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Definition Essay: Silence

This essay defines the word “silence”. It is used in more than one context, and many people describe it in different terms. For example, an awkward silence is no more longer or shorter than a cold silence or an eerie silence. Here is a definition essay of the word “silence”.

The lack of audible sound

Its most basic definition is the lack of audible sound. If you cannot hear anything then you are in silence. This is a very basic definition of silence, as there are lots of contributing factors that are not mentioned. For example, if a person is deaf then there is not mercenarily silence in a room, even if that person cannot hear it. It is reminiscent of the Chinese saying about if a tree falls in the woods and nobody is there to hear it, then does it make a sound?

There is also the fact that some people may have better hearing than others and so be able to hear more sounds. That may make one person think it is quiet whilst others think there is noise. For example, a person who is younger may hear higher pitched noises. The mosquito crowd deterrent tool works on that idea in order to keep young people away since they can hear the annoying noise that older people cannot.

There is also the fact that people may use listening equipment. A person in a room may not hear any sounds, but a person with listening equipment may be able to hear sounds.

Your presence makes a sound

The loudest noise you make when stationary and inactive is the sound of your breath pumping in and out. In addition, there are also things such as your bowels moving and your heart beating. Such things may only be heard by people who are close to the person making the sound, but a sound still exists and so silence does not.

The presence of sound that is very low in intensity

If you wish to get more technical, then silence is the presence of sounds that have such a low intensity that people cannot generally hear them without help (or at all). To say that complete silence may exist is impossible in this universe (as it stands) because there is noise going on all over the universe. Sound cannot penetrate the vacuum of space, but even tiny vibrations in the earth make it impossible to completely rule out the idea of sound.

There is also the presence of sound that cannot be heard by humans. For example, a dog whistle may be heard by a dog and other animals, but cannot be heard by a human. This noise may be very loud in a room, and yet present itself as silence to the people in the room. They may describe the room as silent, but in a very real and obvious way they would be wrong. Still, in technical terms, nobody can truly eliminate the many forms of energy that cause sound to the point of creating a room without sound.

Technically, the closest you could get is if you dropped a room with a vacuum in it, down a long hole with is also in a vacuum, where it was aimed in the direction of the earth’s rotation of the sun, whilst adjusting for earth rotation and the pull of the earth’s poles. Suffice it to say, it would be a difficult task.

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The Aesthetic of Silence: Susan Sontag on Art as a Form of Spirituality and the Paradoxical Role of Silence in Creative Culture

By maria popova.

In The Aesthetics of Silence , the first essay from her altogether indispensable 1969 collection Styles of Radical Will ( public library ), Susan Sontag (January 16, 1933–December 28, 2004) examines how silence mediates the role of art as a form of spirituality in an increasingly secular culture.

Shortly after she wrote in her diary that “art is a form of consciousness” and shortly before Pablo Neruda penned his beautiful ode to silence and Paul Goodman — who shared a mutual admiration with Sontag — enumerated the nine kinds of silence , she writes:

Every era has to reinvent the project of “spirituality” for itself. (Spirituality = plans, terminologies, ideas of deportment aimed at resolving the painful structural contradictions inherent in the human situation, at the completion of human consciousness, at transcendence.) In the modern era, one of the most active metaphors for the spiritual project is “art.” The activities of the painter, the musician, the poet, the dancer, once they were grouped together under that generic name (a relatively recent move), have proved a particularly adaptable site on which to stage the formal dramas besetting consciousness, each individual work of art being a more or less astute paradigm for regulating or reconciling these contradictions. Of course, the site needs continual refurbishing. Whatever goal is set for art eventually proves restrictive, matched against the widest goals of consciousness. Art, itself a form of mystification, endures a succession of crises of demystification; older artistic goals are assailed and, ostensibly, replaced; outworn maps of consciousness are redrawn.

But modern art, Sontag argues, is as much a form of consciousness as an answer to our longing for anti-consciousness, speaking to what she calls “the mind’s need or capacity for self-estrangement”:

Art is no longer understood as consciousness expressing and therefore, implicitly, affirming itself. Art is not consciousness per se, but rather its antidote — evolved from within consciousness itself.

As such, art usurps the role religion and mysticism previously held in human life — something to satisfy our “craving for the cloud of unknowing beyond knowledge and for the silence beyond speech.” The spiritual satiation that arises from this dialogue between art and anti-art, Sontag points out, necessitates the pursuit of silence. For the serious artist, silence becomes “a zone of meditation, preparation for spiritual ripening, an ordeal that ends in gaining the right to speak.”

In a counterpart to her later admonition that publicity is “a very destructive thing” for any artist , Sontag considers the zeal the artist must have in protecting that zone of silence — a notion of particular urgency in our age of tyrannical expectations regarding artists’ engagement with social media:

So far as he is serious, the artist is continually tempted to sever the dialogue he has with an audience. Silence is the furthest extension of that reluctance to communicate, that ambivalence about making contact with the audience… Silence is the artist’s ultimate other-worldly gesture: by silence, he frees himself from servile bondage to the world, which appears as patron, client, consumer, antagonist, arbiter, and distorter of his work.

And yet, in a sentiment that calls to mind Kierkegaard’s astute observation that expressing contempt is still a demonstration of dependence , Sontag recognizes that the gesture of silence in abdication from society is still “a highly social gesture.” She writes:

An exemplary decision of this sort can be made only after the artist has demonstrated that he possesses genius and exercised that genius authoritatively. Once he has surpassed his peers by the standards which he acknowledges, his pride has only one place left to go. For, to be a victim of the craving for silence is to be, in still a further sense, superior to everyone else. It suggests that the artist has had the wit to ask more questions than other people, and that he possesses stronger nerves and higher standards of excellence.

Silence, then, is exercised not in the absolute but in degrees, mediating between art and anti-art, between consciousness and anti-consciousness:

The exemplary modern artist’s choice of silence is rarely carried to this point of final simplification, so that he becomes literally silent. More typically, he continues speaking, but in a manner that his audience can’t hear… Modern art’s chronic habit of displeasing, provoking, or frustrating its audience can be regarded as a limited, vicarious participation in the ideal of silence which has been elevated as a major standard of “seriousness” in contemporary aesthetics. But it is also a contradictory form of participation in the ideal of silence. It is contradictory not only because the artist continues making works of art, but also because the isolation of the work from its audience never lasts… Goethe accused Kleist of having written his plays for an “invisible theatre.” But eventually the invisible theatre becomes “visible.” The ugly and discordant and senseless become “beautiful.” The history of art is a sequence of successful transgressions. […] Committed to the idea that the power of art is located in its power to negate, the ultimate weapon in the artist’s inconsistent war with his audience is to verge closer and closer to silence.

And yet, Sontag points out, silence is relational — while it may be the intention of the artist, it can never be the experience of the audience. (For a supreme example, we need not look further than John Cage , who even during his most forceful imposition of silence was in dynamic dialogue with the audience upon which silence was being imposed.)

Sontag, in fact, shined a sidewise gleam on this notion three years earlier in her masterwork Against Interpretation — for what is interpretation if not the act of filling the artist’s silence with the audience’s noise? She writes:

Silence doesn’t exist in a literal sense, however, as the experience of an audience. It would mean that the spectator was aware of no stimulus or that he was unable to make a response… As long as audiences, by definition, consist of sentient beings in a “situation,” it is impossible for them to have no response at all. […] There is no neutral surface, no neutral discourse, no neutral theme, no neutral form. Something is neutral only with respect to something else — like an intention or an expectation. As a property of the work of art itself, silence can exist only in a cooked or non-literal sense. (Put otherwise: if a work exists at all, its silence is only one element in it.) Instead of raw or achieved silence, one finds various moves in the direction of an ever receding horizon of silence — moves which, by definition, can never be fully consummated.

She illustrates this with the classic scene from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass , where Alice encounters a shop “full of all manner of curious things,” and yet whenever she looks closely at any one shelf, it appears “quite empty, though the others round it were crowded full as they could hold.” Silence, similarly, is relational rather than absolute:

“Silence” never ceases to imply its opposite and to depend on its presence: just as there can’t be “up” without “down” or “left” without “right,” so one must acknowledge a surrounding environment of sound or language in order to recognize silence… A genuine emptiness, a pure silence is not feasible — either conceptually or in fact. If only because the artwork exists in a world furnished with many other things, the artist who creates silence or emptiness must produce something dialectical: a full void, an enriching emptiness, a resonating or eloquent silence. Silence remains, inescapably, a form of speech (in many instances, of complaint or indictment) and an element in a dialogue.

Silence, Sontag argues, is also a way of steering the attention. In a passage triply timely today, half a century of attention-mauling media later, she writes:

Art is a technique for focusing attention, for teaching skills of attention… Once the artist’s task seemed to be simply that of opening up new areas and objects of attention. That task is still acknowledged, but it has become problematic. The very faculty of attention has come into question, and been subjected to more rigorous standards… Perhaps the quality of the attention one brings to bear on something will be better (less contaminated, less distracted), the less one is offered. Furnished with impoverished art, purged by silence, one might then be able to begin to transcend the frustrating selectivity of attention, with its inevitable distortions of experience. Ideally, one should be able to pay attention to everything.

Many years later, Sontag would advise aspiring writers to learn to “pay attention to the world” as the most important skill of storytelling. Silence, she argues here, invites us to pay selfless and unselfconscious attention to the world the artist is creating. In a sentiment that explains why there are no comments on Brain Pickings and captures today’s acute spiritual hunger for a space for unreactive contemplation amid a culture of reactive opinion-slinging, Sontag writes:

Contemplation, strictly speaking, entails self-forgetfulness on the part of the spectator: an object worthy of contemplation is one which, in effect, annihilates the perceiving subject… In principle, the audience may not even add its thought. All objects, rightly perceived, are already full. […] The efficacious artwork leaves silence in its wake. Silence, administered by the artist, is part of a program of perceptual and cultural therapy, often on the model of shock therapy rather than of persuasion. Even if the artist’s medium is words, he can share in this task: language can be employed to check language, to express muteness… Art must mount a full-scale attack on language itself, by means of language and its surrogates, on behalf of the standard of silence.

Once again, Sontag’s extraordinary prescience shines its brilliant beam upon our time, across half a century of perfectly anticipated cultural shifts. Much like she presaged the downsides of the internet’s photo-fetishism in the 1970s and admonished against treating cultural material as “content” in the 1960s, she captures the entire ethos of our social media in 1967:

The art of our time is noisy with appeals for silence. A coquettish, even cheerful nihilism. One recognizes the imperative of silence, but goes on speaking anyway. Discovering that one has nothing to say, one seeks a way to say that .

The Aesthetics of Silence is an immeasurably rewarding read in its entirety, as is the remainder of Styles of Radical Will . Complement it with Sontag on love , “aesthetic consumerism” and the violence of visual culture , how polarities imprison us , why lists appeal to us , her diary meditations on art , and her advice to aspiring writers .

— Published July 6, 2015 — https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/07/06/the-aesthetic-of-silence-susan-sontag/ —

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Don’t Underestimate the Power of Silence

• Vijay Eswaran

Try this exercise the first hour of your day.

Many of us have forgotten (or even fear) quiet. We live in a world full of noise and chatter. A world wherein our daily routines are inundated with distractions and responsibilities. This practice, called the Sphere of Silence, is a 60-minute routine that can help you stay grounded, focused, and most importantly, remain hopeful when your mind wants to spiral. There is one ground rule: Follow the below steps in complete silence.

• The first half hour is broken down in three 10-minute segments. Spend the first 10 minutes writing your short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals. Then, dedicate the next 10-minute set to assessing your progress on the goals you set the previous day.
• Use the final 10 minutes to take note of any unmet goals and assess the reasons why you have not achieved them. This will motivate you to focus on moving forward.
•  Spend the next 20 minutes reading a book, something that teaches you new things or enriches your mind with practical knowledge.
• Spend the first 10 minutes of this step reading a chapter of your book. Then, use the remaining 10 minutes to write down a summary of what you just read by hand to strengthen your ability to process the information, and learn something new.
• Use these last 10 minutes for self-reflection and, if you believe in a higher power, for communicating with God, the Universe, your spirituality, or whatever you prefer. This part of the practice allows you to harness your calm during stressful situations and mindfully choose to stay out of negativity.

Where your work meets your life. See more from Ascend here .

Last year, the world went into lockdown and our lives changed dramatically. “I’m so tired” was already a status symbol, but burnout and it’s long-lasting impact on our health, has increased. The lines between work and play have blurred.

• VE Vijay Eswaran is an entrepreneur , motivational speaker, philanthropist and the author of the best-selling book In the Sphere of Silence . An economist by training, he is the founder of a multimillion-dollar global business. A well-known thought leader in Asia, he has written and spoken extensively about business, leadership, personal development, and life management. For more of his writing and videos, please follow him on LinkedIn ,   Facebook and Instagram .

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INTRODUCTION

Perception of sound and silence, acknowledgments, author declarations, conflict of interest, data availability, what is silence therefore, what is sound.

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William A. Yost; What is silence? Therefore, what is sound?. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 1 October 2023; 154 (4): 2333–2336. https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0021872

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This essay expresses an opinion about what conditions lead to the existence of sound and what conditions lead to the existence of silence. The essay is mainly about the perception of sound and how that perception might influence how silence is or is not perceived.

To an acoustician, “what is sound?” might appear to be a trivial question, one that might be asked by a student taking his or her first course in acoustics or hearing. However, it is a question that has fascinated scholars since almost the beginning of recorded history [e.g., see Boring (1942) ]. This opinion essay was motivated by a recent article 1 ( Goh , 2023 ) titled, “The perception of silence.” In this article, the authors did or did not present certain well-described sounds to their subjects. They referred to the times when a sound was not presented as “silence,” but they also inferred that “silence” means the absence of sound. Thus, defining “silence” in these cases appears to require a definition of sound. As a result, this essay expresses my opinion 1 about what sound is and is not, and how the consideration of “what is sound?” influences considerations of “what is silence?.”

Without getting too technical, most often sound is said to occur when a vibrating object causes molecules and their atoms in some medium (often air) to move [e.g., see Rossing (2014) ]. This motion can cause a wave of pressure changes in the medium, and this wave is often referred to as a sound wave. Even if no object initiates a sound wave, pressure changes in a medium still exist due to the random movement of atoms and molecules in any medium, and this random fluctuation is sometimes referred to as thermal noise [e.g., see Sivian and White (1933) ] or Brownian motion [e.g., see de Vries (1952) ]. Only if molecules could not move (e.g., at 0 K) or there were no molecules to move (e.g., in a vacuum) could there be no molecular motion. Thus, if silence were the absence of molecular motion, silence would occur only under conditions like at a temperature of 0 K or in a vacuum.

The simplified operational physical description of sound provided above is, in my opinion, inadequate to explain one's perception of sound. It is certainly the case that a sound wave of changing pressure caused by a vibrating object can lead to the perception of sound, but not always. Pressure changes in a medium (e.g., air) are not always perceived as sound. For instance, slow changes in air pressure that indicate a change from a low-pressure to a high-pressure weather system does not lead to the perception of sound, but rapidly changing air pressure (wind) can. Consequently, weather-related air-pressure changes are not considered sound.

Sound can be perceived when there is no pressure wave. For instance, consider those who suffer from tinnitus [“ringing in the ears,” e.g., see Baguley (2013) ], the perception of sound when there is no change in air pressure. Even when the auditory nerve is cut, so that there is no auditory peripheral input to the brain about changes in pressure, tinnitus (perceptible sound) occurs. The majority of cases of tinnitus are due to an, as of now, unknown neural abnormality in the brain that triggers the perception of sound. Another example of the perception of sound when there are no pressure changes is the ability of many listeners with severe-to-profound hearing loss who use cochlear implants (CIs) to perceive sound, sometimes in a similar, if not identical, manner to those with normal hearing. Sound is perceived by CI users when an electric current has the opportunity to stimulate auditory-nerve fibers via implanted electrodes, even when there is no pressure wave. In these cases, the outer, middle, and inner ear are bypassed. As another example, the auditory nerve is also not required in that in some cases electrical stimulation of the brainstem, well above the anatomical level of the auditory nerve, can elicit the perception of sound. That is, neither a pressure wave nor an auditory periphery (an “ear”) are required to perceive sound, but an auditory brain is.

My point is that sound is, in my opinion, not a physical property, but is a perceptual property. In most cases changes in pressure (often treated as a pressure wave) is the physical basis of sound, but not all changes in pressure are perceived as sound, and sound can be perceived when there are no changes in pressure. The auditory periphery in most animals primarily evolved to detect changes in air pressure over a certain range of air-pressure changes and provide a neural code to the brain regarding those changes. If the neural code contains sufficient information, the brain interprets that code as indicating that a “sound” occurred (i.e., “sound” is perceived). How and where that happens in the brain are largely unknown. Moreover, as argued above, there does not have to be a neural code provided by the inner ear for “sound” to be perceived, but there does have to be a brain.

As I have already argued, stating that silence is the absence of sound in the sense that silence means there are no pressure changes is probably not consistent with the common use of the word. What might be a good way to describe silence? Perhaps silence is when pressure changes are not audible. Let us consider the differentiation between audible sound and inaudible sound (e.g., infrasound or ultrasound). Considering inaudible sound as “silence” does not mean that pressure changes did not occur. Inaudible sound most likely means that the changing pressure did not lead to stimulation of the brain circuits used to perceive sound, not that there were no pressure changes. In some circumstances, changing pressures that are inaudible can still be perceived by humans (and probably by other animals). For instance, when objects produce infrasound, the pressure changes can sometimes be “felt” but not “heard.” Defining the difference between “felt” and “heard” is fraught with challenges, especially because pressure changes that are “felt” but not “heard” are often not considered sound. In addition, different animals are sensitive to different frequency ranges of pressure changes. A 50 000 Hz change in air pressure would not be perceived by humans, and would be considered ultrasound. However, many bats or dolphins could not survive if they could not perceive pressure changes at such high frequencies (e.g., they use “ultrasounds” for echolocation). Does that mean that an infrasound that is not “heard” but “felt” is “silent”? Is the existence of ultrasound “silence” for a human but not for a bat?

In peeling back a layer of my opinion, I get to the issue of the perception of sound as opposed to the perception of the sources of sounds. Most of the time when one perceives a sound, one perceives the vibrating source that generated the pressure changes. However, as I have already pointed out, it is not necessary to be able to identify a sound source for perceivable sound to exist. In most cases one's memory allows one to identify sound sources (e.g., a guitar made that sound), but even if one has no memory of what the source of a particular sound may be, one can still indicate that a sound exists, describe perceptual attributes of the sound (maybe its pitch, relative loudness, perceived duration, perceived source location, etc.), and perhaps indicate what object produced the sound.

When one cannot perceive that sound exists, that does not mean that there are no pressure changes. All one has to do is use a sound-level meter to measure a sound level that will always exist. A sound-proof room that meets the American National Standards Institute's (ANSI) criteria for sound-proof rooms [ANSI/ASA S3.1 ( ANSI, 2018 )] would most likely have an ambient (i.e., there are no known sources producing air-pressure changes) sound level in the vicinity of 25 dBA (an audible level), while in a typical “quiet” room that is not designed to be sound proof, the ambient sound level would likely be in the vicinity of 40 dBA. This value of 40 dBA, as representative of a quiet room, was a motivation for the use of the 40-phon equal loudness contour as the basis of the “A” weighting used for sound-level measurements [see Yost (2020) ] originally developed in the 1940s by the American Standards Association and adopted later by American National Standards Institute [e.g., ANSI/ASA S1.4 ( ANSI, 2014 )]. The sound level in a room when no obvious sound source exists is likely to change over time by several decibels, in some cases more than enough to be perceptible. If sounds are presented via headphones [ones that cover the pinna (e.g., circumaural) or inserts (e.g., ear buds)], they only partially block pressure changes that occur around a listener, and there are pressure changes in the ear canal caused by headphone-diaphragm motion. Thus, pressure changes that may or may not be directly perceived are always present, even when sounds are presented over headphones.

Another layer of my opinion involves the sensitivity of the auditory system to air-pressure changes that result in the perception of sound. Sivian and White (1933) were among the first to measure the sensitivity of the human auditory system to tones of different frequencies and to collate how their measures compared to other such measurements that were made by others at about the same time ( Yost, 2021 ). Sivian and White (1933) showed that the lowest sound pressure that human listeners could detect was approximately 0.0002 dynes/cm 2 (in today's International System of Units, 20  μ Pa). This value of 20  μ Pa was about the lowest sound pressure level human listeners could detect when sound was presented in a calibrated sound field [minimal audible field (MAF) thresholds] or over calibrated headphones [minimal audible pressure (MAP) thresholds]. MAF and MAP thresholds differed by a few decibels, which Sivian and White (1933) attributed to the acoustic properties of the ear canal, a fact that has been verified several times [e.g., see Yost and Killion (1998) for a detailed review]. Thus, pressure changes that occur in a sound field or via headphones are essentially equally detectable when presented at about the same sound-pressure level.

Sivian and White (1933) were also curious about the theoretical limit of aural acuity, i.e., is the ear's sensitivity “limited by its physiological construction, or whether the limit is imposed by the air as a transmitting medium.” Their conclusion was, “For exceptionally good ears, a further increase in physiological sensitivity would be useless in the presence of thermal noise.” Green and Dai (1991) are perhaps the most recent investigators to reach a similar conclusion. 2 Although there is great diversity in the sound frequency at which different animals are most sensitive, Fay (1988) showed that the sound-pressure level of the most sensitive spectral region across all animals, despite variation in the type of auditory receptors, whose thresholds have been measured is remarkably close to 20  μ Pa. 3 That is, aural acuity throughout the animal kingdom is about as sensitive as it can be, meaning that the lower limit to the auditory system's ability to detect pressure changes generated by a vibrating sound source is that provided by thermal noise (Brownian motion). As such, there may not be, under ideal conditions, any perceived silence as long as thermal noise (Brownian motion) exists. At the very least, the absence of pressure changes is probably not a useful way to determine the perception of silence.

Another aspect of my opinion about sound and silence deals with conditions in which one does not perceive that sound exists (even though pressure changes that are audible do exist), but the sound that does exist alters one's auditory perception. Consider cases in which one is in a room where there are no obvious sound sources that can be identified, and a sound-level meter could indicate a sound level of 25 dBA or more at the position of the listener's ears. Clearly, the room is not “silent,” if silence is the absence of sound. However, one might consider the room to be “silent” because there are no known sound sources. One obvious example of such “silence” leading to perceptual attributes involves the reverberant properties of rooms. If one is in an anechoic (“echo-free”) space or even an “echo-reduced” space (a sound-deadened room) when no sources are obviously producing sound, being in such a room “sounds” different than when one is in a room that has reflections/echoes. The “silence” of the echo-free room is perceptually different from the “silence” in a room with reflections. This is not a subtle effect. 4 Even patients who use CIs remark that when they are in such an echo-reduced room, the room “sounds different” even if there are no obvious sources producing sound. 4 This, of course does not mean “silence (defined as the absence of sound)” is perceptible, as “silence” does not reflect off surfaces, like walls, but sound does.

If one is trying to detect over headphones a low-frequency tone (e.g., 200 Hz) masked by a noise, other pressure changes (ones that listeners probably do not directly perceive) in the ear canal will influence the ability to detect the noise-masked tone [e.g., see Yost (1988) ]. As the level of the externally produced masking noise decreases, the ability to detect the tone depends more and more on the level of the internal pressure changes (noise) in the ear canals. This can be readily determined if the masking noise is presented to both ears, as the internal noise (presumably that in each ear canal in the absence of any external sound source) is interaurally uncorrelated, and the detection of low-frequency tones is dependent on the interaural correlation of masking noise presented to both ears [see Yost (1988) for a review]. That is, even when there does not appear to be a known sound source, pressure change that might be considered “silence” but is not, can influence auditory perception. If the air pressure changes in the ear canal are considered “silence” because they do not seem associated with a known sound source, then these actual canal air pressure changes can influence the perception of a sound from a known source.

This leads to the final layer of my opinion. In the reverberant cases referenced above and when listening over headphones, what are the air pressure changes that are reflected or influencing the perception of other sounds? When a person is in the room, his or her heart is beating, lungs are expanding and contracting, other parts of the bodies vibrate, the room's lighting structures and air handling systems vibrate, the building sways, etc. These are just a few of the potential vibrating sources producing air pressure changes that reflect off surfaces, but they are usually not obvious sound sources to a person in the room. If the sound-pressure level in a room is measured when no one is in it, and then again with someone in it, the sound level will be greater when the person is in the room, even if the person produces no obvious vibrations. Similarly, the air-pressure changes in the ear canals most likely result from the vibration of the listener's internal organs such as the heart and lungs [e.g., see Yost (1988) ].

In conclusion, in my opinion, sound requires a perceptual definition. That is, sound is a perceptual phenomenon that usually occurs when objects vibrate causing changes (a wave) of pressure in a medium, but not always . If “silence” can be perceived, it is not the perception of the absence of sound, but perhaps “silence” is what can influence one's perception when there are no obvious sound sources.

I greatly appreciate discussions with Dr. Judy Dubno and Dr. M. Torben Pastore about my opinions. However, please do not assume that Judy or Torben always agreed with me.

The author has no conflicts of interest to declare.

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the author upon reasonable request.

A reader might wonder why I submitted this opinion essay to the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA) rather than to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). I believe that readers of JASA are likely to have a knowledge of acoustics required to appreciate my opinions and their implications, even if they disagree with my opinions. I am less sure that most readers of PNAS would have such knowledge. Consequentially, my opinions and their implications are more likely to influence other JASA publications than other PNAS publications.

As Sivian and White (1933) pointed out, several assumptions must be made in order to estimate a probable sound level for thermal noise (Brownian motion), and such estimates can vary considerably based on those assumptions.

Fay (1988) made the necessary adjustments required for the differences in sound measurements made in water and air.

While I am not aware of literature that supports this claim, many hundreds of visitors and research participants, several hundred who use CIs, have been in my sound-deadened lab with a short wideband reverberation time (RT 60 ) of 102 ms. Everyone has been asked, “Does this room ‘sound’ different from other rooms you have been in?” Everyone has answered, “Absolutely.”

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Silence within and beyond Pedagogical Settings pp 3–20 Cite as

Speaking Silence: The Different Aspects of Silence

• Eva Alerby 2  
• First Online: 16 September 2020

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In this chapter, some of the various aspects of silence are highlighted and discussed. For example, silence conveys a message. But, in order to understand it, we must listen to the silence and be open and responsive to its message. Another of the aspects that are highlighted is an opposite of silence—sound. The other aspects are how silence can be explained from a linguistic and communicative perspective. The various characteristics of silence will also be discussed—is the silence perceived as good or bad, as friendly or malicious? The relationship between silence and power, silence in the light of cultural perspectives and self-imposed silence or the desire to find it are then explored. The chapter concludes with a review of the multifaceted nature of silence in the form of literal, epistemological and ontological silences.

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Alerby, E. (2020). Speaking Silence: The Different Aspects of Silence. In: Silence within and beyond Pedagogical Settings. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51060-2_1

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Definition of silence

 (Entry 1 of 2)

Definition of silence  (Entry 2 of 2)

transitive verb

• speechlessness
• quieten [ chiefly British ]

Examples of silence in a Sentence

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'silence.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin silentium , from silent-, silens

13th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1

1553, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Phrases Containing silence

• conspiracy of silence
• keep one's silence
• reduce (someone) to silence
• silence is golden
• moment of silence
• suffer in silence
• swear (someone) to silence

Articles Related to silence

8 Ways to Tell Someone to Be Quiet

When shushing just isn't cutting it

What It Means to Go ‘Radio Silent’

When you’re getting nothing but dead air

Dictionary Entries Near silence

silence cloth

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“Silence.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/silence. Accessed 20 Mar. 2024.

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Kids definition of silence.

Kids Definition of silence  (Entry 2 of 2)

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Medical definition of silence, legal definition, legal definition of silence, more from merriam-webster on silence.

Nglish: Translation of silence for Spanish Speakers

Britannica English: Translation of silence for Arabic Speakers

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Article Contents

Silence as gesture, silence∼speech, embodied speech, embodied silence, acknowledgments.

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Silence as Gesture: Rethinking the Nature of Communicative Silences

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Kris Acheson, Silence as Gesture: Rethinking the Nature of Communicative Silences, Communication Theory , Volume 18, Issue 4, November 2008, Pages 535–555, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2885.2008.00333.x

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Silence and speech are often defined in relation to each other. In much scholarship, the two are perceived as polar opposites; speech enjoys primacy in this dichotomy, with silence negatively perceived as a lack of speech. As a consequence of this binary thinking, scholars remain unable to study the full range of the meanings and uses of silence in human interactions or even to fully recognize its communicative power. Merleau-Ponty described language as a gesture, made possible by the fact that we are bodies in a physical world. Language does not envelop or clothe thought; ideas materialize as embodied language, whether spoken or written. If silence is, as I argue here, as like speech as it is different, perhaps silence, too, can be a gesture. Rather than simply a background for expressed thought, if we considered silence to be embodied, to be a mating of the phenomenal and existential bodies, how might that affect current misconceptions of silence and subsequent limitations on the study of communicative silences?

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 semantic 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. Although they sometimes remove the word deliberate from the above equation, critical scholars tend to conceive of silence as omissions as well. One example would be Anzaldúa (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.

Even this recognition of silence as symbolic in place of the missing speech it has supplanted, however, remains insufficient, because it denies that silence can function semantically in its own stead and that it can carry meaning independent of unspoken speech. When we deny the complexity of its nature, we sentence silence to a passive state of being that can only communicate through a marked absence occurring in place of an expected presence. In other words, silence is still simply the field in this research. It can never be perceived as true object but only as the field made visible in the hole left when the speech object disappears (or fails to appear). Restricting silence to field is dangerous in that it reifies the speech–silence binary and the primacy of speech within that binary. Even critical scholars who gravitate toward silences, considering them more telling than the words surrounding them, do so only because of what they see missing inside that silence, the sign replaced by the zero sign. Thus, silence becomes important, even noticeable, only as the absence of speech in this scholarship. 5

These conceptual limitations placed upon silence result in limitations of our understanding. Restricting silence to field promotes the misconception that unlike speech, silence is not actively produced. An apt metaphor would be a white canvas, visible before paint is applied, of course, as well as in any spots the artist missed, intentionally or otherwise. The canvas, the silence, just is . It is the paint (speech) that requires human agency. Yet, what of silence that does not come naturally—biting the tongue, taking a deep breath and counting silently to 10? What of silence that we must train our bodies to produce—to listen intensely or extensively, to meditate? What of silence that defies cultural norms and/or power structures, such as refusing to speak a colonial language or to participate in oppressive discourses? While environmental silence-as-field does, of course, exist independently of human effort, conceptualizing all speech as active and all silence as passive would be amiss. Indeed, Dauenhauer (1980) portrayed silence as an “active human performance” (p. 24). This misconception of silence as always passive seems to stem naturally from the limited theorization of silence as always field , peeking through a zero sign.

Moreover, resigning silence to zero-signifier status alone promotes a false understanding of the nature of sign systems. Firstly, if silence were only the lack of speech, and the signs present in speech alone comprised cultural codes, then silence could not be a part of the structure of language. Secondly, such a restriction excludes cases where silence operates semiotically as signified or even interpretant rather than as the more commonly recognized silence as signifier in a zero sign. Juxtaposing speech and silence in a dichotomy is clearly problematic, in both functional and conceptual senses. As a result of this forced binary, we remain unable to study the full range of the meanings and uses of silence in human interactions or even to fully recognize its communicative power.

To address these limitations, we must rethink the nature of silence, as well as the relationship between silence and speech. If silence, like speech, can be active rather than only passive, can be a sign proper in addition to a zero sign, then silence bursts from a speech–silence dichotomy into a more complex relationship in which silence can be like speech in addition to its opposite. Clair’s (1998) work on the origins of language and silence provides one avenue for exploring this complexity. She analyzed silent speech and speaking silences, demonstrating that the two opposites are self-contained rather than mutually exclusive, and calling into question assumptions of inherent differences between speech and silence.

The philosophizing of Merleau-Ponty on language may provide additional insight to allow for such a disruption of current “Western” thought on silence. Merleau-Ponty described the use of language as a gesture, made possible by the fact that we are phenomenal bodies 6 in a physical world. Language does not envelop or clothe autonomously existing thought; thoughts spring forth from the existential body through speech organs or writing utensils utilized by the phenomenal body and teach themselves to us only when they materialize as words.

If silence is, as I argue here, as like speech as it is different, perhaps silence, too, can be a gesture. Rather than simply a background for expressed thought, if we considered silence to be embodied, to be a mating of the phenomenal and existential bodies, how might that affect current misconceptions of silence and subsequent limitations on our study of communicative silences?

Our first step in exploring communicative silence anew should be to consider silence as akin to, as well as opposed to, speech. For example, either silence or speech may co-occur with voiceless forms of language. Users of sign language may speak or not as their hands fly. Written language, as well, may be accompanied by speech or silence; texts may be read aloud or silently.

Like speech, silence often co-occurs with nonverbal communication. Many scholars focus on the kinesic alone as communication in these instances, and yet the gestures, facial expressions, and body attitudes that accompany silence can reinforce or contradict its meaning, exactly as kinesic behaviors do with speech. For example, in a culture where silence in response to a request signals assent, that silent acquiescence can be performed slowly, with tense posture, tempering the compliance with resentment similar to the way in which an unenthusiastic tone of voice might temper a spoken assent. Similarly, silence and speech can both be either reinforced or contradicted by other forms of nonverbal communication, including vocalizations (e.g., moans of pain, squeals of delight, sighs of exasperation, or boredom), proxemics, and haptics. In the decades of extensive research on nonverbal communication, scholars generally have framed the nonverbal either as accompaniment for speech or else as the primary mode of communication in an interaction, 7 which disguises the fact that when nonverbal behaviors are present without speech they can be, instead, coupled with communicative silence. The combination of silence and nonverbal signs often constitutes as complex a semiotic interplay as the more recognized speech–nonverbal coupling.

Another point where silence and speech can parallel is precision of reference or expression. We tend to think of speech as precise and silence as ambiguous ( Jaworski, 1993 ), and that is often the case. Yet, sometimes, a precise meaning can be better captured without words. Polanyi (1962) wrote of silence as ideal for communicating the linguistically inexpressible, what he termed tacit knowledge—concepts, experiences, sensations, skills, and relationships that defy articulation due to the natural limitations of any given system of language. When words are inadequate, when our language fails us, we perform silence as the more precise referential or expressive tool. Thus did Claudio proclaim in Shakespeare’s (1995) Much Ado About Nothing : “Silence is the perfectest herald of joy. I were but little happy if I could say how much” (II.i.267–268).

Furthermore, silence is very like speech in the way it functions symbolically because its semiotic relationships can be arbitrary within a given code and can vary dramatically across different symbol systems. In German, /ne/ indicates refusal, while in Korean the same sound denotes agreement. Silence, too, can embody exactly opposite propositional content depending on the cultural context ( Jaworski, 1993 ). According to Saville-Troike (1985) , in Japan, if a girl remains silent in response to a marriage proposal, she gives her consent; between Igbo speakers, however, the same response signifies a refusal of the proposal. The norm of some cultures is to express anger with silence, whereas in others silence expresses respect, surprise, joy, uncertainty, contentment, fear, and many another emotions ( Acheson, 2007 ). Silences are contradictorily construed as signs of deceit and honesty, of dominance and submission, and of social skill and error in various cultures. In fact, Enninger (1991) argued that cross-cultural variation in the meanings attributed to silence is so great that the potential for intercultural misunderstandings abound as much with silence as with speech. 8

Consider the ethnographic work of linguistic anthropologist Keith Basso with the Western Apache of Cibeque, Arizona. In several decades of close contact with the tribe, Basso documented many ways that silence forms an integral part of communication among the Apache. Some of his most fascinating conclusions are illustrated in his book, Wisdom Sits in Places , in which he explored the relationships between landscape, silence, and ethics in Western Apache culture. Under certain circumstances, for example, offering consolation or advice, the residents of Cibeque engage in what they call “speaking with names” ( Basso, 1996 , p. 81). This process involves the mention by one speaker of the name of a local landmark, followed by a minute or even several minutes of silence, at which point another speaker may mention the name of another local spot, again followed by a lengthy silence. Speakers often repeat this cycle multiple times before concluding the conversation.

We gave that woman pictures to work on in her mind … We didn’t hold her down. That way she could travel in her mind. She could add on to them easily. We gave her clear pictures with place names. So her mind went to those places, standing in front of them as our ancestors did long ago. That way she could see what happened there long ago … She could recall the knowledge of our ancestors. ( Basso, 1996 , pp. 82–83)

In their account, these silences perform the work of the interaction, taking the uttered place name and using it to conjure meaning in the mind of the hearer, to enact a drama before the mind’s eye that recalls the moral of the tale associated with that particular place, a moral embedded deep in the cultural knowledge of the Apache people. The communicative functions of consoling and advising that members of another culture might accomplish with speech, these people perform with silence.

As an expression, the phenomenon “summer night’s silence” is rather easily communicable … immediately and almost instinctively recognizable (through implicit, tacit knowledge transmitted by the collective layers and codes of cultural experience) …. To convey all the richnesses of this experience, [a] translation would require verbose explanations of the different Finnish seasons, the light of the Nordic summer, the softness of the green, and especially the mental state from which the meaning of [this silence] wells forth. (pp. 348–349)

Vainiomäki offered several examples of attempts by the Finns to represent this particular silence, not only with sedimented phrases such as “summer night’s silence,” but also with images and even music. The represented silence, however, in turn represents: “It is also an illusion representing an ideal conception of reality” (p. 349). It calls into being love and yearning and dreams of happiness.

Synchrony envelops diachrony. The past of language began by being present …. Thus if language is a system when it is considered according to a cross-section, it must be in its development too …. In another connection, diachrony envelops synchrony. If language allows random elements when it is considered according to a longitudinal section, the system of synchrony must at every moment allow fissures where brute events insert themselves. (p. 86)

For Merleau-Ponty, the synchronic speech and diachronic language of any given sign system remain necessarily in dialogue with each other: “History is the history of successive synchronies, and the contingency of the linguistic past invades the synchronic system” (p. 87). Speech is a use of language; it is only understandable between members of a speech community because the larger system is in place to provide the history and context within which to interpret it. Language as a system, though, can only exist through its constant rebirth in the repetition of sedimented speech and its constant reinvention in creative speech production (which explains why a language is dead when it has no remaining native speakers, despite the fact that decipherable records of past examples of speech may still exist).

The two examples above, from Basso and Vainiomäki, clearly demonstrate that human silence, too, is only artificially separable from abstract language systems, in the same way that speech is. Because, for the Western Apache, silence is often the preferred means of human interaction, the materialization of concrete instances of synchronic communication (akin to speech), silence cannot help but occupy a fundamental position in the Apache longitudinal abstract cultural code. Similarly, as both signifier and signified in these signs so central to Finnish culture, silence becomes constitutive of instances of Finnish “speech,” thus constituting as well the Finnish language.

The meanings of these silences (whether translatable into words or not) are only interpretable within a current sign system, and, as with speech, humans’ use of silence to signify serves both to preserve and to transform their sign systems. With silence, then, we see the same inseparability of the synchronic and diachronic that Merleau-Ponty (1945/1962) described with regard to speech and language, the same cyclical relation between the two, where language is that “which reiterates itself [in speech], which is its own foundation, which, like a wave, gathers and poises itself to hurtle beyond its own limits” (p. 229). If Merleau-Ponty had extended his metaphor to silence, he probably would have seen it as the ebb before and after the flow of speech, the stillness between the crashing of waves, but I purport that silence, too, can gather, poise, hurtle, and crash. It certainly seems thus in these examples.

The work of Perales and Cenoz (1996) provides further evidence for this claim. In their discussion of how knowledge about silence is essential to the language-learning process, these authors argued that achieving communicative competence in second language acquisition is impossible if one simply learns the semantic meanings and pragmatic uses of words. If language learners hope to effectively communicate in their target language, they must also master, whether consciously or not, the meanings and uses of silence in that language. Dauenhauer (1980) wrote: “For example, if I hear a speech in a language I do not understand and cannot detect the intervening silences [i.e., the miniscule pauses that separate meaningful sounds and allow the listener to perceive individual words and phrases in a stream of sounds], I hear something which approximates babble” (p. 6). Silences are therefore invaluable for successful speech reception (listening comprehension). Moreover, with regard to speech production, Perales and Cenoz (1996) demonstrated that, in learning another language, just as important as learning when to say what, is learning when to say nothing at all (or to say something with silence). Students cannot speak competently in a new language until they understand how silence functions pragmatically in that linguistic and cultural system, for instance, with regard to politeness, phatic communication, and (gendered, etc.) identity performance.

Perhaps silences such as these are best thought of as events, situated within a historical, cultural, and linguistic context. Schrag (2003) described speech as such events. In what he termed the texture of communicative praxis— a space where language and actions about something are expressed by someone to or for someone—referential communication is inseparable from expressive communication, which is always also rhetorical communication. Because we are in the world, our referential meanings are inherently expressive of our subjectivity; because we are unavoidably intersubjective, our referential and expressive meanings cannot help but be rhetorically directed toward another.

Schrag’s description of this “texture” opens the door for the conceptualization of silence and stillness as more than background for discursive language and behavior. They do not simply fill the space of communicative praxis, becoming audible and visible only when people (by choice or imposition) do/can speak, do/cannot act. Instead, silence and inaction can be events, like speech and action, that occur within that praxis, events also inexorably tied to the discourse of language and social practices, events that both reflect and shape that discourse. Like speech and action, silence and inaction can never be removed from their historical context nor separated from the (inter)subjectivity of speakers and actors. Their meanings, too, are unavoidably referential, expressive, and rhetorical, and the ways that we experience silence as human beings demonstrate these relationships.

Dauenhauer (1980) discussed the impossibility of autonomous silence, arguing that, when humans encounter silence they are filled with emotions and thoughts not of their own choosing, and that these reactions to others’ silence are not simply biological but are correlated to people’s situatedness within social structures and the relationships between the producers and perceivers of silence. Dauenhauer’s description of human experiences of silence parallels Schrag’s explanation of speech—communicative silence, too, is always produced in reference to something, expressed by someone, and directed toward someone. The work of Philips (1983) in the educational system on the Warm Springs Reservation in Oregon provides an example: In this Native American community, if a girl responds in silence to a teacher’s query that she knows perfectly well how to answer, her silence, directed toward her classmates as well as the questioner, expresses gender-appropriate modesty and humility as much as or more than it refers to lack of knowledge (although Philips found it often to be construed by White teachers as simply the latter). This silence is a complex communicative event, unavoidably expressive and rhetorical as well as referential, just as Schrag (2003) described speech events.

Silence and speech, then, as synchronic events, should both be acknowledged as comprising language in the diachronic, systemic sense. This conceptualization of the relationship perhaps allows for the resolution of the dilemma I have developed: That silence and speech, paradoxically, are parallel communicative events in addition to opposite poles of a binary. They have marked similarities, however different they may also be. Clair (1998) previously described how silence and speech mirror and mimic each other, so that speech silences and silence gives voice: “The idea that silence and voice exist as simultaneous expressions suggests that bifurcating the two may leave us with a partial understanding of who we are and how we live our everyday social realities” (p. 187). However, the current semiotic explanation of silence and speech as similarly functioning manifestations of a language system offers a further explanation for how those “simultaneous expressions” are possible. Clair united language and silence into a single term— language/\silence or silence/\language —offering a feminist reading of silence as the origin of language and an argument that “the two phenomena exist simultaneously in a shared space, influencing each other” (p. 10). I have framed that theory semiotically in this discussion, demonstrating that silence and speech (like stillness and action) gain the capacity to live in a paradox of simultaneous opposition and correspondence because they both constitute signs in a semiotic system . Because, together, they comprise language, they are oppositional in their relationship with each other and corresponding in the relationship they share with language.

Thus far, we have established some grounds on which to compare silence and speech in their communicative capacity. I move next to an explication of Merleau-Ponty’s conceptualization of language as a gesture, in order that we may later question whether that same conceptualization might suit some silences as well. 9

Human speech is inevitably embodied. Our bodies move across time, through space; these “movements end in sounds,” and speech is born ( Merleau-Ponty, 1964 , p. 144). A close study of Merleau-Ponty reveals the complex spatiality and temporality of speech, the ways in which speech occupies and depends upon both space and time.

I do not need to visualize external space and my own body in order to move one within the other …. In the same way I do not need to visualize the word in order to know and pronounce it. It is enough that I possess its articulatory and acoustic style as one of the modulations, one of the possible uses of my body. I reach back for the word as my hand reaches towards the part of my body which is being pricked; the word has a certain location in my linguistic world, and is part of my equipment. (p. 210)

Language traces pathways through our brains, some more well-trodden than others, and the words that we speak become a physical part of our bodies. Metaphors of speech sometimes reflect this physicality: “It’s right on the tip of my tongue.”

Moreover, as a phenomenon that spans time, speech finds itself subject to the Husserlian concepts of protention and retention. Of course, this is true in its relationship to language as discussed in the section above (with present speech only interpretable within a previously existing linguistic framework, and each instance of speech shaping the language of future speakers). More important for the current discussion, though, is how these concepts operate internally within each particular speech occurrence.

Writing of human perception, Merleau-Ponty (1945/1962) purported that “each present reasserts the presence of the whole past which it supplants, and anticipates that of all that is to come” (p. 488). Speech, not exempt from this retention and protention that is so integral to human consciousness, is only understandable in light of the previously spoken and the to-be-said. Our attribution of the meaning of every single word of an utterance, in fact, depends upon its context. The words preceding it frame our interpretation when we hear it, as do our expectations of what words might follow it; each word likewise sheds light on what was just said as well as on what will soon be said. In short, we could not comprehend the meaning of an utterance unless past, present, and future were in constant play within it.

In addition to speech, however, Merleau-Ponty also insisted that thought is unavoidably spatial and temporal. Unlike supporters of intellectualism, who portray ideas as somehow autonomously alive within the existential body and merely expressed or fixated with words by the phenomenal body, Merleau-Ponty (1945/1962) refused the metaphor of speech as the “envelope and clothing of thought” (p. 211). In his writings, thought becomes an activity made possible only by the fact that we have both existential and phenomenal bodies: “It cannot be said of speech either that it is an ‘operation of intelligence’, or that it is a ‘motor phenomenon’: it is wholly motility and wholly intelligence” (p. 226). Thought, rather than preexisting speech, finds life only in speech, so that an “orator does not think before speaking, nor even while speaking; his speech is his thought” (p. 209). Speech “accomplishes” thought (p. 207).

One consequence of this connectedness of the existential and phenomenal bodies is the way that we experience our own speech as simultaneously of ourselves and of our world. Merleau-Ponty (1945/1962) wrote of the “double sensations” of touching one hand with the other—feeling the body as an object that can simultaneously feel (p. 106). He later described the similar strange sensation of hearing and feeling one’s own speech: “I hear my own vibration from within … with my throat” ( Merleau-Ponty, 1964 , p. 144). Just as we discover our thoughts when we speak them, we likewise encounter our bodily selves. We feel and hear our speech as our body spawns it, at the same moment, and it is in that moment that we know ourselves to be part of the world we speak into. Thus, did Merleau-Ponty (1945/1962) define speech as “the subject’s taking up of a position in the world” (p. 225).

Yet, speech, as an embodied gesture, does more than make us conscious of our own being-in-the-world; it also intertwines with our intersubjectivity. Merleau-Ponty (1945/1962) described speech as comparable to a fist raised in anger, whose meaning is not “a psychic fact hidden behind the gesture,” but instead is the gesture (p. 214). When we witness such a gesture, we interpret it through our own bodies—what our own raised fists are—and so the “comprehension of gestures comes about through the reciprocity of [our] intentions and the gestures of others, of [our] gestures and intentions discernible in the conduct of other people” (p. 215). Merleau-Ponty (1945/1962) posited speech as just such a gesture: “There is, then, a taking up of others’ thought through speech, a reflection in others, an ability to think according to others” (p. 208). Through my body, I recognize others when they present themselves to me for recognition by speaking, not only because I hear their voices, but because their words are gestures that my body recognizes in itself—an other’s “signification has come to dwell in me” because “its seed [was already present] in my body” ( Merleau-Ponty, 1964 , pp. 91, 145).

As insightful as are Merleau-Ponty’s discussions of embodied speech, his treatment of silence is much less well fleshed out. In the vein of Derrida’s (1978) discussion of speech as emerging from and pushing against silence, for Merleau-Ponty (1964) , speech and thought are “the emergence of the flesh as expression … in the world of silence” (p. 145). He conceptualized silence as lying “beneath the chatter of words” ( Merleau-Ponty, 1945/1962 , p. 214). In this article, however, I have argued that silence can be more than the field underlying speech, more than the world that gives birth to thought and frames it so that that thought is recognizable. Merleau-Ponty’s (1968) last work, unfinished and published posthumously, suggests that he intended to theorize silences more thoroughly, perhaps in these very ways: “Can [speech] come to an end? There would be needed a silence that envelops the speech anew, after one has come to recognize that speech enveloped [silence] … this silence will not be the contrary of language” (p. 179, emphasis in original). Because silence can comprise a communicative linguistic event that parallels speech in many ways, I believe that we can extrapolate from Merleau-Ponty’s earlier conceptualization of speech as a conspiracy of the existential and phenomenal bodies, applying it also to communicative silences, in order to accomplish the theorizing that his final work does not.

Silence is, after all, inherently spatial and temporal. People metaphorically think of silences as objects that we can “break,”“feel the weight of,” and “cut with a knife.” We often also speak of silence, not as space to be filled, but as a substance filling space itself—a room, a church, or a forest. Silence seems sometimes a palpable force that hangs in the air. Furthermore, when more than an environmental attribute, when humanly produced, silence, like spoken language, seems to emanate from people, moving out through the air around them toward others just as would waves of sound. Human or atmospheric, these meaningful silences occupy space in our lived experiences.

Similarly, they inhabit time; they become meaningful only by spanning time. If silences were not temporal, they would be imperceptible. Moreover, the length of the time they seem to fill is integral to the meanings attributed to perceived silences. I say “seem to fill” because the temporality of silence, despite how it is treated in social scientific research where it is objectively measured, sometimes to the thousandth of a second, is much more about subjective perception and less about any objective measure of time. The same pause before responding to a question might seem rushed and anxious to one person and painfully drawn out to another based upon the norms for such pauses in their respective cultures, or even relative to the semantic content of the question itself.

Think for a moment about how silence operates semiotically, intertwined with speech within a given communicative interaction, as a concrete manifestation or performance of a particular language and culture. The meanings of silences rest upon their placement in the performance, the context surrounding them as well as their arrangement relative to that context. Dauenhauer (1980) wrote of intervening silences, those that function “melodically” and “rhythmically” to punctuate sound phrases in discourse (p. 6). He argued that such intervening silences take their meaning from their context because of the interplay between spatiality and temporality. Because the meanings of preceding sounds are retained in the silence, and the meanings of following sounds (even if they are never realized) are protended in the silence as well, silences that fall between sounds in speech can never be meaningless. They carry meaning by bridging sounds, spatially and temporally.

Moreover, when silences carry meaning of their own as signs proper, spatiality and temporality are no less crucial to our understanding of those signs. Returning to the work of Philips (1983) in educational settings, let us examine the duration of silences and the possible range of their subsequent interpretations in cross-cultural interactions. In the classrooms of Philips’s ethnography, a lengthy silence mutually produced by a teacher and student between a question and response signified proper patience and respect on the part of the teacher and appropriate thoughtfulness on the part of the student to the Native Americans. In her study, White teachers tended to interrupt such silences prematurely, interpreting the seemingly too-long (according to their own cultural norms) absence of speech as indicative of a student’s uncertainty or inattention. Meanwhile, Native American students took the abbreviated silence, which seemed too short to them, as a sign of the teacher’s impatience, personal disregard, or lack of interest in their intended response. 10

Clair (1998) provided another example of duration affecting the meaning of silence by noting the case of a woman of the Warramunga tribe of Australia, who refused to speak for 24 years. Enninger (1991) , who also cited the Warramunga example, explained that cultural norms among the Warramunga require female relatives (wives, mothers, sisters, etc.) to display their status of mourning for 2 years after a man’s death by maintaining silence in the presence of others. Clair interpreted one Warramunga woman’s refusal to break silence for 22 years after the imposed silence was lifted as an enactment of her identity that served to simultaneously underscore and protest her victimization. Notice that the duration of silence not only altered the meaning of the silence, from acquiescence to resistance, but also gained strength through its very length. The silence waited, hovering, gathering power like a storm brewing, and was no less moving while it lasted than when it finally broke.

This example brings us to the second point of Merleau-Ponty’s conceptualization of speech as described above—that it is a gesture. Silence, too, is unavoidably an embodied phenomenon. We only know it to be present because we sense it, and I do not mean to limit this sensing to what we hear, for silence is more than heard. We feel it in our bodies. Silence produces emotional and physical symptoms in our phenomenal bodies, both when we encounter it and when we ourselves produce it. “Sepulchral silence,”“deathly silent,” and “silent as the grave”—such statements describe more than a lack of sound. A space that is intensely silent (especially in a society uncomfortable with the notion of death) is one that invokes a visceral reaction—certainly of acute attention but perhaps even of fear or claustrophobia—in its occupants.

Each aspect of silence can be as distressing and misery-laden as it can be consoling and peace-bearing or familiar and untroubling. To see this, one has only to recall the fearful intervening silence which intersperses the small boy’s nervous and hesitant public recitation of a poem. Suppose he cannot span the intervening silence with the right word! Or recall the sorrow-laden after-silence in which the funeral service for one’s beloved ends? What a well of misery is the silence of a ruptured friendship, or the hole whence the agonized cry “Where is my God?” emanates, or the gnawing silence within which one doubts the worth of [one’s] life’s work or indeed of [one’s] life itself. (p. 23)

It is small wonder that many scholars ( Colp-Hansbury, 2004 ; Glenn, 2004 ; Jaworski, 1993 ) have expounded on silence as a compelling rhetorical strategy, one that can be more persuasive than speech. Christina Colp-Hansbury’s ethnography, drawing heavily on Bruneau’s (1973) theorizing on the power of silence, provides a striking example: A war protest group called the Women in Black who stand, even in the face of people who shout at them, and express their point of view in profound, unshakable silence. Of course, some of silence’s rhetorical power may lie in its ambiguity or in its violation of expectations (for speech in general or for a particular token of speech), but some is due, I believe, to how humans experience silence—viscerally in their phenomenal bodies. 11

Because they affect us so bodily, silences call our attention to our own being-in-the-world. Silence, for example, can cause an acute consciousness of the passage of time. When seconds or minutes tick by in silence, even with no clock nearby to signal their passing for us, we may sense time slowing to a crawl, especially when the silence is one of anticipation or of dread. Or, the moments may steal away from us during times of quiet contemplation, leaving us to wonder where the time went while we dreamt undisturbed by noise.

Silence can also make us hyperaware of our own spatiality. I have been told by several people who are blind that they do not need sound to sense the space around them, that they can hear the contours of a room in its very silence. Although I certainly cannot claim such acute hearing, I need not lack sight to hear myself small in a cavernous space, or to feel the immensity of the world when alone, in silent communion with the outdoors. I have felt the emotional distance created when a person I care for responds to me with silent anger, creating with “the silent treatment” an impassable span of space between us. The silence calls to my attention the physical space that separates us, and may also make that gap seem larger than it actually is. I have also felt the lived spatiality of intimate silence, where sometimes there seemed no distance at all between another and myself despite a lack of physical contact, and at other times I stood, breathless, mesmerized by sudden awareness of another’s proximity as I waited silently for another touch.

At these times, I am conscious of my being-in-the-world, aware of being a phenomenal body in a physical world. Encountering silence, whether intentionally or not, has the capacity to bring me into that awareness quite suddenly, catapulting me into an intense awareness of my own body as I strain into the silence, listening to it. In the silence of startled fear, for instance, I feel my heart pounding and feel my muscles aching with tension as I strive to identify what startled me. Producing silence 12 can cause a similar attentiveness—to the world we find ourselves a part of, to others in that world, to the sensations of our own bodies, or to our inner thoughts and emotions—which may be why some religions champion silence as a means of self-discovery and of connection with the universe ( Bill, 2005 ; Carbaugh, 1999 ; Maltz, 1985 ) and why many educators advocate silence on the part of students as an important classroom learning strategy or general epistemology ( Hawk, 2003 ; Kalamaras, 1994 ).

In the experience of dialogue, there is constituted between the other person and myself a common ground; my thought and his are interwoven into a single fabric, my words and those of my interlocutor are called forth by the state of the discussion, and they are inserted into a shared operation of which neither of us is the creator. We have here a dual being, where the other is for me no longer a mere bit of behaviour in my transcendental field, nor I in his; we are collaborators for each other in consummate reciprocity…. and we coexist through a common world. (p. 413)

Communicative silences operate in this same way. Previously, I discussed silences as events in the space of communicative praxis, events that necessarily are about something, expressed by someone, and directed toward someone ( Schrag, 2003 ). Silences are thus dialogic, like speech in Merleau-Ponty’s description of intersubjectivity, in that they require collaboration between subjects, intending each toward the other and binding them in co-existence. But beyond speech, which is usually performed by a single person in an interaction at any given time, Jaworski (1993) pointed out that silence can also be maintained among and between people. That is one of the beauties of silence—that, when multiple people perform it at once, their silent voices are raised in unison, creating not cacophony, but symphony.

Dauenhauer (1980) argued that the ultimate proof of the existence of silence as a positive and intersubjective phenomenon is that silence is experienced by the deaf, who hear silence differently than they hear mere lack of sound. The deaf live their lives without sound, and yet still find themselves interpellated in the intersubjectivity created by speech and silence. Most deaf are not mute. If they learn to, they can speak, and many do just that in conjunction with their preferred mode of communication (signing). Others, however, choose to remain silent as they speak with their hands. For some, this silence is a response to the stigmatization they feel from the hearing world, which tends to regard their speech as deficient in some way—that is, less than fully human, or less than equally intelligent ( Lucas & Valli, 1992 ). Some, like those who oppose cochlear implants in favor of remaining deaf, use their silence to protest the hegemony of spoken language over signed ( Desai, 2005 ; Glenn, 2004 ). Regardless of their reasons for doing so, the deaf are capable of producing silence in interactions within both hearing and deaf communities, just as they are able to perceive the silence and speech of others. Because they communicate with silence, the deaf, too, are woven into that “fabric” of intentionality that Merleau-Ponty described.

To conclude this section on embodied silence, I’d like to return for a moment to the examples from the work of Basso (1996) and Vainiomäki (2004) that I introduced before delving into the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty. In his study of the Western Apache, Basso found that their silences were intimately connected to spatiality. The silences that constitute the practice of “speaking with names,” for example, allow those involved in the conversation to travel within their minds to the places mentioned and witness there the drama for which the place was named. Participants in the process draw their own conclusions unhampered by the words of others. Tribal members describe the practice as laying a row of bricks and allowing others to build their own wall if they so choose, to construct their own meanings. This meaning making is made possible by mutual silence—a waiting silence on the part of the one who spoke the name and an active, learning silence on the part of listeners. In comparison to place and space, precision regarding time is relatively unimportant to the moral of the narratives enacted in the minds of those present, as the events that transpired at the named landmarks are not associated with any particular date (making the stories generally temporal in the sense of being passed down through time rather than specifically temporal, or belonging to/in a certain time). Yet, the temporality of the silence itself is indispensable because it is only across time that space becomes available inside the silence for the story to unfold.

Such silences may be nearly inconceivable to those not a part of this culture, for they represent a particular way of being-in-the-world, and a specific sort of intersubjectivity. The Western Apache do not consider themselves to be in a world that they own. They are daughters and sons of the earth, and, as such, they are duty bound to listen to her silences. They say that their land, as any good mother should, shoots arrows of morality into their souls with her silence, reminding them of the manner in which they ought to behave and the way they need to live. Thus, when they engage with each other in the silences of “speaking with names,” it is not the voice of the place-name speaker unfolding the story in the minds of listeners, but the silence of the place itself and of the ancestors who lived there. Unhampered by Cartesian illusions of a mind–body fissure, these people experience being-in-the-world as an existential connectedness with their world made possible by their phenomenal bodies, not needing Merleau-Ponty to point out the intentionality of their consciousness or Basso to analyze the importance of embodied silence for their way of life. Although these scholars might help cultural outsiders understand their communicative behaviors and may shed light on our current discussion of embodied silence, the Western Apache themselves, as is evident in Basso’s work, are fully cognizant of the fact that the language of their ancestors and the silences of their land are at work upon them, calling them into being and shaping their interactions with each other. Speakers relinquish control in the silences of “speaking with names,” allowing the places they have named to narrate the silence, and allowing listeners to build walls (or not) with the stories the places tell.

The second example in the earlier section on speech and silence, from Vainiomäki (2004) , concerned signs involving the Finnish “summer night’s silence” as signifier and signified. Here, as with the Western Apache, silence occurs in space. It pervades the atmosphere, saturating the air until the summer night is incongruous with sound. The Finns who inhabit this silent space thus feel compelled to be silent in return. They enter into a dialogue of silence with the night and with each other, allowing the tranquility, the wistfulness, to write itself onto their bodies. Temporality, of course, plays a role as well. This is a silence to be found only at a certain time of day and at a certain time of year, when the vague light and the soft green and warm smell of summer make speech superfluous. This is a silence full of abandonment to longings for love and romance and sweet, sweet life, an utter abandonment that refuses knowledge of the approaching dawn with its return to labor and the inevitable winter with its white, cold death. The Finns understand this silence because they live in it. They experience it together, keeping their own silence, and speak of it only when time has moved on, taking the silence with it. It is then that they represent summer night’s silence in image and song, in a struggle to recreate that feeling in signs. This silence, too, is embodied and intersubjective, and its experience is only possible, as Merleau-Ponty (1945/1962) said of speech, by “the subject’s taking up of a position in the world” (p. 225).

While current and past approaches to the study of silences offer much of value, I have argued in this essay that many scholars have not fully grasped the nature of silences. By applying Merleau-Ponty’s (1945/1962 , 1964 ) conceptualization of speech as a gesture to communicative silences, I hoped to extend and develop a theory of silences as lived, arriving at a better understanding of the relationship of silence to language and speech, and, most importantly, to the body. Throughout this phenomenological exploration, I noted exemplary research of embodied silences: Clair (1998) , who theorized “language/\silence” of sexual harassment in organizations; Basso (1996) , who ethnographically explored the Western Apache’s communicative uses of silence (see also Carbaugh, 1999 for another fine example of an ethnography of silence); Vainiomäki (2004) , who executed a semiotic analysis of a Finnish sign of silence; and Dauenhauer (1980) , who rigorously explored the ontology of silence. 13 Essential to a future, more robust understanding of silences will be a continuation of the consideration of silences as bodily experienced phenomena. Csordas (1994) , in his edited volume Embodiment and Experience: The Existential Ground of Culture and Self , argued vehemently for the importance of embodiment to the study of cultural experience, proposing that “the fact of our embodiment can be a valuable starting point for rethinking the nature of culture and our existential situation as cultural beings” (p. 6). I believe his argument applies equally well to the study of silences—we should begin with our embodiment of them.

If we are to understand silences in all their complexity, not simply as a field for speech, and not merely as a zero-signifier when the speech object is missing from that field, the study of silences as events, like speech, like action, must become the rule rather than the few exceptions noted in this essay. In short, scholars must find more ways to study silences as situated, embodied practices. We need to recognize that silences, too, can be gestures, that our use of silence like speech, as part of language, is made possible only as a result of our being-in-the-world simultaneously in phenomenal and existential bodies, and that, as bodily gestures, silences play roles in both our awareness of our being-in-the world and our intersubjectivity with others. Only then can we escape the binary of speech and silence and understand the human experience of silence in its communicative fullness.

The author offers special thanks to Dr. Jacqueline Martinez for her mentorship on the development of this paper and to three anonymous reviewers whose insight was so helpful.

Although this essay often critiques “Western” scholarship, I do not intend to imply by my use of first-person plural markers that “we” includes only or primarily “Western” scholars (see also the note below on the problematics of the term “Western”). Rather, I employ the first person as an invitation to readers to join me on a journey of contemplation that is as shared as the human experiences contemplated.

For a comprehensive review of scholarly treatments of silence, see Acheson (2007) .

Regarding labels such as Western , Clair (1998) wrote: “This language functions to split the world in half—eastern from western. It then labels western as white European” (p. 216). She later remarked that “this discourse marginalizes African Americans because they have a distinct heritage that is neither eastern nor western per se and yet contains elements of both. It leaves the cultural contributions of South American cultures in question … There is no clear place for the Irish who have suffered the throes of colonization for generations. Geopoliticizing under the term ‘western’ further erases marginalized groups like people who are bi-, homo-, or a-sexuals [and] it would seem that even women of ‘western’ origin have been constrained by colonization” ( Clair, 2003 , p. 20). I would add to Clair’s list some white Europeans/USians ( Bill, 2005 ; Carbaugh, 2005 ; Lehtonen & Sajavaara, 1985 ; Lippard, 1988 ) whose values and uses for silence are made invisible by discussions of “Western” conceptualizations of silence. In this essay, I surround words such as Western with quotation marks as a continual reminder of the essentializations and erasures that such labels perpetuate.

This is, of course, a generalization. For a striking counterexample (discussed in more detail below), see Clair’s (1998) postmodern discussion of speech and silence as simultaneously occurring and mutually constituting.

In his phenomenological study, Dauenhauer (1980) diverged from this thinking by noting silences that are “nonderivative” from language and that they “enjoy a radical independence from or hegemony over utterance” (pp. 5, 16).

In opposition to Cartesian ideas of a mind–body dichotomy, Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy marries the existential body (the perceiving body) to the phenomenal body (the material one), claiming that the two are intertwined. Our every perception is therefore grounded in our physical presence in this world and our orientation to the objects and people around us, and thought is as much of the body as it is of the mind.

For exemplars of research of this type, see the works of Hall (1966) , Ekman and Friesen (1975) , and Burgoon and Saine (1978) . For an overview of the field, see also Guerrero, DeVito, and Hecht (1999) .

I would hypothesize based on my own experiences encountering silences in unfamiliar cultural environments that people might expect the meanings of silence, which sometimes do not strike the ear or body as strange, to translate better than the words of an unfamiliar language, which tend to be immediately, unmistakably, and viscerally recognizable as “foreign.” It may be that such assumptions of similarity where there are in fact cultural differences make silence a particularly tricky means of cross-cultural communication.

Note that in the discussion below, I sometimes replace Merleau-Ponty’s language with speech . I make these changes not to critique Merleau-Ponty’s conceptualization of language nor to correct translation errors, but simply for the sake of clarity. In English, the word language has a number of meanings. In the current article, I have been using language to refer to a semiotic system and speech to an instance of language use. My utilization of these terms does not always correspond to Merleau-Ponty’s. So as not to confuse readers with a lack of consistency in terminology, I replace Merleau-Ponty’s language with speech where he meant the use of, not the system of, language.

As one reviewer noted, such misunderstandings over the lengths of silence are not limited to interactions between people of different linguistic or ethnic backgrounds, but can even happen between speakers of the same language. See Tannen’s (1984) early work with New York and Southern U.S. English speakers for an example of regional differences among English speakers in pragmatic uses of silence for turn-taking.

Note that even ambiguity or violation of expectations can be felt bodily, as surprise, wonder, discomfort, or anxiety (depending on one’s tolerance for ambiguity and the nature of the violation).

Thus far, I have written of encountered silence and produced silence as distinct from one another, but that distinction may indeed be illusion. Although I could produce silence that is not echoed by others or by my environment, can I produce it without having it encountered at all, if only by myself? Moreover, can I encounter the silence of others without simultaneously producing it? I wonder if, when others listen to my speech, it is not their silence I hear but my own voice, permitted full resonance by their silence.

I would like to note that, although I recognize and appreciate the rigor of Dauenhauer’s (1980) work, as a communication scholar I am left wanting by his findings. As a philosopher, he focuses his phenomenological investigation of silences around ontology. His work thus provides a basis for the phenomenological exploration of silences by communication scholars while not precluding the need for such further exploration.

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Narrative Silence in Literature & Literary Theory

Narrative silence, as a theoretical term, refers to intentional omissions or pauses within a story, leaving crucial details unspoken.

Narrative Silence: Etymology /Term , Meanings and Concept

Table of Contents

Narrative Silence: Etymology/Term

The term “narrative silence” combines “narrative,” referring to the art of storytelling or the representation of events, and “silence,” denoting the absence of sound or communication. Together, it conveys a powerful concept within literary and artistic contexts, suggesting intentional gaps or omissions in a narrative that compel the audience to engage actively by filling in the missing pieces.

Meanings and Concept:

• Artistic Pauses: Narrative silence often involves deliberate pauses or breaks in storytelling, allowing readers or viewers to reflect on the unspoken aspects and draw their own conclusions.
• Implicit Meaning: It signifies the unspoken, where what is left unsaid holds as much significance as the explicit content, encouraging interpretation and fostering a deeper connection between the audience and the narrative.
• Emotional Resonance: By leveraging narrative silence, creators can evoke emotions and provoke thought, relying on the audience’s imagination to amplify the impact of a story.
• Open Interpretation: This concept allows for diverse interpretations, as the gaps in the narrative enable individuals to project their experiences, beliefs, and perspectives onto the story, making it a more inclusive and participatory experience.
• Strategic Omissions: Authors and artists may strategically omit details to build tension, mystery, or suspense, inviting the audience to actively engage with the narrative by speculating on what remains unsaid.

Narrative Silence: Definition of a Theoretical Term

Narrative silence, as a theoretical term , refers to intentional omissions or pauses within a story, leaving crucial details unspoken. It involves the strategic use of gaps in the narrative to engage the audience actively, prompting them to fill in the blanks with their own interpretations and imagination. This concept enhances the emotional resonance of a narrative, allowing for nuanced and open-ended storytelling.

Narrative Silence: Theorists, Works and Arguments

• Roland Barthes: The influential French theorist explored the concept of narrative gaps in his work, emphasizing the reader’s role in constructing meaning through active engagement with the text.
• Wolfgang Iser: A prominent figure in reader-response theory, Iser delved into the idea of “gaps” or “blanks” in narratives, arguing that readers contribute to the completion of a text by filling in these spaces with their own interpretations.
• Jacques Derrida: Known for deconstructionist theory, Derrida’s ideas on language and meaning contribute to the understanding of narrative silence by highlighting the inherent instability and openness of texts.
• “S/Z” by Roland Barthes (1970): In this seminal work, Barthes analyzes a short story by Honoré de Balzac, introducing the concept of narrative codes and exploring how readers actively participate in the creation of meaning through gaps and silences.
• “The Act of Reading” by Wolfgang Iser (1978): Iser discusses the role of the reader in the literary experience, emphasizing the significance of gaps and indeterminacies within the text that prompt readers to actively engage in interpretation.
• “Of Grammatology” by Jacques Derrida (1967): While not specifically focused on narrative, Derrida’s deconstructionist ideas have influenced discussions on narrative silence by challenging traditional notions of language, meaning, and closure in texts.

Key Arguments:

• Reader Participation: The theorists argue that narrative silence invites readers to actively participate in the construction of meaning, as they fill gaps and interpret ambiguities based on their individual perspectives and experiences.
• Deconstruction of Closure: It challenges the traditional idea of a closed and complete narrative by introducing gaps that resist definitive interpretations, aligning with Derrida’s notion of deconstruction and the inherent instability of language.
• Emphasis on Imagination: These theorists highlight the role of imagination in the face of narrative silence, positing that leaving certain aspects unspoken stimulates the audience’s creativity, fostering a more dynamic and engaging literary experience.

Narrative Silence: Major Characteristics

• Unspoken Emotions: Narrative silence often involves the deliberate omission of characters’ emotions or reactions, allowing readers to infer and imagine the unspoken feelings. In J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye,” Holden Caulfield’s emotional state is often left unarticulated, creating a sense of narrative silence around his internal struggles.
• Strategic Omissions: Authors strategically leave out certain details, creating gaps that require readers to fill in with their own interpretations. In Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants,” the characters’ discussion about an unspecified operation raises questions, with the actual nature of the operation left unsaid, prompting readers to infer its implications.
• Ambiguous Endings: It is often evident in ambiguous or open-ended conclusions that refrain from providing clear resolutions. Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Never Let Me Go” concludes with an open-ended scene, leaving the fate of the characters uncertain and allowing readers to contemplate the implications of the narrative.
• Symbolic Absences: Silence can be symbolically used in literature to represent absence or unspoken tensions. In J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” series, the unspoken history and unresolved conflicts surrounding the character of Severus Snape contribute to a sense of narrative silence, heightening the intrigue around his character.
• Narrative Gaps: Gaps in the storyline, where certain events or details are left unexplained, create a space for readers to engage actively with the text. In Haruki Murakami’s “Kafka on the Shore,” the mysterious circumstances surrounding certain characters and events contribute to a narrative silence, inviting readers to interpret the unexplained occurrences.
• Intentional Pacing: Authors may use silence as a pacing tool, allowing moments of quiet reflection or pause in the narrative. In Arundhati Roy’s “The God of Small Things,” moments of narrative silence punctuate the story, emphasizing the weight of unspoken family dynamics and social issues.
• Multilayered Interpretations: It encourages multilayered interpretations, as readers bring their own perspectives to fill the gaps. In Gabriel García Márquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” the unspoken history of the Buendía family prompts varied interpretations, enriching the narrative with layers of meaning.

These literary references showcase how narrative silence manifests in various forms, engaging readers in the co-creation of meaning and fostering a deeper connection with the text.

Narrative Silence: Relevance in Literary Theories

Narrative silence: application in critiques.

• Application of Narrative Silence: In Salinger’s novel, the protagonist Holden Caulfield often experiences profound emotional turmoil, yet the author employs narrative silence to leave many of these emotions unspoken. This deliberate omission challenges readers to interpret and empathize with Holden’s internal struggles, creating a more nuanced and engaging exploration of adolescent angst.
• Application of Narrative Silence: Hemingway’s short story relies heavily on what is left unsaid, particularly in the characters’ discussion about an unspecified operation. The narrative silence around the nature of the operation prompts readers to infer its significance and understand the unspoken tension between the characters, showcasing how intentional omissions can drive a narrative and evoke reader involvement.
• Application of Narrative Silence: Ishiguro employs narrative silence effectively in the novel’s ambiguous ending, leaving the fate of the characters open to interpretation. The intentional gaps in the resolution contribute to a lingering emotional impact, prompting readers to reflect on the ethical implications of the story and emphasizing the power of what remains unspoken.
• Application of Narrative Silence: Márquez utilizes it to weave a multigenerational tale, leaving certain aspects of the Buendía family’s history unspoken. The gaps in the narrative invite readers to piece together the intricate web of magical realism and societal commentary, showcasing how intentional omissions can enhance the richness of a narrative and stimulate diverse interpretations.

Narrative Silence: Relevant Terms

Narrative silence: suggested readings.

• Barthes, Roland. S/Z. Hill and Wang, 1974.
• Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Johns Hopkins UP, 1976.
• Hemingway, Ernest. “Hills Like White Elephants.” The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway, Scribner, 1995, pp. 273-277.
• Ishiguro, Kazuo. Never Let Me Go. Vintage, 2005.
• Márquez, Gabriel García. One Hundred Years of Solitude. Harper & Row, 1970.
• Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter Series. Bloomsbury, 1997-2007.
• Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye. Little, Brown and Company, 1951.
• Salinger, J.D. Franny and Zooey. Little, Brown and Company, 1961.
• Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. The Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues. Routledge, 1990.
• Roy, Arundhati. The God of Small Things . Random House, 1997.

Related posts:

• Absence / Presence in Literary Theory
• Alienation in Literary Theory
• Androgyny in Literary Theory
• Cultural Poetics in Literary Theory

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Definition Essay: Silence

This essay defines the word “silence”.

It is used in more than one context, and many people describe it in different terms. For example, an awkward silence is no more longer or shorter than a cold silence or an eerie silence. Here is a definition essay of the word “silence”. The lack of audible sound Its most basic definition is the lack of audible sound. If you cannot hear anything then you are in silence.

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This is a very basic definition of silence, as there are lots of contributing factors that are not mentioned. For example, if a person is deaf then there is not mercenarily silence in a room, even if that person cannot hear it. It is reminiscent of the Chinese saying about if a tree falls in the woods and nobody is there to hear it, then does it make a sound?There is also the fact that some people may have better hearing than others and so be able to hear more sounds. That may make one person think it is quiet whilst others think there is noise. For example, a person who is younger may hear higher pitched noises.

The mosquito crowd deterrent tool works on that idea in order to keep young people away since they can hear the annoying noise that older people cannot.There is also the fact that people may use listening equipment. A person in a room may not hear any sounds, but a person with listening equipment may be able to hear sounds. Your presence makes a sound The loudest noise you make when stationary and inactive is the sound of your breath pumping in and out. In addition, there are also things such as your bowels moving and your heart beating. Such things may only be heard by people who are close to the person making the sound, but a sound still exists and so silence does not.

The presence of sound that is very low in intensity If you wish to get more technical, then silence is the presence of sounds that have such a low intensity that people cannot generally hear them without help (or at all). To say that complete silence may exist is impossible in this universe (as it stands) because there is noise going on all over the universe. Sound cannot penetrate the vacuum of space, but even tiny vibrations in the earth make it impossible to completely rule out the idea of sound.There is also the presence of sound that cannot be heard by humans. For example, a dog whistle may be heard by a dog and other animals, but cannot be heard by a human. This noise may be very loud in a room, and yet present itself as silence to the people in the room.

They may describe the room as silent, but in a very real and obvious way they would be wrong. Still, in technical terms, nobody can truly eliminate the many forms of energy that cause sound to the point of creating a room without sound. Conclusion Technically, the closest you could get is if you dropped a room with a vacuum in it, down a long hole with is also in a vacuum, where it was aimed in the direction of the earth’s rotation of the sun, whilst adjusting for earth rotation and the pull of the earth’s poles. Suffice it to say, it would be a difficult task.

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• Silence is Freedom
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Meaning of silence in English

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silence noun ( QUIET )

• The conductor waited for dead silence before commencing the performance .
• After he had spoken , a deathly silence/ hush fell on the room .
• In the silence of the night , a lone wolf howled .
• A screech of brakes jarred the silence.
• The silence was broken only by the whisper of the leaves in the gentle breeze .
• crickets idiom
• dead silence
• deafeningly
• keep something down
• radio silence
• soundlessly
• trail away/off
• under your breath idiom

silence noun ( NO SPEAKING )

• Cistercian monks and nuns take a vow of silence.
• He has maintained a dignified silence about the rumours .
• A jury should not interpret the silence of a defendant as a sign of guilt .
• No one could think of anything more to say, and the meeting lapsed into silence.
• We listened in silence as the names of the dead were read out.
• be (on) non-speakers idiom
• bite something back
• bite your tongue idiom
• button your lip idiom
• have nothing to say for yourself idiom
• silence is golden idiom
• speechlessly
• speechlessness
• stick in someone's throat idiom
• tight-lipped
• tongue-tied

You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

silence | American Dictionary

Silence verb [t] ( stop from speaking ), examples of silence, collocations with silence.

These are words often used in combination with silence .

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Translations of silence

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a person who entertains with puppets

Paying attention and listening intently: talking about concentration

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Guest Essay

The Unforgivable Silence on Sudan

By Linda Thomas-Greenfield

Ms. Thomas-Greenfield is the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Silence. Last September, when I visited a makeshift hospital in Adré, Chad, where young Sudanese refugees were being treated for acute malnutrition, that was all I heard: an eerie silence.

I had tried to prepare myself for the wails of children who were sick and emaciated, but these patients were too weak to even cry. That day, I saw a 6-month-old baby who was the size of a newborn and a child whose ankles were swollen, and whose body was blistered, from severe malnourishment.

It was equal parts newly horrific and tragically familiar.

Twenty years earlier I had visited the same town and met with Sudanese refugees who fled violence in Darfur, where the janjaweed militia, with backing from Omar al-Bashir’s brutal authoritarian regime, carried out a genocidal campaign of mass killing, rape and pillage.

Today, civil war has once again turned Sudan into a living hell. But even after aid groups designated the country’s humanitarian crisis to be among the world’s worst, little attention or help has gone to the Sudanese people.

For almost a year, I have been pushing the United Nations Security Council to speak out. On March 8, the Council finally called for an immediate cessation of hostilities. This is a positive step, but it is not nearly enough — and it does not change the fact that the international community and media outlets have been largely quiet.

The world’s silence and inaction need to end, and end now.

The first thing that must happen is we must send a surge of humanitarian support to Sudan’s most vulnerable. Eighteen million Sudanese face acute hunger, and famine is looming . Nearly eight million people have been forced from their homes in what has become the world’s largest internal displacement crisis. Measles, cholera and other preventable diseases have spread.

Since the start of this conflict, humanitarian workers have been on the ground, often putting their lives at risk to save others, but combatants on both sides of the war have deliberately undermined their efforts. The Sudanese Armed Forces has impeded the major humanitarian aid crossing from Chad into Darfur, and members of the rival Rapid Support Forces are looting humanitarian warehouses.

Regional and global leaders must unequivocally and publicly demand that the warring parties respect international humanitarian law and facilitate humanitarian access. If the parties don’t listen, the Security Council must take swift action to ensure lifesaving aid is delivered and distributed. The Council should consider all tools at its disposal, including authorizing aid to move from Chad and South Sudan into Sudan, as the United Nations has done with cross-border aid into Syria. The United States is prepared to help lead this initiative.

We also believe that the United Nations should appoint a senior humanitarian official based outside Sudan to advocate humanitarian access, scale up relief efforts and mobilize international donors. The World Food Program warned that, unless new funds come in, it will be forced to cut off food assistance to hundreds of thousands of Sudanese refugees in Chad as early as next month. Just a tiny fraction of the United Nations’ humanitarian appeal for Sudan has been met. This is unacceptable. The United States is the largest single donor nation to both efforts. Now other countries need to step up.

The international community must also demand the protection of civilians and pursue justice for victims of war crimes.

In the 2023 Elie Wiesel Act Report , the Biden administration warned of continuing reports of large-scale human rights abuses in Sudan. And in December, Secretary of State Antony Blinken determined that fighters on both sides had committed war crimes and that members of the Rapid Support Forces and allied militias had committed crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.

When I visited the Sudanese border last year, I announced U.S. sanctions on militia leaders who carried out abuses against civilians, including conflict-related sexual violence and ethnic-based killings. Since then, we have issued several more rounds of targeted sanctions.

We must break the cycle of impunity. We must demand accountability for those responsible for the horrors playing out before our eyes — horrors that are documented, in gruesome detail, in a recently released U.N. report . Investigators found that women and girls, some as young as 14, have been brutally raped by Rapid Support Forces militiamen, that the group’s snipers have indiscriminately targeted civilians and that entire villages have been burned down and their people massacred, among other atrocities. Late last year, according to the report, more than 1,000 Masalit and other non-Arab minorities were slaughtered in Ardamata, a village in West Darfur.

We should all stand behind the International Criminal Court’s continuing investigation into allegations of war crimes in the region, local and international documentation efforts and other accountability initiatives.

Finally, we need to do everything in our power to stop the fighting and get Sudan back on the path to democracy.

Right now, a handful of regional powers are sending weapons into Sudan. This outside support is prolonging the conflict and enabling the atrocities taking place across West Darfur, including massacres reminiscent of the 2004 genocide. The Security Council has made clear that these illegal arms transfers, which violate the United Nations’ arms embargo, must stop.

This conflict will not be solved on the battlefield. It will be solved at the negotiating table. Those with influence, particularly the African Union and leaders across East Africa and the Persian Gulf, must push the warring parties toward peace.

The Biden administration will continue to support these diplomatic efforts. Just last month, Secretary Blinken appointed Tom Perriello, who has significant experience in the region, as the U.S. special envoy to Sudan.

The United States is working to persuade relevant players to coalesce around the shared goal of preventing the breakup of Sudan, which would fuel instability across the Horn of Africa and Red Sea region. We are also working with courageous grass-roots leaders to build momentum toward a better future, in which the Sudanese people can realize their aspirations of a civilian, democratically elected government.

Through the sounds of gunfire and shelling, the people of Sudan have heard our silence. They ask why they have been forsaken; why they have been forgotten.

The international community must, at long last, speak out — and work together to end this senseless conflict.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield is the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

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Advanced writer

Add more quality to your essay or be able to obtain a new paper within a day by requesting a top or premium writer to work on your order. The option will increase the price of your order but the final result will be totally worth it.

Top order status

Every day, we receive dozens of orders. To process every order, we need time. If you’re in a great hurry or seek premium service, then choose this additional service. As a result, we’ll process your order and assign a great writer as soon as it’s placed. Maximize your time by giving your order a top status!

SMS updates

Have you already started to write my essay? When it will be finished? If you have occasional questions like that, then opt-in for SMS order status updates to be informed regarding every stage of the writing process. If you’re pressed for time, then we recommend adding this extra to your order.

Plagiarism report

Is my essay original? How do I know it’s Turnitin-ready? Very simple – order us to attach a detailed plagiarism report when work is done so you could rest assured the paper is authentic and can be uploaded to Turnitin without hesitating.

1-page summary

World’s peace isn’t riding on essay writing. If you don’t have any intent on reading the entire 2000-word essay that we did for you, add a 1-page summary to your order, which will be a short overview of your essay one paragraph long, just to be in the loop.

Our Team of Professional Essay Writers

As we are an honest and well-paying essay writer service, writers come flying our way. Nonetheless, in the writers' community, we are known for our strict selection process. You as a client can be sure that you will be working with the best paper writer in the game no matter your subject or the difficulty of the task as all our writers go through testing and have their degrees checked. Only 3% of all applicants are accepted to work with us and even these 3% have a training program and a two-month trial period ahead. We value our reputation and only hire true experts with years of experience in academic writing behind their backs. Nonetheless, being a professional writers service has its challenges. For example, as our employer expectations are high, not all writers can handle the challenge of creating zero-plagiarism essay writing content in a short time frame, so as leading writing services we must keep everything in control.

Customer Reviews

In the order page to write an essay for me, once you have filled up the form and submitted it, you will be automatically redirected to the payment gateway page. There you will be required to pay the entire amount for taking up the service and writing from my experts. We will ask you to pay the entire amount before the service as that gives us an assurance that you will come back to get the final draft that we write and lets us build our trust in you to write my essay for me. It also helps us to build up a mutual relationship with you while we write, as that would ease out the writing process. You are free to ask us for free revisions until you are completely satisfied with the service that we write.

• How it Works
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Fill up the form and submit

On the order page of our write essay service website, you will be given a form that includes requirements. You will have to fill it up and submit.

Alexander Freeman

Types of Paper Writing Services

Finished Papers

offers a great selection of professional essay writing services. Take advantage of original, plagiarism-free essay writing. Also, separate editing and proofreading services are available, designed for those students who did an essay and seek professional help with polishing it to perfection. In addition, a number of additional essay writing services are available to boost your customer experience to the maximum!

Advanced writer

Add more quality to your essay or be able to obtain a new paper within a day by requesting a top or premium writer to work on your order. The option will increase the price of your order but the final result will be totally worth it.

Top order status

Every day, we receive dozens of orders. To process every order, we need time. If you’re in a great hurry or seek premium service, then choose this additional service. As a result, we’ll process your order and assign a great writer as soon as it’s placed. Maximize your time by giving your order a top status!

SMS updates

Have you already started to write my essay? When it will be finished? If you have occasional questions like that, then opt-in for SMS order status updates to be informed regarding every stage of the writing process. If you’re pressed for time, then we recommend adding this extra to your order.

Plagiarism report

Is my essay original? How do I know it’s Turnitin-ready? Very simple – order us to attach a detailed plagiarism report when work is done so you could rest assured the paper is authentic and can be uploaded to Turnitin without hesitating.

1-page summary

World’s peace isn’t riding on essay writing. If you don’t have any intent on reading the entire 2000-word essay that we did for you, add a 1-page summary to your order, which will be a short overview of your essay one paragraph long, just to be in the loop.

Customer Reviews

Johan Wideroos

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