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Yappari, As I Thought: Listener Talk In Japanese Communication, Haru Yamada

Global Advances in Business Communication

Listener Talk, typical of Japanese communication, places the listener at the center of interaction. Listener Talk differs from many western styles of communication where the onus of the explicit form of communication Victor (1992) calls the Direct Plan is on the speaker. Listener Talk finds its roots in the others-centered focus of Buddhist and Taoist traditions and the values the communicators place on silence and implicit talk.

Drawing on data from both intracultural and cross-cultural bank meetings, I bring to fore a strategy I examined in my book, Different Games, Different Rules (1997), and two additional strategies for Listener Talk …