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Silence: Cultural Aspects
Silence: Cultural Aspects 379 Jaworski A (ed.) (1997). Silence: interdisciplinary perspectives. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Jaworski A (1998). ‘The silence of power and solidarity in Fallen sons.’ Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 33, 141–152. Jaworski A (2000). ‘Silence and small talk.’ In Coupland J (ed.) Small talk. London: Pearson Education. 110–132. Jaworski A & Galasin´ski D (2000). ‘Strategies of silence: omission and ambiguity in The black book of Polish censorship.’ Semiotica 131, 185–200. Jaworski A & Sachdev I (2004). ‘Teachers’ beliefs about students’ talk and silence: constructing academic success and failure through metapragmatic comments.’ In Jaworski A, Coupland N & Galasin´ski D (eds.) Metalanguage: social and ideological perspectives. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 227–244. Kurzon D (1998). Discourse of Silence. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Philips S U (1976). Some sources of cultural variability in the regulation of talk. Language in Society 5, 81–95.
Saville-Troike M (1985). ‘The place of silence in an integrated theory of communication.’ In Tannen D & Saville-Troike M (eds.). 3–18. Scollon R (1985). ‘The machine stops: silence in the metaphor of malfunction.’ In Tannen D & Saville-Troike M (eds.). 21–30. Sifianou M (1997). ‘Silence and politeness.’ In Jaworski A (ed.). 63–84. Tannen D (1990). ‘Silence as conflict management in fiction and drama: Pinter’s Betrayal and a short story, ‘‘Great Wits.’’’ In Grimshaw A (ed.) Conflict Talk. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 260–279. Tannen D & Saville-Troike M (eds.) (1985). Perspectives on silence. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Theismeyer L (ed.) (2003). Discourse and silencing: representation and the language of displacement. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Silence: Cultural Aspects M Saville-Troike, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA ß 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Silence as a Signifier Silence, perhaps because it is typically defined as the absence of acoustic signals, has long been neglected in linguistics. Nevertheless, it is an essential component of communication, and people who are members of the same speech community share as much in the uses and interpretations they give to silence as they do in regard to the linguistic forms that they use. Silence is a ‘signifier’ in Saussure’s sense of a meaningful element that is linked to a referent by cultural convention. As with spoken language, the linkage between silence and meaning may be symbolic, indexical, or iconic. The symbolic link of silence to meaning is arbitrary, with segments of silence assigned referential meaning much as speech segments are (e.g., /hors/ in English for the four-legged creature that eats hay). For example, a moment of silence may mean ‘respect,’ or silence in response to a request may mean either ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ depending on which interpretation has been assigned to it in particular contexts by the speech community. The indexical link of silence to meaning essentially involves the association of ideas. This level of signification goes beyond the literal content of messages and requires understanding of the interpretive frames within which they occur, as when silence indexes social relationships. The iconic link between form and meaning is a more direct and
‘natural’ one, although it is also importantly related to cultural considerations. Silence has meaning at this level, for example, in its representation of ‘death.’ This meaning is invoked in such metaphors as the silence of the tomb, and in Hamlet’s final utterance: The rest is silence. In contrast to its relative neglect within linguistics, silence has been accorded widespread attention in philosophy, anthropology, and literary analysis. A search for silence and silent in the MLA International Bibliography website, for example, yields over 3000 entries, most related to the role of silence as a sociocultural signifier.
Cultural Meanings and Social Distribution Ultimately all aspects of culture are potentially relevant to the domain of silence, but those that have the most direct bearing on this topic are social and institutional structure, values and attitudes held about language and speaking (or not speaking), and ways in which communicative knowledge and skills (including appropriate use of language and silence) are transmitted from one generation to the next and to new members of the group. Aspects of social structure that are indexed by silence commonly involve interaction phenomena that reflect status and role. Speech may be proscribed, for example, from a commoner to a chief, or between a man and his mother-in-law. Where power is accorded voice, silence is often indicative of powerlessness.
380 Silence: Cultural Aspects
Thus women may be required to keep silent in the presence of men, or children in the presence of adults. The opposite is the case in settings where self-exposure is required, and where the listener sits in silent judgment: e.g., in religious confession, psychotherapy, bureaucratic interviews, and jury trials. The amount of talk versus silence that is prescribed is closely tied to social values and norms, and can only be interpreted in its cultural context. Components of the interpretive frame that defines interactional silence include the physical and temporal setting, the type (or genre) of event, its general purpose and topic, the identity and relationship of participants, and the textual sequence (what has preceded and what is expected to follow). This interpretive frame is situated within the larger context of societal institutions, beliefs, and norms. Noninteractional silence may merely indicate absence of activity, but it too is imbued with conventional meaning when it is the frame for such contemplative and meditative events as that invoked in the JudeoChristian call to worship: The Lord is in His holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before Him. Other sociocultural functions include marking boundaries of events and serving as a background against which speech and other activity is interpreted. In some cases, the meaning of silence may be defined by a society’s covenants and laws. In the United States, for instance, suspected legal offenders must be explicitly informed that they have the ‘right to remain silent’ to avoid self-incrimination, although in other legal contexts a person may commit perjury by silence. Instances of implicit silence (i.e., non-disclosure) in business transactions have been ruled to constitute active concealment and fraud. In some societies, silence in interpersonal interaction may be invoked as a powerful instrument of social control (e.g., ‘shunning’ among the Eskimo, the Igbo, or the Amish). Acquisition of communicative competence requires learning the appropriate usage of silence in a community as well as of speech. Because cultural beliefs, values, and practices are integrally involved in the process, socializing young children or new group members to the meaning of silence may be considered part of the transmission of worldview.
Study of Silence Silence is often not documented because it does not attract attention in the same way that audible or visible behavior does. Norms for appropriate use in specific situations can perhaps most easily be inferred from the reaction of participants to their violation, or when explicit instruction or ‘correction’ is given to children or newcomers. Cultural beliefs and values
concerning silence may also be distilled in proverbs: e.g., Silence is golden (English); Because of the mouth the fish dies (Spanish); and Man becomes wise through the ear (Farsi). Additionally, cultural understandings regarding the contextual or interactional interpretation of silence may be made explicit in the choice of adjectives coupled with the term silence itself (e.g., ominous silence, reverent silence, eerie silence, smug silence, reflective silence, pregnant silence) or may be implied by terms used to describe people who exhibit relatively silent behavior (e.g., taciturn, reserved, secretive, circumspect). Metaphorical references that link silence to seemingly unrelated objects and events provide insights into how people conceptualize their world and the meanings they accord silence in relation to other experiential domains. As with study of other aspects of culture, the study of silence as a sociocultural signifier may be approached from functionalist, constitutive, and critical perspectives. Each of these informs and highlights different facets of the topic, and all may be needed to achieve adequate understanding. The functionalist approach is emphasized in viewing silence as a component of communication that functions in relation to such cultural categories as belief systems and social organization; the constitutive approach is emphasized in viewing silence as a dynamic interactional phenomenon that is involved in establishing role-relationships and expressing social identity; the critical approach is emphasized in viewing silence in relation to sociopolitical domination and subordination.
Asymmetries of Access to Speaking Privilege Differential speaking privileges and responsibilities are allocated to individuals or classes of people who are engaged in communicative events. Some of these are institutionally-determined, with lower-status (less powerful) members of a society or organization usually accorded less access to speaking opportunities than higher-status persons. Institutionally-determined asymmetries in participation also result from ritual constraints on speech versus silence, such as who has a responsibility to speak or remain silent in religious services, legal proceedings, funerals, classes in school, and public performances (e.g., concerts and movies). Other asymmetries are group-determined, with differential access to speaking roles delegated (e.g., in legislative bodies and committees), or assigned as the implicit or explicit outcome of group dynamics. Still others are individually-determined, often by personality factors (e.g., the relative aggressiveness of participants), tactical strategies (e.g., concealment or image manipulation), and attitudes (e.g., respect or
Silence: Cultural Aspects 381
disapproval). For example, silent attentiveness during relatively long stretches while one person ‘holds the floor’ may convey listener interest and respect, although the same absence of conversational backchannel noise in some speech communities (e.g., AfricanAmerican) would convey indifference or hostility.
Position and Duration of Silence in Discourse Discourse is both silence and sound. The former includes the pauses and hesitations that occur within and between turns of talk – the rhythmic patterns of silence. The meanings they carry are generally affective in nature, and typically connotative rather than denotative. These meanings may nonetheless be symbolic and conventional, as is seen in the various patterns of use and norms of interpretation in different speech communities. Cultural differences are particularly notable in the duration of pauses between turns, or ‘switching’ pauses. For example, certain American Indian groups are accustomed to waiting several minutes in silence before responding to a question or taking a turn in conversation, while the native English speakers they may be talking to have very short time frames for responses or conversational turn-taking, and find long silences distressful. For members of these particular American Indian groups, a shorter duration may be interpreted as impoliteness, and as not giving adequate consideration to the topic under discussion. For native English speakers, a longer duration may be interpreted as unfriendliness or shyness, lack of knowledge, or not wanting to be involved. In the context of legal proceedings, native English speakers are likely to (mis)interpret long pauses by defendants and witnesses as signs of lack of cooperation and of evasiveness, perhaps even of guilt. The duration of pauses within speaking turns varies by cultural group membership, but it is influenced more by situational factors than are switching turns. Pauses may reflect time that is needed for mental search processes, especially in cognitively demanding speaking tasks, and there are pauses that reflect encoding difficulties. Duration of pausing is strongly influenced by whether the speech is preplanned or spontaneous. The genre of discourse also influences pausing position and duration, with poetry reading, prose reading, spontaneous narratives, and conversations all showing different patterns of placement and duration of silence in relation to sound, whatever the cultural context. Silence occurs in terminal positions within discourse as well as in switching and medial slots. Utterances and even whole communicative events may be completed in silence when the topic is a particularly
delicate one or the word that would be used is taboo, or when the situation is emotionally loaded and the speaker is ‘at a loss’ for words. The Japanese term haragei ‘wordless communication’ captures the essence of this latter usage. On one side, silence functions to structure discourse. On another, silence often conveys a message precisely because it forms part of discourses that are additionally structured by sound.
Special Group Uses of Silence Cultural aspects of silence are often most dramatically apparent in special group uses of silence. These are typically associated with activity domain (e.g., religion) and with dimensions of power. Extreme manifestations mark some religious group membership, as the vow of silence required by certain monastic orders. Silence is needed in Quaker worship services in order to allow ‘space’ in which God can work; in some ritual contexts, any speech at all is considered profane. The ban on speech is often associated with setting, with entry into a place of worship calling for silence even when no service is in progress. The silence is often accompanied by special patterns of head, hand, and body position and movement. Silence is a signifier of power when it indexes the capacity of some individuals, groups, and institutions in a society to control others. From a critical perspective, most notable are coercive acts that force certain participants to speak, limit expression, or maintain silence. These may be institutionally prescribed for the maintenance of system and order, such as teachers’ authority in school classrooms to control speaking rights, or judges’ authority in courtrooms, or may be self-imposed by common agreement, as when a group adopts Roberts’ Rules of Order. However, when whole classes of members of a society (such as women or members of certain ethnic, social, or religious groups) are compelled to remain silent by being denied speaking rights, their silence becomes a sign of oppression, and may even, to the discerning observer, ‘speak louder than words.’
Bibliography Bruneau T J (1973). ‘Communicative silences: forms and functions.’ Journal of Communication 17, 36–42. Jaworski A (ed.) (1997). Silence: interdisciplinary perspectives. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Saville-Troike M (2003). The ethnography of communication (3rd edn.). Oxford: Blackwell. Tannen D & Saville-Troike M (eds.) (1985). Perspectives on silence. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Tiersma P (1995). ‘The language of silence.’ Rutgers Law Review 48, 1–99.
Saville-Troike M (1985). ‘The place of silence in an integrated theory of communication.’ In Tannen D & Saville-Troike M (eds.). 3–18. Scollon R (1985). ‘The machine stops: silence in the metaphor of malfunction.’ In Tannen D & Saville-Troike M (eds.). 21–30. Sifianou M (1997). ‘Silence and politeness.’ In Jaworski A (ed.). 63–84. Tannen D (1990). ‘Silence as conflict management in fiction and drama: Pinter’s Betrayal and a short story, ‘‘Great Wits.’’’ In Grimshaw A (ed.) Conflict Talk. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 260–279. Tannen D & Saville-Troike M (eds.) (1985). Perspectives on silence. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Theismeyer L (ed.) (2003). Discourse and silencing: representation and the language of displacement. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Silence: Cultural Aspects M Saville-Troike, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA ß 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Silence as a Signifier Silence, perhaps because it is typically defined as the absence of acoustic signals, has long been neglected in linguistics. Nevertheless, it is an essential component of communication, and people who are members of the same speech community share as much in the uses and interpretations they give to silence as they do in regard to the linguistic forms that they use. Silence is a ‘signifier’ in Saussure’s sense of a meaningful element that is linked to a referent by cultural convention. As with spoken language, the linkage between silence and meaning may be symbolic, indexical, or iconic. The symbolic link of silence to meaning is arbitrary, with segments of silence assigned referential meaning much as speech segments are (e.g., /hors/ in English for the four-legged creature that eats hay). For example, a moment of silence may mean ‘respect,’ or silence in response to a request may mean either ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ depending on which interpretation has been assigned to it in particular contexts by the speech community. The indexical link of silence to meaning essentially involves the association of ideas. This level of signification goes beyond the literal content of messages and requires understanding of the interpretive frames within which they occur, as when silence indexes social relationships. The iconic link between form and meaning is a more direct and
‘natural’ one, although it is also importantly related to cultural considerations. Silence has meaning at this level, for example, in its representation of ‘death.’ This meaning is invoked in such metaphors as the silence of the tomb, and in Hamlet’s final utterance: The rest is silence. In contrast to its relative neglect within linguistics, silence has been accorded widespread attention in philosophy, anthropology, and literary analysis. A search for silence and silent in the MLA International Bibliography website, for example, yields over 3000 entries, most related to the role of silence as a sociocultural signifier.
Cultural Meanings and Social Distribution Ultimately all aspects of culture are potentially relevant to the domain of silence, but those that have the most direct bearing on this topic are social and institutional structure, values and attitudes held about language and speaking (or not speaking), and ways in which communicative knowledge and skills (including appropriate use of language and silence) are transmitted from one generation to the next and to new members of the group. Aspects of social structure that are indexed by silence commonly involve interaction phenomena that reflect status and role. Speech may be proscribed, for example, from a commoner to a chief, or between a man and his mother-in-law. Where power is accorded voice, silence is often indicative of powerlessness.
380 Silence: Cultural Aspects
Thus women may be required to keep silent in the presence of men, or children in the presence of adults. The opposite is the case in settings where self-exposure is required, and where the listener sits in silent judgment: e.g., in religious confession, psychotherapy, bureaucratic interviews, and jury trials. The amount of talk versus silence that is prescribed is closely tied to social values and norms, and can only be interpreted in its cultural context. Components of the interpretive frame that defines interactional silence include the physical and temporal setting, the type (or genre) of event, its general purpose and topic, the identity and relationship of participants, and the textual sequence (what has preceded and what is expected to follow). This interpretive frame is situated within the larger context of societal institutions, beliefs, and norms. Noninteractional silence may merely indicate absence of activity, but it too is imbued with conventional meaning when it is the frame for such contemplative and meditative events as that invoked in the JudeoChristian call to worship: The Lord is in His holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before Him. Other sociocultural functions include marking boundaries of events and serving as a background against which speech and other activity is interpreted. In some cases, the meaning of silence may be defined by a society’s covenants and laws. In the United States, for instance, suspected legal offenders must be explicitly informed that they have the ‘right to remain silent’ to avoid self-incrimination, although in other legal contexts a person may commit perjury by silence. Instances of implicit silence (i.e., non-disclosure) in business transactions have been ruled to constitute active concealment and fraud. In some societies, silence in interpersonal interaction may be invoked as a powerful instrument of social control (e.g., ‘shunning’ among the Eskimo, the Igbo, or the Amish). Acquisition of communicative competence requires learning the appropriate usage of silence in a community as well as of speech. Because cultural beliefs, values, and practices are integrally involved in the process, socializing young children or new group members to the meaning of silence may be considered part of the transmission of worldview.
Study of Silence Silence is often not documented because it does not attract attention in the same way that audible or visible behavior does. Norms for appropriate use in specific situations can perhaps most easily be inferred from the reaction of participants to their violation, or when explicit instruction or ‘correction’ is given to children or newcomers. Cultural beliefs and values
concerning silence may also be distilled in proverbs: e.g., Silence is golden (English); Because of the mouth the fish dies (Spanish); and Man becomes wise through the ear (Farsi). Additionally, cultural understandings regarding the contextual or interactional interpretation of silence may be made explicit in the choice of adjectives coupled with the term silence itself (e.g., ominous silence, reverent silence, eerie silence, smug silence, reflective silence, pregnant silence) or may be implied by terms used to describe people who exhibit relatively silent behavior (e.g., taciturn, reserved, secretive, circumspect). Metaphorical references that link silence to seemingly unrelated objects and events provide insights into how people conceptualize their world and the meanings they accord silence in relation to other experiential domains. As with study of other aspects of culture, the study of silence as a sociocultural signifier may be approached from functionalist, constitutive, and critical perspectives. Each of these informs and highlights different facets of the topic, and all may be needed to achieve adequate understanding. The functionalist approach is emphasized in viewing silence as a component of communication that functions in relation to such cultural categories as belief systems and social organization; the constitutive approach is emphasized in viewing silence as a dynamic interactional phenomenon that is involved in establishing role-relationships and expressing social identity; the critical approach is emphasized in viewing silence in relation to sociopolitical domination and subordination.
Asymmetries of Access to Speaking Privilege Differential speaking privileges and responsibilities are allocated to individuals or classes of people who are engaged in communicative events. Some of these are institutionally-determined, with lower-status (less powerful) members of a society or organization usually accorded less access to speaking opportunities than higher-status persons. Institutionally-determined asymmetries in participation also result from ritual constraints on speech versus silence, such as who has a responsibility to speak or remain silent in religious services, legal proceedings, funerals, classes in school, and public performances (e.g., concerts and movies). Other asymmetries are group-determined, with differential access to speaking roles delegated (e.g., in legislative bodies and committees), or assigned as the implicit or explicit outcome of group dynamics. Still others are individually-determined, often by personality factors (e.g., the relative aggressiveness of participants), tactical strategies (e.g., concealment or image manipulation), and attitudes (e.g., respect or
Silence: Cultural Aspects 381
disapproval). For example, silent attentiveness during relatively long stretches while one person ‘holds the floor’ may convey listener interest and respect, although the same absence of conversational backchannel noise in some speech communities (e.g., AfricanAmerican) would convey indifference or hostility.
Position and Duration of Silence in Discourse Discourse is both silence and sound. The former includes the pauses and hesitations that occur within and between turns of talk – the rhythmic patterns of silence. The meanings they carry are generally affective in nature, and typically connotative rather than denotative. These meanings may nonetheless be symbolic and conventional, as is seen in the various patterns of use and norms of interpretation in different speech communities. Cultural differences are particularly notable in the duration of pauses between turns, or ‘switching’ pauses. For example, certain American Indian groups are accustomed to waiting several minutes in silence before responding to a question or taking a turn in conversation, while the native English speakers they may be talking to have very short time frames for responses or conversational turn-taking, and find long silences distressful. For members of these particular American Indian groups, a shorter duration may be interpreted as impoliteness, and as not giving adequate consideration to the topic under discussion. For native English speakers, a longer duration may be interpreted as unfriendliness or shyness, lack of knowledge, or not wanting to be involved. In the context of legal proceedings, native English speakers are likely to (mis)interpret long pauses by defendants and witnesses as signs of lack of cooperation and of evasiveness, perhaps even of guilt. The duration of pauses within speaking turns varies by cultural group membership, but it is influenced more by situational factors than are switching turns. Pauses may reflect time that is needed for mental search processes, especially in cognitively demanding speaking tasks, and there are pauses that reflect encoding difficulties. Duration of pausing is strongly influenced by whether the speech is preplanned or spontaneous. The genre of discourse also influences pausing position and duration, with poetry reading, prose reading, spontaneous narratives, and conversations all showing different patterns of placement and duration of silence in relation to sound, whatever the cultural context. Silence occurs in terminal positions within discourse as well as in switching and medial slots. Utterances and even whole communicative events may be completed in silence when the topic is a particularly
delicate one or the word that would be used is taboo, or when the situation is emotionally loaded and the speaker is ‘at a loss’ for words. The Japanese term haragei ‘wordless communication’ captures the essence of this latter usage. On one side, silence functions to structure discourse. On another, silence often conveys a message precisely because it forms part of discourses that are additionally structured by sound.
Special Group Uses of Silence Cultural aspects of silence are often most dramatically apparent in special group uses of silence. These are typically associated with activity domain (e.g., religion) and with dimensions of power. Extreme manifestations mark some religious group membership, as the vow of silence required by certain monastic orders. Silence is needed in Quaker worship services in order to allow ‘space’ in which God can work; in some ritual contexts, any speech at all is considered profane. The ban on speech is often associated with setting, with entry into a place of worship calling for silence even when no service is in progress. The silence is often accompanied by special patterns of head, hand, and body position and movement. Silence is a signifier of power when it indexes the capacity of some individuals, groups, and institutions in a society to control others. From a critical perspective, most notable are coercive acts that force certain participants to speak, limit expression, or maintain silence. These may be institutionally prescribed for the maintenance of system and order, such as teachers’ authority in school classrooms to control speaking rights, or judges’ authority in courtrooms, or may be self-imposed by common agreement, as when a group adopts Roberts’ Rules of Order. However, when whole classes of members of a society (such as women or members of certain ethnic, social, or religious groups) are compelled to remain silent by being denied speaking rights, their silence becomes a sign of oppression, and may even, to the discerning observer, ‘speak louder than words.’
Bibliography Bruneau T J (1973). ‘Communicative silences: forms and functions.’ Journal of Communication 17, 36–42. Jaworski A (ed.) (1997). Silence: interdisciplinary perspectives. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Saville-Troike M (2003). The ethnography of communication (3rd edn.). Oxford: Blackwell. Tannen D & Saville-Troike M (eds.) (1985). Perspectives on silence. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Tiersma P (1995). ‘The language of silence.’ Rutgers Law Review 48, 1–99.