of East and West toward each other can be shown to be the direct outcome of these unconsciously differing discourse practices in the introduction of topics.