Silence and speech are inseparable, inescapably intertwined. The two ‘‘belong together’’ (Picard, 1952, p. 16). Like silence and music, we1 recognize each only because it is framed by the other (Boykan, 2004; Edgar, 1997). We perceive a tune only when silences, however short, mark the beginning and the end; we hear the silence after the last note dies away only because that song has ended and the next has not yet begun. So it is, too, with silence and speech. Each delineates the other not only in use, but also in study, as in Cappella’s (1979) research on talk–silence sequences. Although various scholars define silence and speech in myriad ways,2 the one constant seems to be that each is described in relation to the other. Thus, did Derrida (1978) equate silence and madness, incompatible with language (whichcannot be mad because it necessarily carries with it normality and sense) but inseparable from it nonetheless:
Silence plays the irreducible role of that which bears and haunts language, outside and against which alone language can emerge—‘‘against’’ here simultaneously designating the content from which form takes off by force, and the adversary against whom I assure and reassure myself by force. (p. 54)
In this definition, silence and speech become two metaphorical forces (field and object) in tension, as if silence were gravity—always present, always pulling at me—and speech were any movement of mine, however small, that, in the context of that field, inevitably must emerge in opposition to gravity, born of it, erupting from it by pushing harder than it is pulled, but always haunted by the intuition that as soon as my movement, my opposition, relents and begins to diminish the field will overwhelm it and absorb it once more.
Inseparability, of course, does not necessitate a dichotomous relationship. Yet, a dichotomy is exactly what silence and speech have become in much ‘‘Western’’3 scholarship. Reflecting their cultural values and assumptions about the nature of silence and speech, ‘‘Western’’ scholars tend to perceive the two as polar opposites. Silence and speech thus become two sides of a coin, an either/or pair of phenomena with very different faces that cannot co-occur.4 In the social sciences, for example, scholars (Hasegawa & Gudykunst, 1998; Johnson, Pearce, Tuten, & Sinclair, 2003; Wagener, Brand, & Kollmeier, 2006) often treat silence as either a dependent or independent variable in experiments—a variable that can be isolated from and compared to sound, a variable that can be operationalized and measured. Likewise, conversational analysts such as Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson (1974) and Wilson and Zimmerman (1986) treat silence and speech as mutually exclusive categories, each with unique discursive functions.
Speech enjoys primacy in this binary, with silence negatively perceived as a lack. At times, silence is simply the void in which speech occurs, the background or field that frames speech: ‘‘The basic assumption [is] that silences are meaningless and insignificant nothings before, between, and after interactive periods’’ (Enninger, 1991, p. 4). When we trap silence in the role of field and speech in the role of object, our scholarship suffers. Although allowing for the study of pragmatic silences such as intra- or interturn pauses (as in the previously mentioned traditional conversational analyses), viewing silence as mere frame for speech can preclude the study of seman- tic silences, silences that mean something.
Fortunately, some have avoided that trap. More than the blank page, the quiet room, more than the space in which speech manifests, contemporary scholars also often regard silence as the conspicuous and meaningful absence of a linguistic sign. With this conception of silence, in contrast to silence-as-frame, ‘‘all silences during interactive periods are significant absences [or] zero signifiers’’ (Enninger, 1991, p. 4). Glenn’s (2004) recent work on silence as rhetoric, for instance, treats silence as strategically used omissions. For her, silence is the deliberately unspoken. Althoughthey sometimes remove the word deliberate from the above equation, critical scholars tend to conceive of silence as omissions as well. One example would be Anzaldu ́a (1999), for whom silence is often silencing, the disciplining of her native tongue: the swallowed Chicano words, the unsung TexMex songs, the erased Spanish accent in English. Silence here comprises the imposed absence of speech and the theft of voice.
Silence and speech are inseparable, inescapably intertwined. The two ‘‘belong together’’ (Picard, 1952, p. 16). Like silence and music, we1 recognize each only because it is framed by the other (Boykan, 2004; Edgar, 1997). We perceive a tune only when silences, however short, mark the beginning and the end; we hear the silence after the last note dies away only because that song has ended and the next has not yet begun. So it is, too, with silence and speech. Each delineates the other not only in use, but also in study, as in Cappella’s (1979) research on talk–silence sequences. Although various scholars define silence and speech in myriad ways,2 the one constant seems to be that each is described in relation to the other. Thus, did Derrida (1978) equate silence and madness, incompatible with language (whichcannot be mad because it necessarily carries with it normality and sense) but inseparable from it nonetheless:Silence plays the irreducible role of that which bears and haunts language, outside and against which alone language can emerge—‘‘against’’ here simultaneously designating the content from which form takes off by force, and the adversary against whom I assure and reassure myself by force. (p. 54)In this definition, silence and speech become two metaphorical forces (field and object) in tension, as if silence were gravity—always present, always pulling at me—and speech were any movement of mine, however small, that, in the context of that field, inevitably must emerge in opposition to gravity, born of it, erupting from it by pushing harder than it is pulled, but always haunted by the intuition that as soon as my movement, my opposition, relents and begins to diminish the field will overwhelm it and absorb it once more.Inseparability, of course, does not necessitate a dichotomous relationship. Yet, a dichotomy is exactly what silence and speech have become in much ‘‘Western’’3 scholarship. Reflecting their cultural values and assumptions about the nature of silence and speech, ‘‘Western’’ scholars tend to perceive the two as polar opposites. Silence and speech thus become two sides of a coin, an either/or pair of phenomena with very different faces that cannot co-occur.4 In the social sciences, for example, scholars (Hasegawa & Gudykunst, 1998; Johnson, Pearce, Tuten, & Sinclair, 2003; Wagener, Brand, & Kollmeier, 2006) often treat silence as either a dependent or independent variable in experiments—a variable that can be isolated from and compared to sound, a variable that can be operationalized and measured. Likewise, conversational analysts such as Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson (1974) and Wilson and Zimmerman (1986) treat silence and speech as mutually exclusive categories, each with unique discursive functions.
Speech enjoys primacy in this binary, with silence negatively perceived as a lack. At times, silence is simply the void in which speech occurs, the background or field that frames speech: ‘‘The basic assumption [is] that silences are meaningless and insignificant nothings before, between, and after interactive periods’’ (Enninger, 1991, p. 4). When we trap silence in the role of field and speech in the role of object, our scholarship suffers. Although allowing for the study of pragmatic silences such as intra- or interturn pauses (as in the previously mentioned traditional conversational analyses), viewing silence as mere frame for speech can preclude the study of seman- tic silences, silences that mean something.
Fortunately, some have avoided that trap. More than the blank page, the quiet room, more than the space in which speech manifests, contemporary scholars also often regard silence as the conspicuous and meaningful absence of a linguistic sign. With this conception of silence, in contrast to silence-as-frame, ‘‘all silences during interactive periods are significant absences [or] zero signifiers’’ (Enninger, 1991, p. 4). Glenn’s (2004) recent work on silence as rhetoric, for instance, treats silence as strategically used omissions. For her, silence is the deliberately unspoken. Althoughthey sometimes remove the word deliberate from the above equation, critical scholars tend to conceive of silence as omissions as well. One example would be Anzaldu ́a (1999), for whom silence is often silencing, the disciplining of her native tongue: the swallowed Chicano words, the unsung TexMex songs, the erased Spanish accent in English. Silence here comprises the imposed absence of speech and the theft of voice.
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Silence and speech are inseparable, inescapably intertwined. The two ‘‘belong together’’ (Picard, 1952, p. 16). Like silence and music, we1 recognize each only because it is framed by the other (Boykan, 2004; Edgar, 1997). We perceive a tune only when silences, however short, mark the beginning and the end; we hear the silence after the last note dies away only because that song has ended and the next has not yet begun. So it is, too, with silence and speech. Each delineates the other not only in use, but also in study, as in Cappella’s (1979) research on talk–silence sequences. Although various scholars define silence and speech in myriad ways,2 the one constant seems to be that each is described in relation to the other. Thus, did Derrida (1978) equate silence and madness, incompatible with language (whichcannot be mad because it necessarily carries with it normality and sense) but inseparable from it nonetheless:
Silence plays the irreducible role of that which bears and haunts language, outside and against which alone language can emerge—‘‘against’’ here simultaneously designating the content from which form takes off by force, and the adversary against whom I assure and reassure myself by force. (p. 54)
In this definition, silence and speech become two metaphorical forces (field and object) in tension, as if silence were gravity—always present, always pulling at me—and speech were any movement of mine, however small, that, in the context of that field, inevitably must emerge in opposition to gravity, born of it, erupting from it by pushing harder than it is pulled, but always haunted by the intuition that as soon as my movement, my opposition, relents and begins to diminish the field will overwhelm it and absorb it once more.
Inseparability, of course, does not necessitate a dichotomous relationship. Yet, a dichotomy is exactly what silence and speech have become in much ‘‘Western’’3 scholarship. Reflecting their cultural values and assumptions about the nature of silence and speech, ‘‘Western’’ scholars tend to perceive the two as polar opposites. Silence and speech thus become two sides of a coin, an either/or pair of phenomena with very different faces that cannot co-occur.4 In the social sciences, for example, scholars (Hasegawa & Gudykunst, 1998; Johnson, Pearce, Tuten, & Sinclair, 2003; Wagener, Brand, & Kollmeier, 2006) often treat silence as either a dependent or independent variable in experiments—a variable that can be isolated from and compared to sound, a variable that can be operationalized and measured. Likewise, conversational analysts such as Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson (1974) and Wilson and Zimmerman (1986) treat silence and speech as mutually exclusive categories, each with unique discursive functions.
Speech enjoys primacy in this binary, with silence negatively perceived as a lack. At times, silence is simply the void in which speech occurs, the background or field that frames speech: ‘‘The basic assumption [is] that silences are meaningless and insignificant nothings before, between, and after interactive periods’’ (Enninger, 1991, p. 4). When we trap silence in the role of field and speech in the role of object, our scholarship suffers. Although allowing for the study of pragmatic silences such as intra- or interturn pauses (as in the previously mentioned traditional conversational analyses), viewing silence as mere frame for speech can preclude the study of seman- tic silences, silences that mean something.
Fortunately, some have avoided that trap. More than the blank page, the quiet room, more than the space in which speech manifests, contemporary scholars also often regard silence as the conspicuous and meaningful absence of a linguistic sign. With this conception of silence, in contrast to silence-as-frame, ‘‘all silences during interactive periods are significant absences [or] zero signifiers’’ (Enninger, 1991, p. 4). Glenn’s (2004) recent work on silence as rhetoric, for instance, treats silence as strategically used omissions. For her, silence is the deliberately unspoken. Althoughthey sometimes remove the word deliberate from the above equation, critical scholars tend to conceive of silence as omissions as well. One example would be Anzaldu ́a (1999), for whom silence is often silencing, the disciplining of her native tongue: the swallowed Chicano words, the unsung TexMex songs, the erased Spanish accent in English. Silence here comprises the imposed absence of speech and the theft of voice.
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