Television dinners

Television dinners

 

A lot of the students mentioned that it was difficult to have conversations with their homestay families because their families were always watching television. Some of the students even commented that a lot of the time they would have TV dinners, or that the television would be on during dinner time. The students said that they felt awkward if they disturbed their hosts while watching television and so decided not to say anything at all. Television acts as a socially-constructed medium for controlling when conversations should begin and end. Although the homestay families do converse during the commercial breaks, the conversation is usually reduced to short, quick comments rather than lengthy discussions. Again, this is a skill that the students do not have and so they find it difficult to communicate in these commercial breaks. In terms of an interpersonal function, by switching on the television during dinner time (or leaving the television switched on), the homestay parent has indirectly appropriated the mood and modality of any conversation that takes place. Similarly, the conversation of the student and parent watching a drama on television and only speaking during the commercial breaks indicated that the student acted in the same way as the parent in this situation. In both of these circumstances the parent not only controlled who the participants were, i.e., the television and the family members, but also when and how they were to participate. To use Itakura's (2001) term, the host parents construct a "sequential dominance" over the interaction. In other words, the rules of rapport were determined by the parent, who assumed the rules were known by the student. However, as we can see from the conversations that took place when the television was an active participant, the students decided to say very little, or not speak at all. It is also important to notice that none of the students initiated any conversation at these times. As Halliday (1984) notes, the students' communicative options have been severely restricted.