Silence: The Phenomenon and Its Ontological Significance
... Silence, as the absence of something, is performative because it offers space for creation, reveals what was hidden, and transforms one's perspectives and realities (Bigo, 2018;Scott, 2018). A wide range of disciplines has explored the concept of silence, including philosophy (e.g., Dauenhauer, 1980;Merleau-Ponty, 1962;Picard, 1964), psychology (e.g., Freud, 1953;Lehmann, 2016;Valle, 2019), anthropology (e.g., Basso, 1970;Carbaugh, 1999;Le Breton, 1997), sociology (e.g., Dragojlovic and Samuels, 2021;Scott, 2018;Zerubavel, 2006), and linguistics (e.g., Acheson, 2008;Bruneau, 1973;Jaworski, 1997). Despite the interdisciplinary debates and a variety of-sometimes conflicting-definitions of silence, researchers tend to conceptualize silence as an active human performance that "shows itself in a multiplicity of profiles" (Dauenhauer, 1980), and as a "positive and intersubjective phenomenon" (Acheson, 2008). ...
... A wide range of disciplines has explored the concept of silence, including philosophy (e.g., Dauenhauer, 1980;Merleau-Ponty, 1962;Picard, 1964), psychology (e.g., Freud, 1953;Lehmann, 2016;Valle, 2019), anthropology (e.g., Basso, 1970;Carbaugh, 1999;Le Breton, 1997), sociology (e.g., Dragojlovic and Samuels, 2021;Scott, 2018;Zerubavel, 2006), and linguistics (e.g., Acheson, 2008;Bruneau, 1973;Jaworski, 1997). Despite the interdisciplinary debates and a variety of-sometimes conflicting-definitions of silence, researchers tend to conceptualize silence as an active human performance that "shows itself in a multiplicity of profiles" (Dauenhauer, 1980), and as a "positive and intersubjective phenomenon" (Acheson, 2008). ...
Consumer identity work refers to the reflexive and ongoing process by which individuals create, manage, and communicate their sense of identity through consumption. Although the literature highlights the strategies by which consumers engage with marketplace resources, less is known about the more internal and reflexive aspects of identity work. In an environment saturated with identity choices and imperatives, our study seeks to understand how consumers’ experiences of silence—defined as the temporary absence of external stimuli—contribute to their identity work. Based on in-depth interviews, we demonstrate that the consumption of silence creates an “in-between space” in the dialectic of identification. Specifically, we show that silence functions as (a) a protective boundary that preserves consumers’ sense of agency from external demands; (b) a symbol of freedom for self-actualization used to present one’s identity; and (c) an inner space for reflection that fosters a transformative internal dialogue.
... Como reação ao tecnicismo, ao parlatório e aos ruídos que se alastraram no mundo contemporâneo, Gonçalo M. Tavares concede, em seus textos, maior espaço aos silêncios significativos que é, sem dúvida, irredutível ao verbo e inquebrantável ante o ruído e ao barulho sem sentido que imperam na contemporaneidade. Não obstante, o silêncio não é apenas um ingrediente para descobrir a subjetividade humana e lá encontrar a libertação e, consequentemente, alcançar a iluminação (DAUENHAUER, 1980). O silêncio pode significar, sim, paz e tranquilidade na vida do sujeito, mas pode também ser expressão de poder. ...
... O exercício do silêncio é, sem dúvida, uma forma de influenciar e de determinar os rumos da linguagem (DAUENHAUER, 1980). Sabe-se que procurar controlar as pessoas por meio do silêncio é, incontestavelmente, demonstração de poder. ...
Este artigo tem como objetivo principal discutir a política do silêncio, bem como os seus efeitos, em Aprender a rezar na era da técnica de Gonçalo M. Tavares, a partir de sua personagem central: Lenz Buchmann. Embora o silêncio seja geralmente associado à ideia de falta de comunicação, ele, na verdade, permeia a relação do ser humano com a linguagem. Reportando aos estudos de Eni Orlandi (2007), o silêncio é sentido em si mesmo, o que significa que os sentidos passam pelo silêncio e se constroem nele. Quando o silêncio é considerado a partir de sua dimensão política, ele passa a ser entendido como uma ferramenta de opressão e de controle dos sentidos. Com este estudo, cuja perspectiva é a política do silêncio, espera-se evidenciar os mecanismo de opressão e silenciamento empregados por Lenz Buchmann, bem como expor os seus efeitos em Aprender a rezar na era da técnica
... É por isso que na primeira parte do nosso artigo tratamos do "silêncio como via longa" enfatizando a sua dimensão interior na linha do silêncio vivido pelas Ordens religiosas de recolhimento de estrita observância (Merton, 1953(Merton, , 1960MacCulloch, 2013). Por outras palavras, o silêncio que nos importa é aquele de tipo espiritual, ontológico no sentido que lhe dão Max Picard (1954), Joseph Rassam (1980) e Bernard Dauenhauer (1980), e não tanto o "silêncio psicolinguístico", o "silêncio interactivo" e o "silêncio sociocultural" (Bruneau, 1973: 17-46) que são objeto de estudo no quadro da Retórica, das Ciências da Comunicação, da Linguística (particularmente da Pragmática e da Semântica), da Literatura, entre outras disciplinas. Na segunda parte tratamos de uma pedagogia do silêncio preocupada em dar uma orientação filosófico-educacional ao silêncio interior pela simples razão de que este não se basta por si sem estar guiado por um conjunto de finalidades sejam elas espirituais, filosóficas, educacionais, retórico-linguísticas e comunicacionais, psicológicas, etc. Por fim, concluímos que esta posição, que privilegia o silêncio interior e uma pedagogia que lhe seja adequada não se opõe à Palavra desde que esta seja justa, pregnante de sentido e emergente do silêncio interior que deve ser de caráter reflexivo. ...
... À luz dos ritos iniciáticos esta valorização religiosa da morte ritual, que consiste na vitória sobre o medo da morte real e na crença na possibilidade de uma sobrevivência espiritual do ser humano, revela-se um dos ensinamentos a reter e a pensar num mundo des-sacralizado que esqueceu o poder salvífico da iniciação de tipo tradicional. E um dos modos de restaurar-se um mundo mais espiritual, mais sacralizado, mais convivial é precisamente através do silêncio interior por contraposição ao silêncio exterior ou epidérmico.: Assim, aquele silêncio que nos importa é o de natureza mais ontológica, mais espiritual, mais denso ontologicamente numa perspetiva de tipo essencialista (Dauenhauer, 1980). Esta proposta de silêncio afasta-se da perspetiva funcionalista dos "estudos da comunicaçao, da semântica, da linguística da semiótica" e das "perspetivas sociais e pragmáticas" (Bruneau, 1973: 17-46;Jaworski, 1993Jaworski, : 28-97, 1997. ...
... It links silence as an "active performance of arts that employ gestures" (Agich, 1995, p. 222). As Dauenhauer (1982), says, this relationship is considered to be the "interplay of man [sic] and the world" (p. 219). ...
... In his work, he also shows that such deep silence gives insight into humans, their world and their being. Silence has a stronger emphasis in preference to speech when it is used for verbal expression in certain situations (Dauenhauer, 1982). For example, instead of talking, we stop using words and also it enables people to come closer. ...
South Asians are a minority group generally reported in New Zealand as part of the category ‘Asian’. Studies in New Zealand have raised questions about how the huge diversity of peoples from Asia or from Asian backgrounds can be covered by the generic term ‘Asian’. The process of acknowledging and accepting South Asians as a minority group has been an ongoing debate globally. This thesis focuses on
domestic South Asian students in New Zealand universities by asking:
What measures have been successful in improving outcomes for domestic South Asian
undergraduate students at AUT?
This research reported in this thesis used a single case study approach to study domestic South Asian students enrolled in bachelors programmes at Auckland University of Technology (AUT). The study used mixed modes of data collection, both qualitative and quantitative, to conduct the research. Analysis of quantitative data found that there has been a growth in the domestic South Asian population in the Auckland region but an underrepresentation of this population in bachelor’s degree enrolments at AUT. Furthermore, domestic South Asian students’ degree completion rates in AUT are below the university average rate of completion. However, the lack of sufficiently detailed data means these problems are largely masked by South Asian students being subsumed into the category ‘Asian’. Universities in New Zealand and institutions in the tertiary education system more generally, need to collect more fine‐grained data so that the performance of different groups of students can be observed and responded to appropriately where necessary.
Interviews with 16 participants from academic and professional staff at AUT and two focus groups with nine domestic South Asian students studying at AUT, were carried out and participants invited to share their experiences. Staff shared their experiences of teaching and supporting students and the students shared their current experiences of their study journey at AUT. Four themes emerged from the qualitative data: 1) the absence of fine‐grained data to inform participation and completion of domestic South Asian students in undergraduate programs; 2) issues with academic and support services offered to students; 3) the absence of South Asians in university policy and strategy; and 4) a lack of acceptance iii and acknowledgement that meant participants felt difficulty in integrating into and feeling part of the wider student body. In addition, as a minority group, students encountered financial hardship when combining work and study, and if they did not have targeted financial support or scholarships. Despite efforts made by AUT to provide academic and pastoral support to students overall, this study finds that minority domestic South Asian students within the broader Asian group are struggling and the lack of adequate support for these students has serious implications for them, and for universities such as AUT.
... Desde la segunda mitad del siglo XX, el silencio ha generado un gran interés interdisciplinario de numerosas investigaciones en áreas de psicolingüística y sociolingüística (Baker 1955;Bruneau 1973;Jensen 1973;Zimmerman y West 1975), pragmática (Jaworski 1992;Kurzon 2007;Ephratt 2008), antropología y etno-grafía de la comunicación (Basso 1970;Tannen y Saville-Troike 1985;Jaworski 1997), comunicación no verbal (Poyatos 2002, comunicación intercultural y enseñanza de lenguas (Nakane 2007; Bao 2020), política y sociología (Noelle-Neumann 1984;Ferguson 2003;Clair 1998;Le Breton 2006), filosofía, arte y estética (Sontag 1969;Dauenhauer 1980), crítica y teoría literaria (Block de Behar 1995;Farmer 2001;Steiner 2013;Corbin 2019), etc., y, por supuesto, retórica (Valesio 1986;Glenn 2004). ...
El silencio, que suele ser considerado como antítesis de la palabra y una forma pasiva en la comunicación, está cargado de significados, funciones y retoricidad. El presente trabajo tiene como objetivo hacer una breve indagación del silencio a la luz de algunos conceptos fundamentales de la Retórica Cultural —motor metafórico, interdiscursividad, poliacroasis, cenestesia comunicativa y retórica en sociedad—, enfocada en dos aspectos específicos: el silencio en contextos interculturales y el silencio como herramienta de protesta social. El significado y la percepción del silencio varían en culturas y colectivos con distintos estilos comunicativos y pueden causar confusiones o malentendidos, por lo que se requiere una mayor competencia intercultural en la cenestesia comunicativa. En la dimensión social, en contra del silencio impuesto por el poder dominante, especialmente en regímenes autoritarios, el silencio también es utilizado en muchas ocasiones como una forma de resistencia y protesta.
... However, only the past two decades indeed witnessed responsive research efforts. If most appeals during the 1950s-1990s asked for a consideration of the overall study of silence as a meaning-making mechanism [21,31,[40][41][42] , the yearning for silence research since the 2000s has become increasingly concrete through tangible suggestions for investigating social communication. ...
Drawing on research-based discourse, this article provides an updated overview of what silence means in social psychology. Such meanings can be viewed from an interpersonal dimension and an intrapersonal dimension. That is, silence can be externally or internally generated. The external process sees silence as a response to the social environment, while the internal process views silence as an individual choice. The article argues that silence has a sociological nature. When a silent person sends out a silent message to the public (such as showing resistance or alienation), this person not only expresses their personal view but also acts on behalf of others. The article rests on the ideal of sociological imagination to argue that an individual’s issue of concern or trouble, seemingly a limited social experience, may not be a single case but can represent the concern of a group or a society. This means that the lives of individuals can signify the status and reaction of their community. By presenting silence from various individual perspectives, the article showcases the richness of what silence means and what it does in social contexts.
... 'A lost file', as Cornelia Vismann noted, 'can only be discovered if there exists a hint that something is missing' (Vismann 2006, 103). Such decidedly material gaps where something once was but is no longer might, when discovered, speak quite loudly (O'Toole 1989;Dauenhauer 1980;Schneider 2013). ...
While the history and practices of collecting have received considerable attention over the past few decades, the notion of erasure – of the deleting, removal or destruction of material, whether deliberate or otherwise – has remained largely in the shadows. We challenge this neglect by placing erasure centre stage and treating it as a productive phenomenon in its own right. Indeed, we suggest that it forms a significant precondition for the very possibility of memory and collections. This article draws upon a recent turn to consider questions of forgetting, ignorance and ending to lay out the grounds for analysing the various roles played by erasure in making and unmaking our world. Inspired by Paul Connerton's discussion of different types of forgetting, we present five distinct forms of erasure that we regard as principally important: (i) repressive erasure, (ii) protective erasure, (iii) operative erasure, (iv) amending erasure and (v) calamitous and neglectful erasure. In each case, we discuss the characteristic logic of the erasure at hand and provide examples of the historical and media-specific forms in which it has been enacted. Our aim in doing so is to provide future researchers with some of the analytical tools and perspectives necessary to engage in further erasure studies . For if we are interested in making sense of the shifting and complex world we inhabit, then the interdisciplinary study of the compelling yet elusive phenomenon of erasure is an excellent place to start.
... "Certainly architecture is concerned with much more than just its physical attributes [5]. It is a many-layered thing. ...
Architecture is essentially an extension of nature into the man-made realm, providing the ground for perception and the horizon of experiencing and understanding the world. Architecture is a celebration of life and manifestation of an idea; it encodes messages and emotes feelings. Architecture has the power to trigger the embodied thoughts and memories of humanity, our ideas, and our emotions. Space sequence and its organization communicate at three levels-sensorial, experiential, and associational. The silence that speaks to an experience of pause, when, at a loss of words, we reveal the presence of our emotions and our senses. In architecture the understanding of physical space is achieved through our five senses, which may be conveyed through tranquility, sadness, spirituality, minimalism, and the spatial desire quality of space. In this paper, the author has reviewed the architect's venerable works and developed a phenomenological perspective of silence to illustrate its principle through architectural elements of silence in various contemporary buildings across different built environment typologies.
... La voluntariedad de su emisión refuerza la idea del silencio como expresión […] El silencio es comunicación porque forma parte del mensaje comunicativo y, hasta cuando no se quiere decir nada, con un silencio, se comunica" (Torras, 2015: 35). 19 Aquí discrepamos de la investigadora Michal Ephratt que sí entiende el silencio, aunque desde una perspectiva lingüística, como ausencia absoluta de sonidos (Ephratt, 2018: 6 Scollon y Scollon, 1979, 1981Dauenhauer, 1980). El sistema cultural como marco de interpretación es crucial e indispensable. ...
Aunque el silencio como fenómeno es transversal y universal, la inercia de una visión lingüístico-céntrica negativa impregna el silencio de concepciones erróneas o matizables que estigmatizan su signo. Además, en un plano psicoacústico, el signo del silencio solo es previsible con dificultades en una dimensión general debido a su extradependencia del contexto, rasgo que implica que la situación y el aquí y ahora son partes indivisibles del silencio y de su significado y que crea una gran variedad de representámenes. Se propone una primera acotación analítica entre el silencio como vehículo de sonido y hablar del silencio. Seguidamente, se distingue el silencio humano y no humano y el silencio intencionado y no intencionado. Una de las singularidades del signo del silencio es su posible origen no humano y no intencionado. En esta investigación, se establece un primer marco aproximativo para, en un futuro, analizar los componentes del signo del silencio.
... Silence in a classroom can make students-and even some teachers-squirm. One type of silence is merely the absence of sounds or noise; but there is another sense that distinguishes being silent from saying nothing (Dauenhauer 1980), and it is this latter sense that is salient in this discussion. It is the kind of silence that arises when one individual gives another the so-called "silent treatment"-it is active and intentional. ...
This paper addresses the alleged tension between the kind of strong apophaticism endorsed by Maimonides and his view of worshiping God. After considering some extant resolutions to this problem, I offer a proposal that utilizes the role of silence and imitative activity in Maimonides. While this solution may not have been one that Maimonides would have offered, I argue that Maimonides had conceptual resources for offering a promising solution within his theological framework.
... Yet, Dingli's (2015) wake-up call "We need to talk about silence" can be seen as a tipping point. Since then, advancement in conceptualization and theorization of silence has set in (e.g., Hence, political scholars often employ a cross-disciplinary perspective to grasp silence ontologically and epistemologically, including for instance communication studies (e.g., Tannen and Saville-Troike 1985;Jaworski 1993;Bilmes 1994Bilmes , 1997Kurzon 1998;Thiesmeyer 2003;Ephratt 2008;Schröter 2013;Schröter and Taylor 2018), memory studies (e.g., Ben-Ze'ev, Winter, and Ginio 2010;Assmann and Assmann 2013;Choi 2014;Dessingué and Winter 2016;Fowler 2018;Russell 2018), philosophy (e.g., Wittgenstein 1969;Heidegger 1972;Nietzsche 1999;Picard 2009;Kierkegaard 2013), and sociology (e.g., Dauenhauer 1980;Luhmann and Fuchs 1989;Bellebaum 1992;Zerubavel 2006;Hahn 2014). Still, conceptual and theoretical differences remain. ...
Germany is considered a role model for dealing with past mass atrocities. In particular, the social reappraisal of the Holocaust is emblematic of this. However, when considering the genocide on the Herero and Nama in present-day Namibia, it is puzzling that an official recognition was only pronounced after almost 120 years, in May 2021. For a long time, silence surrounded this colonial cruelty in German political discourse. Although the discourse on German responsibility toward Namibia emerged after the end of World War II, it initially appeared detached from the genocide. That silence on colonial atrocities is to be considered a cruelty itself. Studies on silence have been expanding and becoming richer. Building on these works, the paper sets two goals: First, it advances the theorization of silence by producing a new typology, which is then integrated into discourse-bound identity theory. Second, it applies this theory to the analysis of the silencing and later acknowledging of the genocide on the Herero and Nama by German political elites. To this end, Bundestag debates, official documents, and statements by relevant political actors are analyzed in the period from 1980 to 2021. The results reveal the dynamics between hegemonic and counter-hegemonic discursive formations, how those are shifting in a period of 40 years, and what role silence plays in it. Beyond our emphasis on the genocide on the Herero and Nama, our findings might benefit future studies as the approach proposed in this paper can make silence a tangible research object for global studies.
... 207-213. 89 Dauenhauer, 1980. Silence, the Phenomenon and its Ontological Significance, University of Indiana Press,P. 5. adamant; he refuses to abandon the humble animal. ...
The article attempts to deal with the proposition that human being’s incapacity to imagine its own death, the state of non-being necessitates the thinking of the animal. A critical and close reading of specific Brāhmaṇa and Mahābhārata texts would spotlight that it is man’s rationalizing capacity that disavows and denies the question of intelligibility of the actions of the animal. The animal is the undisclosable which man keeps and brings to light as such. The article would further investigate if the question of our forgetfulness toward the fact that we are born in debt to death has any linkage to the sacrificial logic of killing animals as elaborated in Brāhmaṇical hermeneutics. It examines how the ethical is thoroughly coextensive with the animal’s act of hospitality/hostility as an affective, purposive and reasoned response toward the other. In the course of the analysis of the jantu and pakshî upākhyāns in the Àraṇyak and Śanti Parvas of the Mahābhārata, the article tries to understand and explore if the experience of the animalitas is intrinsic to the structure of human reason, complicating the nature and notion of a priori.
... The early essentialist perspective on silence in the social sciences (e.g. Dauenhauer 1980;Tannen and Saville-Troike 1985), referred to relevant philosophical works on the phenomenon (e.g. Kierkegaard 1843Kierkegaard /2013Picard 1948Picard /2009). ...
Contrary to the common promise of the UN Charter, mass atrocities continue to be committed as the wars in Yemen and South Sudan or the fate of the Rohingya in Myanmar demonstrate. Using Germany as an example, this article examines the thesis that mass atrocity situations are silenced which inhibits their politicisation. Drawing on interdisciplinary literature on silencing and theoretical approaches (agenda-setting, desecuritisation, discourse-bound identity theory) a working definition of silencing in foreign policy is proposed. Silencing appears to be a structural feature of ‘identity mismatch’ characterised by three modes: non-mentioning, trivialisation and framing. A rhetoric-analysis of speech acts by the German chancellor, foreign ministers and leaders of the parliamentary groups on the aforementioned cases shows in which way the German political elite in fact silences mass atrocities.
... Because her presence, thanks precisely to her silence and refraining from intervening in any tactile way with Alice, was more profoundly relational than anything else occurring in the room. To attend silently to an other is already to engage actively with her: what Dauenhauer (1980) in Silence: The Phenomenon and its Ontological Significance calls "fore-silence" is already saturated with meanings: it is the silence that is already an anticipating, a waiting for, an inviting-of-next. So Schwing's silence is already communicative because it's already unspoken relating. ...
The phenomenological tradition in philosophy and psychology places great emphasis upon human relationality, envisioned not as a correspondence between strictly bounded, monadic subjects, but rather as arising within intersubjectivity. For phenomenology, communication at its depth is a dynamic and constitutive event, rather than a signaling between fixed egos. Nowhere is this perspective clearer than in the work of Emmanuel Lévinas, who argued that the Other’s call constitutes the “I” itself. Gertrud Schwing (1906–1995), author of A Way to the Souls of the Mentally Ill (1940), begins her book with a moving account of her work with a catatonic patient in a Viennese psychiatric hospital. Schwing’s narrative is the point of departure for this phenomenological reflection on communication, intersubjectivity, and in Lévinas’ words the “saying before the said” in the context of therapeutic work.
... Philosopher Dauenhauer (1982) and communications scholar Miller (1993) associated silence with meaningful, obligatory pauses in musical compositions. But is the intended meaning of pauses juxtaposed with sound may not translate in the same way to those who listen. ...
In this conceptual essay, I propose a way of viewing silence or silent texts in discourse for educators and educational researchers who are facing the growing call to bring to light hidden biases, histories and other sociocultural phenomena largely hidden from public audiences. Specifically, I explore the potential affordances from going against the grain of the long and widely established view of silence as anything but void. Taking up the scientific notion of void as the known unknown, I examine what we can gain as educators and researchers when viewing silence as unexplored time-space of social matter, a view acknowledged long ago by literary giant James Baldwin. Using media about recent sociopolitical movements such as #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter, I explore the void of discourse–the unpublished works, hidden exchanges, and forgotten or misrepresented experiences that are brought forth through the guidance of those with respective cultural knowledge and expertise, once given the space to do so. Viewing silence as a discursive void positions the educational researcher as a co-learner who attends to the contextual aspects of social interactions with open acknowledgement of the racialized and gendered systems that bind our social spaces. Implications for epistemological approaches are discussed.
... Bernard Dauenhauer, in his book Silence: The Phenomenon and Its Ontological Significance, states that there are three modes of deep silence: the silence of intimates, liturgical silence, and the silence of the to-be-said. 23 For the purposes of this essay, I will focus on the silence of the to-be-said. ...
What I would like to do in this essay is to turn my attention to what I call prophetic rhetoric’s listening function. In other words, how does the prophet know what the prophet declares? How does the prophet know that God is calling the prophet to do the work of God? How does the prophet know what to say, when to say it, and how to say it? How does the prophet know when a rebirthing moment is taking place? How does
the prophet get this revelation and thereby become empowered to share this “new” vision of the deity with society?
I argue that, before the prophet speaks or offers a prophetic witness, the prophet must do work. All prophets must engage in what Elizabeth O’Connor calls the “inward journey.” For her, the inward journey is composed of three elements: the engagement with self, the engagement with God, and the engagement with the other. However, the inward journey can only start when we enter a space of deep silence, which leads to what I call prophetic listening. It is with this type of listening that the prophet begins to create ethos that ultimately leads to logos.
... Silence should be perceived as shaping rather than ending discourse. It reveals the limits of speech (Dauenhauer 1982 ' (1992: 345). Thus, silence has a negative value in many communicative contexts (Tannen 1995). ...
Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Israel has known seven wars, seven prominent violent operations and numerous military conflicts. During this period (1948-2019), 86 Israeli screen stories have engaged with the motif of Israel's military/wars. However, only two of them were written by women and focused on the female Israeli soldier. The marginal position of screen stories based on Israeli women's experience in the military presents a unique opportunity to unravel the notions female screenwriters have of women's conduct in a patriarchal military culture. Our findings suggest that female Israeli screenwriters (a) propose a dual vision for women-on the one hand, they are portrayed as silenced, while on the other they use silence as a coping tactic; (b) represent the hegemonic male as silencing women's voices even though in some cases women silence hegemonic men; and (c) depict military service as an opportunity for women to unravel their femininity.
... Foucault (1978, p. 27) defined silence as "an element that functions alongside the things said". Dauenhauer (1980) explained that silence does not mean the absence of meaning; on the contrary, it is a positive notion. Further, Ephratt (2008Ephratt ( , p. 1909 stated that (eloquent) silence is a way of talking because it does not refer to the speaker's silence or the listener's silence: ...
... Or, what sense does silence make (cf. Dauenhauer 1980)? Is it more important to know what silence means or what it does (cf. ...
Although the aim of this paper is primarily to provide a theoretical contribution to our understanding of silence, it is also based on an ethnographic study conducted in Lika, a region of Croatia marked by a history of conflict and violence. Silence, in addition to having diverse functions and effects, is also characterised by different durations (it can be measured in seconds as well as in decades). It can be, and often is, filled with other potentially communicable non-verbal aspects (emotions and affects, gestures, sounds, etc.). It can also be more or less dependent on – and even steered by – the opinions, experiences and viewpoints of other individuals and communities. In short, this paper deals with the silences found in the course of the research within the framework of numerous typologies of silence, focusing on contextually dependent and ambivalent effects of silence, its “emptiness”, duration and actors (both individuals and communities). This paper deals with silences and silencing at the macrolevel (which includes their affective and social functions), as well as their effect at the microlevel of interpersonal interaction, everyday life and fieldwork encounters. The effects of the network of silences on the public presentation of the findings resulting from studying silence will also be discussed.
W swym artykule Paź analizuje film Przebudzenia (Awakenings, reż. Penny Marshall, 1990) pod kątem obecności w nim elementów monadologicznej metafizyki G. W. Leibniza. Okazuje się, że autor pierwowzoru scenariusza Oliver Sacks, brytyjski neurolog i psychiatra, w opisach badanych i leczonych przez siebie pacjentów, jakie zawarł w książce o tym samym tytule, co późniejszy film, wprost inspirował się kategoriami niemieckiego filozofa. Wśród pojęć Leibniza zaczerpniętych przez Sacksa należy wymienić: monadę, refleksję, świat możliwy etc. W filmie zaś obecne są głoszone przez niemieckiego filozofa prawa świadomości, takie jak np. zasada ciągłości od najmniej jasnych percepcji (letarg, sen) do percepcji w pełni wyraźnych i zreflektowanych oraz koncepcja realnej tożsamości podmiotu. W szczególności Leibnizjańska teza izolacjonistyczna („monady nie mają okien”) znalazła swoją konkretyzację w przypadku opis losu głównych bohaterów Przebudzeń. Walorem tego filmu jest to, że jest on jak dotychczas pierwszą i udaną próbą unaocznienia tez – uchodzącej za bardzo abstrakcyjną – metafizyki nowożytnego racjonalisty.
RESUMO: O presente artigo tem como propósito examinar variadas concepções relacionadas ao silêncio, que convergem para a direção do silêncio primordial, concepção proposta por Santiago Kovadloff (2003) em seu livro homônimo. O corpus escolhido para aplicação das teorias relativas ao silêncio é Aprender a Rezar na Era da Técnica (2008), de Gonçalo M. Tavares. Acredita-se que em uma leitura analítica do texto literário é possível explorar o silêncio primordial. O objetivo central consiste em salientar o processo e os efeitos dos silêncios na linguagem, para então conduzir à sua forma mais plena: o silêncio primordial. Busca-se promover um diálogo envolvendo o romance, a teoria e os estudos críticos já realizados acerca da obra. Objetiva-se, tendo como âncoras, sobretudo, os estudos de Santiago Kovadloff (2003) e de Eni Orlandi (2007), enveredar pelos caminhos do silêncio primordial a fim de sondar a dimensão mais substancial da existência humana e, por meio dessa sondagem, levar o homem ao conhecimento, cada vez mais aprofundado, de si mesmo. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Silêncio primordial; Aprender a Rezar na Era a Técnica; Gonçalo M. Tavares. ABSTRACT: The present article aims to examine various concepts related to silence, which converge in the direction of the primordial silence. It is a concept proposed by Santiago Kovadloff (2003) in his eponymous book. The corpus chosen for application of the theories regarding the silence is Learning to Pray in the Age of Technique (2008), by Gonçalo M. Tavares. It is believed that in an analytical reading of literary texts to explore the primordial silence. The main objective is to highlight the process and the effects of silence in the language, and then lead to its fullest form: the primordial silence. It is intended to promote a dialogue involving the novel, theory and critical studies already undertaken concerning the work. The objective is, with the mainstay, above all, studies of Santiago Kovadloff (2003) and Eni Orlandi (2007), explore the primordial silence paths in order to probe the more substantial dimension of human existence and, through this survey, lead human being to knowledge, ever deeper, him or herself. KEYWORDS: Primordial Silence; Learning to Pray in the Age of Technique; Gonçalo M. Tavares. Introdução Na tentativa de abordar o incógnito que é, por assim dizer, o silêncio primordial, este artigo se debruça sobre o texto de Aprender a Rezar na Era da Técnica (2008), de Gonçalo M. Tavares, porque há nele uma relação primordial com o indizível. Tal relação se dá tanto no plano da forma, no que diz respeito à economia da prosa, aos cortes recorrentes, aos parágrafos curtos e aos saltos no tempo, quanto no plano da matéria tratada, cuja expressão
This paper argues that the gesture of being silent —or “subjective silence”— can be described as a specific modulation of attention, in which consciousness gains awareness of a specific realm of experience where the body appears as a transcendental dimension of the self. Taking Dauenhauer’s typology as a point of departure, I will describe what I understand with the expressions “subjective silence” –and “the gesture of being silent”– and try to show its specific relation to “attention,” according to Husserl’s description of it. Second, that the noematic field of this “subjective silence” is the realm of the pre-predicative, since it allows consciousness to maintain a certain intentional tension that does not focus on any categorial object. Finally, I will try to show that in this realm of the pre-predicative, the body appears as an immanent dimension of consciousness and, therefore, not as a mere object but as a transcendental instance of the self.
Silence in language learning is commonly viewed negatively, with language teachers often struggling to interpret learner silence and identify whether it is part of communication, mental processing, or low engagement. This book addresses silence in language pedagogy from a positive perspective, translating research into practice in order to inform teaching and to advocate greater use of positive silence in the classroom. The first half of the book examines the existing research into silence, and the second half provides research-informed practical strategies and classroom tasks. It offers applicable principles for task design that utilises rich resources, which include visual arts, mental representation, poetry, music, and other innovative tools, to allow both silence and speech to express their respective and interrelated roles in learning. Comprehensive yet accessible, it is essential reading for academic researchers and students in applied linguistics, TESOL, and language teaching, as well as for language teachers and educators.
The present work aims to analyze silence/acquiescence as a legal fact that constitutes a passive conduct and produces legal effects. The paper is divided into three parts. The first analyzes silence as a legal act in international law, translates the phenomenon of acquiescence and elaborates the relative doctrine and jurisprudence as well as the limits that this term presents. We continue with the acquisitive prescription and the silence in the formation of the treaties. It compares acquiescence in dispute resolution as well as the establishment of jurisdiction of international courts and tribunals. The waiver applies to the area of international responsibility of a State and the decision-making mechanisms within the opting-out procedure. Silence as a legal fact in stricto sensu integrates a qualified conduct to which the production of legal effects compose an institution of international law. The production of their legal effects contemplate the existence of an involuntary silence such as l'estoppel by silence and the extinguishing prescription. The jurisprudence from the ICJ and from arbitral awards is extensive and helps to better know and understand the institution of acquiescence and the importance that the silence of States has in contemporary international law.
Therese B. Dykeman in analyzing silence ontologically as substantial and non-substantial, demonstrates how it is understood in language and discourse, in music and art, in space, motion, time, matter and in emotion and bodily stillness. Dykeman argues that silences can be dramatic, contemplative, vicious, awkward, joyful, self-expressive, paradoxical, ineffable, and mystical. Through exploring the nature of silence, she points out the limits of our usual thinking about silence, and invites us to think in more open and inclusive ways about the multi-faceted dimensions of silence.
The use of negotiation in hostage situations is not a new concept. As a matter of fact, it has been used worldwide since the 1970's. However, the South African Police Service (SAPS) has been training its members in the use of hostage negotiations only since 1990. Seen in the light of greater community involvement by the SAPS it is expected that hostage negotiation as a nonviolent means of solving such situations will become more common as time goes by. In this article hostage negotiation is viewed as a form of persuasive communication. It focuses on the existence of and reasons for resistance to the persuasive content of hostage negotiations. Strategies that the hostage negotiator can use to overcome existing resistance are discussed, as well as strategies and techniques to initiate change in the hostage taker's behaviour, that is, to persuade the latter to let the hostage go unharmed the ultimate goal of such negotiations. Recommendation is made that South African hostage
The article deals with the didactic and methodological foundations of silence in learning, focused on students’ reproduction of their own meanings and content of learning. According to the French scholars, Maurice Halbwachs and Pierre Nora, history and historical memory are contrary in several ways. As suggested by Gabriel Tarde the intensity of global changes is caused by the imitation as stereotypical copying of each other’s behavior. The aims and goals of traditional education are based on the transfer of the social and cultural experience of mankind, they do not take into account the student’s personal mission, purpose, and peculiar features. This results in stereotype, monologue of thinking, behaviour, and human communication, i.e. the “friend” of history and the “enemy” of historical memory. The monologic nature of education leads to the phase of mass man silence when there is nothing to say, as well as to the inability of society to hear a person and each other. The acquisition of a personal “historical ear” lies in the ability to remain silent as competence when the student “reveals” himself: his meanings, goals, knowledge, mission. The peculiarity of the article lies in its interdisciplinary nature, in particular, the author has carried out the cross-cultural analysis of the silence features in the Eastern and Western cultural traditions, showing the deeply philosophical, methodological, and linguistic differences between the civilizations of “speaking” and of silence”. The article illustrates how silence in learning relates to the student’s ability to ask questions and to conduct a heuristic dialogue.
Verbal silence touches on every possible aspect of daily life. This book provides a full linguistic analysis of the role of silence in language, exploring perspectives from semantics, semiotics, pragmatics, phonetics, syntax, grammar and poetics, and taking into account a range of spoken and written contexts. The author argues that silence is just as communicative in language as speech, as it results from the deliberate choice of the speaker, and serves functions such as informing, conveying emotion, signalling turn switching, and activating the addresser. Verbal silence is used, alongside speech, to serve linguistic functions in all areas of life, as well as being employed in a wide variety of written texts. The forms and functions of silence are explained, detailed and illustrated with examples taken from both written texts and real-life interactions. Engaging and comprehensive, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in this fascinating linguistic phenomenon.
Silence has often been studied in international law as a mechanism tied to passivity and oppression. In this study, I propose an exploration of other ontologies of silence by unravelling its possibilities as an active mechanism, namely: (i) a tool for resistance; and (ii) a linguistic device for managing disagreement. For this, I use as an exploratory ground the construction of a non-definition of gender for the crime of persecution in international criminal law (ICL). Analysing the Rome Statute negotiations, I examine how gender-conservative actors successfully opposed the proposal for a non-definition of gender, arguing that such a solution would harm the clarity required by the principle of legality in ICL. By establishing that legal rules must be clear, specific, and cohesive, I argue that the legality principle imposes a burden of speech upon non-state voices in ICL, one that encircles them within a subalternity scheme where speech is demanded but can only be performed or mediated by states. Exploring the negotiations of the Convention on Crimes Against Humanity draft, I examine how the non-definition of gender allowed feminist and queer activists to resist such a burden of speech for the conceptualization of gender. Simultaneously, silence also provided an opportunity for International Law Commission members to propose a draft that avoids cacophony around a contentious term. By reflecting on the active roles of silence, this study contributes to new modes of analysing resistance to dominant modes of legal discourse, as well as exploring dynamics of order(ing) in international law-making.
‘The Shape of Sound’ project seeks to build a
visceral bridge to an understanding of internally
crafted technologies, in this instance the hair
cells inside the cochlea. It combines explorations
of human movement with a reverse scale artistic
interpretation of the hair cells that mirror the inner
workings of our bodies, materialised as an
installation made of wool and silk threads,
suspended from above that both capture and
respond to vibration, breath, and bodily movement. Sound enters our ears in the form of a travelling wave of movement, in which the hair
cells respond, and yet the artist installation (made
by hand by Petra Johnson) – sometimes referred
to as “warps” – both responds and synergistically
influences movement from the dance artists.
The ear and the voice bridge the distances between human and the world in a constant cycle of stimuli’s perception, internalization and transforming regeneration. In this cycle, Echo’s repetitive quality is conceived as the smallest distance between ear-voice-reality. Echo fills and “feels” the outer and inner worldly-like spaces, affects vocal utterance and cocreates one’s sounding presence within public sphere. Though deprived of her own logos, Echo neutralizes the speech of the others by mediating it through her ubiquitous vocality. In this paper I engage with my performative experience as “Echo” in the digital opera “Echo and Narcissus” by MedeaElectronique to examine the voice-ear-world(s) relations in association to the notion of distance in literal and metaphorical ways. Valorizing artistic and theoretical tools, I conceptualize Echo as a series of paradoxes concerning speech, action, and the world (in Arendtian sense) filtered through the triptych ear-voice-distance. Aspects of my experience such as the in-ear feeling of self-echoing, and the filling of space with continues improvisational vocalizations become starting points towards negotiating Echo through the notion of distance in association to different spaces (inner/head, public, natural). As in the discussed experience, listening resembled to vocal action and vocality acquired the labyrinthically depths of the ear, I approach echo as a ‘vibrating ear’ and create a constellation of sensorial fusions affected by distance in different contexts. The scenically imposed split between gesture and projected sounds, is considered as an image and sound split, a distance within self, raising identity and power issues. Echo is investigated as a sounding mirror between beings and the world. Resounding through space (Nancy 2007) it is also theorized as an elsewhere sound, symbolizing the ungraspable communicative dimensions problematized by linguistic ontology, and acts as a reminder and a remainder of lively presence on earth, acquiring poetic perspectives.
La interpretación del silencio aquí presentada transvalora una serie de instancias descritas en el artículo y las torna altamente dudosas por su dependencia en un único concepto. La experiencia del silencio se torna, en nuestra aproximación, un criterio de verdad: las distintas transvaloraciones se mantienen si se conjugan con una pre-comprensión del silencio. Esta pre-comprensión es su carácter de ausencia-de. Si bien aquí hemos dotado de significado al silencio en términos de respuestas que cobran vida en su abismo y las distintas instancias arribadas aparentan una estructura, al ver de cerca el principio donde todo descansaría, dicha “estructura” se esfuma, pues una edificación que descansa en un abismo es una edificación sin principio de estructuralidad. El carácter escurridizo de la ausencia-de trae a la luz, en todo momento, la primacía del carácter interpretativo de todo lo que se dice, pues obliga a no tomar nada por su valor aparente; es decir, obliga a reinterpretar incesantemente. Traiciona toda voluntad de ocultamiento ya que en esencia es una desnudez. El silencio es insostenible en el lenguaje verbal, mas algo manifiesto en la experiencia cotidiana que escucha. Trabaja, paradójicamente, en contra de toda estructura calculable. Este carácter paradójico demuestra ser, sin embargo, un motivo de celebración por un decir esencial: fiel al estremecimiento de una experiencia, dotado de la posibilidad de desafiar toda verbalidad replicante de la historia de la metafísica o debilidad suprema, y dotado de la posibilidad de transformarlo todo en decir esencial.
In the 1960s, as an awkward teenager exploring how to create social relationships within my peer group, especially girls, I assumed that there had to be constant conversation with no gaps.
In this paper, I suggest that one of the ways in which problems of exclusion from deliberation and uptake within deliberation can be ameliorated is to develop a more robust account of the deliberative virtues that socially privileged speakers/hearers ought to cultivate. Specifically, privileged speakers/hearers ought to cultivate the virtue of actively facilitating equitable and inclusive deliberative exchanges (which includes a cluster of virtues, including the practice of silence and of listening) and the deliberative virtue of training their ‘testimonial sensibility’ to correct for prejudicial judgments about other speakers.
Where has silence gone? What does this mean for the spiritual soul? This analysis utilizes a phenomenological and qualitative lens to assess the way silence and the soul interact. The author posits that the relationship between silence and the soul, or soulful silence, creates a space to learn about the powerful phenomena that shape us. Through imagery, metaphor, and personal reflection the author embarks on a descriptive journey to explore what we learn by sitting in soulful silence, the phenomenological and spiritual implications of soulful silence, and how one must first become intimately familiar with their own soulful silence to experience growth, beauty, and wisdom.
Contemporary democratic theory is focused on empowering the voices of citizens in collective decision-making. The opposite of voice is silence. Increasingly, citizens are remaining silent rather than vocally participating in politics. Among democratic theorists, silent citizenship is equated to civic disengagement and disempowerment. I expand this view by theorizing the conditions under which silence is also a political expression. My analysis identifies four types of silence that can politically communicate. The resulting framework draws out the communicative dimension of silence, providing new tools to assess the unique interpretative challenges and dangers that silent citizenship presents for a democratic system.
The article actualizes the concepts of noise, silence and the problems of dialogue in the modern digital field, which is formed through commodity-production relations and thus generates new mechanisms for constructing reality and affects value-semantic categories. The development of technologies, including in the field of communication, dictates the course of cultural development, which paradoxically has a destructive effect on the processes of dialog interaction, complicating mutual understanding between interlocutors.
Background:
Our objective was to examine the influence of silence on team action in the operating room.
Methods:
We conducted a constructed grounded theory study with semi-structured interviews with 25 interprofessional surgical team members. Using a framework of silence as communication and performance, transcripts were iteratively team-coded to develop themes and a conceptual model.
Results:
OR silence is expressed verbally and nonverbally. Two contexts of silence were identified: homogenous as collective action, and disparate, as disengagement. Complex and dynamic, two primary themes emerged, Power that often shuts down communication, and Focus during critical moments. Five additional sub-themes included critical moments, respect, self-reflection, personal preference, and, bad mood.
Conclusion:
OR silence is not an absence of communication and requires a response. Whether homogenous through cohesiveness, or desperate as a solitary act, OR silence is a call to action. Examining silence as a part discourse has important implications on surgical team function.
This paper examines Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah (2013) and it's troubling of the silencing and policing of black female migrants. Focusing on the salon/hairdressers and Ifemelu's blog, I argue that the former represents an intimate and politicized narrative space whose production and habitation invites us to engage with migrant/feminine interactions and non-normative feminine aesthetics. In addition, I read the virtual site of Ifemelu's blog as a space that transcends the circumscribed nature of interracial relations and dialogues. By portraying these spaces' cultivation of heterogeneity and polyvocality, Adichie's text advances an alternative politics of inhabiting racially and patriarchally hierarchized foreign spaces.
Silence has been a recurring focus of rhetorical criticism. This essay examines the role of tactical silence in political contestations, particularly during protests. To do so, it explores local debates about K-12 education policy that took place at school board meetings in Golden, Colorado between 2013 and 2015. The analysis centers on two particular school board meetings during which a social resistance organization, Jeffco Students for Change (JSFC), exposed the analog between imposed silence and chosen silence in order to reappropriate the silencing power of the Jefferson County Board of Education (JBOE) and make claims at political agency. I offer seven characteristics of tactical silence in politics that are apparent as the students use silence to challenge the board’s authority.
This article offers silences to make deliberative democracy more inclusive and diverse. Considering deliberation broadly as conversation, I advance the argument that silence may be the missing link in our democratic theories: that some silences are packed full of meaning, others can be used as temporary tactics for bringing more meaningful voices to the table, and that silent yielding is the most crucial practice for a robust democratic world. Inclusion involves at least two important dimensions. First, excluded subjects must be brought, allowed, welcomed, and embraced to democratic conversations. Excluded voices must become present. Second, and this is the more difficult dimension, exclusionary identities must be transformed in the process. Simply including more voices and meanings does little if there are structural forces that preclude the rearrangement of democratic possibilities. One such structural force is privileged identities that, by their character, are unlikely to hear and be transformed. In this regard, I put forth silent yielding as an enduring democratic habit that, if practiced sincerely, is likely to transform such identities, and transition thin democracies (ones in which citizens participate in order to simply fight for their own self-interests) into strong democracies (ones in which all citizens are welcomed to the table, and all leave the table transformed in the direction of the common). Deliberate silences combine intentionality, meaningfulness, thoughtful engagement, and robust commitment to inclusion, in order to make deliberative democracy more democratic and transformative.
W artykule przedmiotem refleksji uczyniono sposoby organizowania i tematyzowania ciszy i milczenia oraz problem pustych miejsc w filmie, muzyce i malarstwie. Omówienie nie systematyzuje wymienionych zjawisk; ma charakter szkicu wyznaczającego jedynie wybrane obszary dociekań. W toku wywodu przykłady wywołano na zasadzie skojarzeń i pracy pamięci. Jako kontekst autor wykorzystał utwory literackie. Tematyka obecności milczeń i przemilczeń w sztuce słowa towarzyszy jego rozważaniom w osobnych tekstach.
Research in the field of homiletics indicates that preachers have to reckon with the problematic praxis of fear caused by the effects of cognitive distortions regarding corruption. This article investigates the role that preachers can fulfil by not merely being brave from a distance. The research problem is as follows: Is it possible that the distorted cognitions of preachers and listeners could cause them to engage in a nitpicking process that allows hope to be held captive by fear? To what extent can a clear understanding of the essence of sermon delivery enable listeners to realise that hope has to do with a definite calculating process (cognition) that incorporates the yet and not yet reality. The article provides descriptive perspectives on a problematic praxis, offers strategizing perspectives from social psychology and scrutinises the essence of people's understanding of corruption and societal issues. It explores the normative vantage points of seeing, fearing God and the paradoxical nature of hope. The role of people's ability to view reality seems to be pivotal for the experience of meaningfulness. The article uses a hermeneutical interaction between the elements of research. In conclusion, the article offers practical theological perspectives.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.