Apologies Across Cultures: An Analysis of Intercultural Communication Problems Raised in the Ehime Maru Incident Darren Lingley Kochi University, Japan Bio Data Darren Lingley has worked in a variety of teaching contexts in Japan for 13 years. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of International Studies at Kochi University in southern Japan where he teaches Intercultural Communication and Comparative Culture. His research interests include content-based language teaching, Intercultural Communication and curriculum design. Abstract This paper describes in detail an example of a failed intercultural communication and offers a teaching procedure to help students cope with culture's impact on language. Using the 2001 accident involving the sinking of the Ehime Maru, a Japanese fisheries high school training boat, the paper employs a "critical incidents" approach to suggest how differing cultural norms and values surrounding apologies in America and Japan caused serious intercultural communication problems. A pedagogical background demonstrating the importance of emphasizing culture and awareness-raising activities in language teaching is provided along with intercultural communication background specifically situating differing cultural apology values as a potentially huge area for intercultural miscommunication. Using a critical incidents approach, a teaching procedure and supplemental materials are then offered as a possible method for helping students understand differing expectations that might occur when apologizing across cultures. The procedure is linked to Bennett's (1993) Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity and encourages students to deal with cultural difference in a way that best represents the spirit of ethnorelativity as described in the "acceptance" stage of Bennett's model. Introduction On February 9th, 2001, the USS Greenville, a U.S. Navy submarine, surfaced on a training maneuver near Hawaii and accidentally hit the Ehime Maru, a Japanese high school training ship. Nine members on board the Ehime Maru, including several students, died in the accident. The accident became an international incident with much of the attention centering on the different cultural norms related to apologies, with the bereaved Japanese families expecting a form of apology that was not immediately forthcoming from the American side, particularly the captain of the submarine. The issue was further complicated by frenzied media attention both in Japan and in the U.S. which attempted to portray the Ehime Maru accident in light of other vaguely or unrelated issues including the American military presence in Okinawa, the raising of the boat to recover the dead, the questionable performance of the Japanese Prime Minister, and, later, the issue of apology in the context of Japan's imperialistic history. This paper offers the incident as an example of an intercultural communication problem with special reference to helping students understand how cultural factors can impact apologies. Using a variety of authentic materials (media reports, opinion pieces and letters), a teaching procedure is then described to help students analyze such culturally influenced communication problems. The teaching procedure is strongly influenced by Bennett's (1998) Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity and is based on materials that might help students reach the first of Bennett's ethnorelativist stages, that of acceptance. Intercultural Communication: The culture and language bridge Teachers working in EFL contexts where such intercultural communication crises might occur need to be prepared to deal with incidents like this and the cultural questions that are sure to arise in the classroom. Such incidents provide an opportunity to show how culture impacts on language and behaviour, and to show how to overcome, or preferably prevent, the cultural resentment that so naturally appears in failed intercultural communication. This paper focuses on different cultural expectations regarding apologies between Japanese and Americans with particular emphasis on how differing cultural norms regarding apologies can seriously impact intercultural communication. Culture clearly featured strongly in this case and such examples provide pieces of the cultural puzzle that language learners must always deal with as they progress in overall language development. The Ehime Maru accident is presented here as a real life example of a clearly failed intercultural communication, a 'critical incident' that can also be used to help students understand some of the fundamental theory of intercultural communication research as well as culture's influence on language. A teaching procedure for analysis of apologies across cultures is offered as a means for helping students realize what psychological conditions are necessary to reach the "acceptance" level of the ethnorelativist stages of Bennett's (1993) intercultural sensitivity model. It is based on analyzing cultural difference in ways that help students better understand both the "Self" and the "Other". Description of the intercultural communication problem For the purposes of this paper a brief account of what transpired in the month or so following the accident is necessary to give the reader a better understanding of the controversy surrounding cultural norms of apology seen in the incident. In the period between February 9th and February 28th, the U.S. was slow to officially apologize for the incident with public statements offering only such phrases as "sincere regret" if indeed the U.S. Navy is found to be at fault. On the U.S. side, at stake was a tense political relationship between the two countries, legal issues, an accident investigation and the matter of compensation. Finally, on February 27th, an American envoy was sent to Japan with an official and comprehensive apology from the U.S. President delivered both at the diplomatic level and to the bereaved families, a full apology that was well-received but still failed to appease the families as it did not come directly from the submarine captain. During this period, the captain of the submarine, Cmdr. Scott Waddle, maintained a silence that increasingly infuriated the families of the victims on the Japanese side. Waddle's non-apology during this period is best explained in light of his being the subject of an ongoing Navy investigation and in terms of the constraints of potential legal liability. Finally, also on February 27th, he expressed an apology in the form of "sincere regret" for the accident in written letters to the families delivered to the Japanese consulate in Hawaii. This gesture of apology was rejected outright by the victims, deemed too impersonal and insufficient for making amends. While he did express a desire to formally visit Japan to apologize, legal issues prevented him from doing so. During this same period, it became clear that the type of apology the Japanese victims and the public wanted from the submarine captain was unlikely to be offered any time soon. Japanese families repeatedly requested a clear and public expression of contrition from Cmdr. Waddle, given directly to the victims to include an acknowledgement of responsibility and to reflect that he was aware of the grief the families were feeling. The Japanese maintained that the apology must have a human face and many even demanded that Cmdr. Waddle should kneel and bow before them, as is ritual in Japan in similar serious cases. His reluctance to make any public remarks and to express an apology to the families directly was viewed as offensive and as a failure to abide by Japanese cultural norms of the victims valuing decorum and form. To the degree that the one making an apology is personally involved and responsible, and should express that sense of responsibility and sorrow directly to the victim, the Ehima Maru incident can be seen as straddling the domains of public and interpersonal apologies. With the direct apology desired by the victims, they then can choose whether or not to accept the apology. Although the incident was a public act, it required from the Japanese victims a more interpersonal form of apology from the person directly responsible and therefore the case does not fit neatly into either category. Bennett's Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity Bennett's (1993) DMIS model of IC sensitivity is rooted in developmental psychology and views understanding of cultural difference in terms of personal growth spanning a continuum from Ethnocentric Stages (denial, defense, minimization) to Ethnorelative Stages (acceptance, adaptation and integration). The "acceptance" level has been described by Bennett (1998) as follows: "People at the acceptance stage enjoy recognizing and exploring cultural differences. They are aware that they themselves are cultural beings. They are fairly tolerant of ambiguity and are comfortable knowing there is no right answer (although there are better answers for particular contexts). "Acceptance" does not mean that a person has to agree with or take on a cultural perspective other than his or her own. Rather people accept the viability of different cultural ways of thinking and behaving, even though they may not like them." (1998, p. 28) The parallel aims of this paper - analysis of apology behaviours across cultures and provision of a teaching procedure to help students deal with cultural differences of apologies - integrate Bennett's model in the sense that fostering ethnorelative thinking in students leads to smoother intercultural communication. It is suggested here that encouraging students to reach a minimal level of ethnorelative thinking as exemplified by the acceptance level is a worthy endeavour and appropriate in terms of the developmental level of intermediate-level Japanese students embarking in the field of Intercultural Communication. It is particularly useful as a model in the sense that it mainly aims at awareness raising with respect to perception of cultural difference. As a model though, it does have limitations not the least of which is that it fails to adequately deal with "difference-within-difference", as Guilherme (2002, p. 136) has noted, and "does not problematise the formation of (inter)cultural identities sufficiently" (op. cit.). However, with a critical approach to both analysis of Japanese and American apology behaviours and the materials used to help students negotiate and understand apologies across cultures, the model has proved useful in determining whether or not students can deal with difference in a culturally appropriate way in this particular context of IC learning. Pedagogical background: Use of "Critical Cultural Incidents" Critical incidents are defined in Chen and Starosta (1998) as case studies based on real-life experiences with people from other cultures which "depict a controversy or source of conflict that reflects cultural values or other aspects of a culture" (p. 272). Tomalin and Stempleski (1993) have shown how critical incidents and cultural incidents can be used to develop effective teaching materials for increasing cultural awareness and sensitivity in students. Brislin (2002) suggests that critical incidents are useful for intercultural communication training and education because they provide an approach whereby students can analyze cases "that depict people in intercultural encounters that involve a misunderstanding or a difficulty"(Brislin, 2002, cited online). In the process of working through an incident to identify why a communication may have failed, students can also be introduced to "research-based concepts that assist in understanding many other intercultural interactions they are likely to have in the future" (op. cit.). While exploration of critical incidents is a student-centered strategy, the teacher may at times integrate a mini-lecture style format to focus on IC concepts as they arise. While critical incidents are usually brief descriptions of situational events between interlocutors from different cultures, the Ehime Maru accident is offered here as a "critical cultural incident", a more complicated and involved incident which is familiar to Japanese students. Brislin (1993) notes that ideal critical incidents "include experiences with which all...participants can identify" (p. 227). The Ehime Maru incident is also controversial enough to elicit a variety of culturally biased emotions and reactions to be identified and dealt with by the teacher. Use of critical cultural incidents is suggested here not only for more typical ELT situations but also in more specific course offerings where EFL teachers are often asked to coordinate their English language classes as part of broader fields such as "Intercultural Communication" or "Comparative Culture". Noting that critical incidents may be preferable to "presenting prescriptive rules" (p. 26), Meier (1997) has called for more awareness-raising activities in language teaching suggesting the potential for the second language classroom as a "venue for culture teaching" (p. 26). Use of a critical incident approach to study apologies is also in line with Meier's (1998) position that findings in the literature on apology behaviour in English are too varied and that general descriptions of behaviour are not sufficient. At the very least, use of a critical incidents methodology for teaching intercultural communication can create an environment in which learners "gain insight into cultural assumptions which underlie the perception of contextual and situational factors as they inform linguistic behaviour" (Meier, 1997, p. 25). A valuable precursor to the teaching of apology strategies used in English is the contrastive teaching of cultural norms related to apologies in a specific EFL context. This comparative method of teaching, sensitive to how the needs of both cultures should be considered, studies factors that can potentially impact on how an apology is given or received, and even whether or not an apology is actually offered. This kind of comparative analysis has the potential, as Byram (1997) notes, to turn "learners' attention back on their own practices, beliefs and social identities" (p. 20). The Ehime Maru incident provides a case where learners can consciously "understand that different evaluations of appropriateness may exist across cultures" (Meier, 1997, pp. 24-25). It should be noted here that contrastive analysis does have potential "traps" many of which have been detailed by Guest (2002). These include very real dangers such as oversimplification, polarization of cultural attributes and cultural reductivism (pp. 154-155). There is also the possibility that critical incidents, especially those as emotionally charged as the Ehime Maru case, might serve to create even stronger feelings about how one feels about members of another culture, thus reinforcing stereotypes and generalizations. Further, in terms of working with cases such as the Ehime Maru incident, special heed is called for with respect to Guest's fear that contrastive analysis can "lead to cross-cultural paralysis" (p. 25). Rather than reducing dealings with the target culture to a level of "hypersensitivity", this kind of study is meant to prepare students with the skills "to be able to look at their own interaction with others analytically with fresh eyes in order to solve the puzzle of what is going on" (Holliday, Hyde and Kullman, 2004, p. 2). Indeed, as a strategy contrastive analysis should involve the utmost in terms of sensitivity, acknowledgement of exceptions, and avoidance of "otherization". As such, close analysis of an intercultural critical incident gone wrong can help learners attain a level of development of intercultural sensitivity close to the initial phase of Bennett's (1998) ethnorelative stages. Intercultural analysis of this kind helps students to recognize, appreciate and accept difference and sets the stage for better linguistic understanding of apology strategies for actual use in English. For language teachers working in EFL contexts, mainly with lower-intermediate or intermediate level students, the research findings from Maeshiba, Yoshinaga, Kasper and Ross (1996) are of particular interest here. They found that native Japanese learners of English at the intermediate level were three times more likely to apply their native apologetic behaviours than more advanced learners. If indeed one aim of intercultural communication and language teaching is to help students improve pragmatic ability in English, cross-cultural studies of apologies such as the one presented here should be of value to the learner. The primary objectives of this lesson focus on developing a "critical cultural awareness" (Byram, p. 35) consisting of recognition of cultural differences, tolerance of others' values and understanding of cultural relativity. During this process of ethnorelative learning, the degree to which students choose to adopt the cultural norms regarding apology as an influence on actual production of the target language is left to the discretion of the individual student. The native-speaker cultural norms (in this case American) are presented alongside the Japanese cultural norms influencing apology. If, as Gieve (1999) hopes, such study "empowers students to co-create an interactive context of their own inter-cultural space" (p. 7), then the teaching approach can be deemed successful. Focus on the development of key intercultural communication skills such as self-awareness and cultural sensitivity can be seen as ends in and of themselves. IC background: Culturally influenced apologies between Japan and America Intercultural communication scholars from Japan and America have given a great deal of attention to cultural differences between the two countries and how they might negatively impact communication. A study by Barnlund and Yoshioka (1990) found that although both Japanese and Americans chose to offer apologies directly, most other forms and behaviours related to the delivery of apologies were fundamentally different. They conclude that the act of "offering an apology, what prompts it, to whom it is offered, how it is offered, with what consequences, embodies underlying cultural assumptions and values" (p. 203). While the focus of their study is on strategies for offering genuine apologies in interpersonal situations, they begin by comparing public apology strategies of similar real-life accidents to demonstrate differing cultural values. Differing assumptions, in our case with respect to apology behaviour, highlight what Gudykunst and Nishida (1994) have termed "violations of expectations" (p. 86) in a communication, causing an arousal in either or both interlocutors.