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Towards a typology of silence

Article  in  Journal of Pragmatics · October 2007

DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2007.07.003

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 Journal of Pragmatics 39 (2007) 1673–1688
www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma

Towards a typology of silence

Dennis Kurzon
Department of English, University of Haifa, Haifa 31905, Israel
Received 10 May 2006; received in revised form 2 June 2007; accepted 11 July 2007

Abstract
The article presents a typology of silence in social interaction, based on a number of features, including
the number of participants in the interaction, the identity of the text that is left unsaid, and the intention of the
silent person. Four types are proposed—conversation, thematic, textual and situational. Since conversa-
tional silence has been extensively discussed elsewhere, the focus of the article is on the other three types,
and several problematic cases are discussed concerning not only the classification of instances of silence but
also whether what has been called silence is in effect silence. The types of silence are illustrated by examples
such as silence in the library, during classroom lessons, in political speeches, remembrance ceremonies, and
theatrical and musical performances.
# 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Silence; Social interaction; Situational; Thematic; Textual; Intentional

1. Introduction

There have been a number of attempts to enumerate types, functions and meanings of silence in
social interaction. Bruneau (1973) spoke of three forms of silence: (1) psychological, (2) interactive
and (3) sociocultural. He defines the differences between the three in terms of the perception of
time. Psychological silence is very short, illustrated by hesitation in a conversation, or by a
deliberate slowing down in order to aid the addressee to understand what has just been said. Other
instances include self-corrections and stuttering. Interactive silence is longer than psychological
silence, and is related to interpersonal relationship; turn-taking, too, plays a role here. Bruneau
admits, however, that ‘‘psycholinguistic, slow-time silences are often difficult to distinguish from
interactive silences’’. The third type – sociocultural silence – seems to underlie the first two, since
the social and cultural habits may ‘‘manipulate both psychological and interactive silences’’
(Bruneau, 1973:36).

E-mail address: kurzon@research.haifa.ac.il.

0378-2166/$ – see front matter # 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2007.07.003
1674 D. Kurzon / Journal of Pragmatics 39 (2007) 1673–1688

In the same year as Bruneau’s paper, appeared Jensen’s (1973), in which the author talks of
five functions of silence. The first function is ‘‘linking’’: silence binds people together or
‘‘sever[s] relationships’’. Examples of this function of silence include what have been called
moments of silence (e.g. the annual Memorial Day for the Fallen in the Netherlands on May 4;
see also section 5 below), silence in worship, or silence in tolerating people with opposing
political views by deciding not to talk about such topics. Jensen’s second function is the affecting
function. This may be said to have some perlocutionary effect on the ‘‘addressee’’; the function of
this silence communicates indifference, coldness, e.g. ignoring someone or sending him or her to
Coventry. Its use may also prevent harm being done. In industrial disputes, for example, there
may be a cooling-off period — a period of silence observed by both the employers and
employees, which may lead finally to some agreement. Thirdly, we have the revelational function
of silence, by which in keeping silent, a person reveals that s/he does not possess knowledge on
the topic under discussion, such as a pupil being silent when asked a question by the teacher.
Religious mystics argue that to achieve ‘‘the true fulfillment of self, one must be able to immerse
himself in silence’’ (Jensen, 1973:253). A further example is the silence of a witness at a criminal
trial; this absence of evidence may reveal much to the court. Fourthly, Jensen proposes
judgmental function, which may indicate assent or dissent, favour or disfavour to what has been
said prior to the silence. This includes ‘‘silence as admission’’,1 and also silent protests. The last
function of silence Jensen terms the activating function. A speaker may be silent while s/he
chooses his or her words before speaking. A day-dreaming child is another example; here, the
impression is created that the child is not doing anything.
Johannesen (1974) discusses the contexts in which silence functions: (1) ‘‘in human thought
processes and cultural development’’; (2) ‘‘purposive, everyday, interpersonal communication’’;
(3) ‘‘in political and civil life’’; and (4) ‘‘in pathological settings’’, in counselling and
psychotherapy. He also enumerates the ‘‘typical potential meanings’’ of silence in his second
context, in interpersonal communication. He lists 20 such meanings:
(1) The person lacks sufficient information to talk on the topic. (2) The person feels no sense
of urgency about talking. (3) The person is carefully pondering exactly what to say next. (4)
The silence may simply reflect the person’s normal rate of thinking. (5) The person is
avoiding discussion of a controversial or sensitive issue out of fear. (6) The silence expresses
agreement. (7) The silence expresse[s] disagreement. (8) The person is doubtful or
indecisive. (9) The person is bored. (10) The person is uncertain of someone else’s meaning.
(11) The person is in awe, or raptly attentive, or emotionally overcome. (12) The person is
snooty or impolite. (13) The person’s silence is a means of punishing others, of annihilating
others symbolically by excluding them from verbal communication. (14) The person’s
silence marks a characteristic personality disturbance. (15) The person feels inarticulate
despite a desire to communicate; perhaps the topic lends itself more to intuitive sensing than
to verbal discussion. (16) The person’s silence reflects concern for not saying anything to hurt
another person. (17) The person is daydreaming or preoccupied with other matters. (18) The
person uses silence to enhance his own isolation, independence, and sense of self-uniqueness.
(19) The silence marks sulking anger. (20) The person’s silence reflects empathic exchange,
the companionship of shared mood or insight. (Johannesen, 1974:29)
Some of these potential meanings have appeared, of course, in other studies of silence.

1
This meaning of silence and the silence of a witness at a trial seem to reveal the same thing—that the silent person has
knowledge that s/he wants to conceal.
 D. Kurzon / Journal of Pragmatics 39 (2007) 1673–1688 1675

Psychological evidence in support of many of the meanings of silence that have been proposed
has been provided by Berger (2004). His research is based on self-reports by students aged
18–29, who were asked to recall the last instance of silence they remembered. In the first of two
studies, the main causes of silence were (1) unexpected information/deviant behaviour, (2) stress,
extreme emotions or nervousness, and (3) lack of information and knowledge about topic. The
major purpose of the second study, in which Berger found that the subjects in his study did not
rank lack of knowledge as one of the main causes of speechlessness, was to distinguish between
strategic reasons for silence and involuntary speechlessness (intentional silence and
unintentional silence, respectively; see below). From his studies it may be seen that there is
a clear distinction between intentional and unintentional silences.
In Kurzon (1995, 1998), I focused my attention on the silent response to a question, especially,
but not only, in a legal context, viz. the right to silence of a suspect in police custody. I presented a
model by which an observer (and/or an addresser) may interpret the silence of the addressee. In
the present article, I would like to outline a typology of silences in the context of social
interaction, based partly on the basic features of the model. Here, I am not focusing on the
meanings of the silence as such, but on the circumstances in which silence may be meaningful
within dyadic or multi-party interaction.
In setting up this typology, a number of factors may have to be taken into account. Firstly, we
should consider the number of people actively involved in the interaction, whether there are
two – one speaking and the second person silent, with the possibility that there are other people
present in the interaction, but are not at any given moment actively involved, or whether there is
an audience involved – a group of people. In previous studies pertaining to silence, the situation
generally described is one in which there are only two people involved; in other words, the
silence analyzed occurs in dyadic interaction. Where there are many people involved, and all or
most are silent, we are dealing with a different context, and perhaps a different type of silence.
Secondly, we may have to consider the text that is not uttered because of the silence. The term
‘text’ here refers to anything from a short oral answer to a complete discourse; in section 4
(‘Textual silence’), however, ‘text’ will refer more narrowly to a written text. In some cases the
text is unknown, especially when a person is asked a question, and does not reply. The question in
this case relates to a text, that is information that the addresser would like to, but does not, have,
while the silent person may have the information but does not reveal it. This may be contrasted
with the typical teacher/pupil dyadic interaction, in which the text is usually known. The teacher
asks a pupil a question to which the teacher knows the answer (the same function of utterance that
is found in examination questions); in other words this is a known text.
Thirdly, the distinction between intentional and unintentional silence should be maintained.
As in Kurzon (1998) and Berger (2004), this distinction was also implied in the various
taxonomies discussed above. The examples Jensen (1973) gives seem to be mainly instances of
intentional silence, while in Johannesen’s (1974) list of meanings of silence, there are instances
of both intentional and unintentional silence. We may compare several of them, for example,
meanings (3) and (4): ‘‘the person is carefully pondering exactly what to say next’’ seems to be a
case of intentional silence, while ‘‘the silence may simply reflect the person’s normal rate of
thinking’’ is unintentional. The same may be said for meanings (16) and (17): cf. ‘‘the person’s
silence reflects concern for not saying anything to hurt another person’’ – intentional, and ‘‘the
person is daydreaming or preoccupied with other matters’’ – unintentional.
Fourthly, the following features were discussed in Kurzon (1998) as part of what is called in
this article ‘‘conversational silence’’. Their application to the other types of silence will be
considered. The first of these features is a distinction that may be made between presence and
1676 D. Kurzon / Journal of Pragmatics 39 (2007) 1673–1688

non-presence, that is the psychological presence or non-presence of the silent person. While
participants in a conversation are present, a person deciding to be silent or is unintentionally
silent signals his or her non-presence. The choice of the term ‘‘non-presence’’ (from Gurevich,
1989) is preferable to ‘‘absence’’, since the silent person is not physically absent, but withdraws
from the interaction by the silence. S/he does not want to be considered part of the interaction.
This is clearly seen in classroom situations, when a pupil sits in the back, does not participate in
the lesson, and may not answer the teacher’s questions.
Finally, a distinction may be made in relation to the source of the silence: whether the cause
for the silence is found within the silent person him- or herself – internal silence, or whether some
person or body or even social norm seems to impose the silence on the silent person(s) – external
silence. This may often, however, be linked to the intention or non-intention of the silent person.
If so, it should not be regarded as a separate, independent feature. If the person intends to be
silent, we may assume that his or her intention is internal. Although this may be the case in many
instances, it is nevertheless a simplification of the situation. A person may wish to be silent
because that is the social norm according to which one is expected to act. If the person asks what
should be done in such a situation, the answer would be in accordance with some ‘‘rule’’ from the
social code, but if the person consistently acts according to the social code, then s/he may have
internalized the code, so that it is part of him or her (i.e. internal silence). External or internal
sources of the intention to become silent will be related to where they show something relevant
(see also section 6 below).
Before I turn to the typology itself, a further set of terminological distinctions has to be made.
Instead of the wordy ‘‘a silent person’’ to refer to a person who is intentionally or unintentionally
silent in social interaction, I have used the abbreviated form S (not to be confused with S(peaker));
its plural is simply Ss. The abbreviated form A will be used for the addresser, with its plural As.
In this paper, I distinguish four types of silence. In section 2, I shall briefly discuss
conversational silence, since this is the type of silence which receives most of the attention in the
literature. Section 3 deals with thematic silence, then textual silence follows in section 4. The
final type of silence – situational silence – will be discussed in section 5. Section 6 deals with
problematic and borderline cases, to be followed by a brief conclusion (section 7).

2. Conversational silence

The first type – conversational silence – is the one that tends to be dealt with in the field of
conversational analysis and, in general, in discourse analysis, where the discourse is spoken (e.g.
political speeches). This type covers phenomena such as the silent answer to a question
(discussed in detail in Kurzon, 1998), or the case of not participating in a conversation even when
one is physically present. This type occurs often in dyadic interaction, i.e. with two participants
only—the A and the S. As with all instances of silence, other people may be physically present,
but may not be active in the conversational exchange (as noted above). In this type of silence, the
silence may be considered equivalent to a speech act. But we do not know what the S would have
said if s/he had spoken; in such a silence the text is often unknown.
The model of silence in dyadic interaction proposed by Kurzon (1998) is based on the
interpretation of this type of silence by modal verbs. If we maintain the distinction between
intentional and unintentional silence, then intentional silence may be glossed in the form of a
modal expression ‘‘I will not speak’’ or ‘‘I may/must not speak’’. The former would be the
conventional interpretation when the intentional silence is internal to the silent person, that is to
say, the decision not to speak originates with the S him- or herself. The second modal expression
 D. Kurzon / Journal of Pragmatics 39 (2007) 1673–1688 1677

‘‘I may/must not speak’’ seems to imply an external source that forces the person not to speak.
There are many cases, though, where the distinction is not as clear as it is assumed here. If
someone refuses to speak because of a social or criminal code (as in the case of omertà among the
Sicilian Mafia) it may not be possible to ascertain whether the silence is self-imposed because of
social codes, i.e. internal, or whether fear is the reason for the silence, i.e. external.
Unintentional silence (Berger’s, 2004, ‘‘involuntary speechlessness’’) may be glossed as ‘‘I
cannot speak’’, and relates to psychological inhibitions that may prevent the person from opening
his or her mouth. We may say that shyness often leads to such silence, but there are also other
reasons for silence, such as evident in several of the meanings of the phenomenon Johannesen has
suggested: ‘‘The person is in awe, or raptly attentive, or emotionally overcome’’ or ‘‘[t]he silence
may simply reflect the person’s normal rate of thinking’’. Berger (2004:163) hypothesized that
‘‘[t]he degree to which speechlessness is attributed to involuntary causes is associated with
emotional states other than embarrassment and guilt’’, and the two studies he carried out have
produced significant statistical results supporting this hypothesis.
There seems, then, to be a clear distinction between intentional and unintentional silence, but,
as Berger has pointed out (2004:173), there may be transitional cases between the two extremes.
For example, not finding the right words may be ‘‘nonstrategic in origin’’, for example memory
failure, which is of course unintentional. This may be followed by a decision not to speak until the
right words do come back, which is intentional.
In section 1, mention was made of the feature presence v. non-presence. If we apply this
feature to conversational silence, in both cases of intentional and unintentional silence we may
argue that non-presence is adopted by S. But we may also have to take into account the effect of
the silence on the A or As. Berger has noted (2004:164) that Ss who attribute their silence to
causes stemming from conversational strategy, that is, intentional silence, ‘‘should experience
less overall negative affect’’ than Ss who claim that their silence was involuntary (unintentional).
In Berger’s study there is partial statistical support for such a hypothesis. If so, then non-presence
may be attributed more to cases of unintentional silence than to intentional silence, where the S
may in effect express presence by being silent in a given context.

3. Thematic silence

The second type of silence in social interaction is what I shall call ‘‘thematic silence’’. This
type of silence is closely connected with conversational silence in that it often occurs in a
dialogical context. While in conversational silence, the S does not say anything, in thematic
silence, a person when speaking does not relate to a particular topic. A male S may be silent about
women, for example. Here, I do not mean only that such a person would be silent about various
love affairs he may have, but the focus would be on a wider rather than a strictly personal topic.
Similarly, it has been claimed that women have been silenced over the generations, and that only
since the 1960s have they been given a voice (Lakoff, 1995; Young, 1998). This type of silence
also includes the case of a politician who does not mention a particular topic in a political
interview or in a political speech. In conversational silence, in an interview, we normally have
dyadic interaction, although there may be more than one interviewer, while in thematic silence, it
is not that the politician does not respond to an explicit utterance from a member of the audience
(here the plural As), since such an utterance may not exist at all, but seems deliberately to ignore a
topic – s/he chooses silence instead of talking about that topic. Hence, the silence is thematic – it
relates to a theme, topic or subject. In this type of silence, the theme or topic of the text is known,
and perhaps the contents are also known.
1678 D. Kurzon / Journal of Pragmatics 39 (2007) 1673–1688

The speaker who may omit some topic is speaking to an audience without any apparent dyadic
interaction. There is, however, some dialogical relationship at work even in the case of a
discourse such as a political speech (Bakhtin, 1981). Politicians relate to topics which are on the
agenda, which have been ‘‘asked’’ in the current political discourse, so keeping silent about a
particular topic may be seen as refusing to answer a question. Nevertheless, choosing not to talk
about a particular topic and not answering a question – both often termed ‘‘silence’’ – have to be
differentiated. In the second case, that of refusing to answer a question, the politician would say
something like ‘‘no comment’’, or may choose some other way not to answer the question. The
explicit silence or its equivalent of non-responding to a question or to an utterance of the
politician is part of conversational silence, while the implicit silence inherent in not talking about
a particular topic is an instance of thematic silence. Moreover, Huckin (2002) speaks of
manipulative silence in which a writer (or speaker) would leave out salient information in order to
manipulate the reader (or hearer) to accept his or her point of view. This is viewed as a type of
thematic silence (see fn. 2).
If we apply the other features to this type of silence, we may talk of thematic silence as
intentional, since it is the speaker who decides not to talk about a specific topic. As for presence v.
non-presence, even though the speaker is silent about the topic, s/he is still present. One cannot
say that the politician does not want to be noticed; the absence of the topic in the speech or
interview is noticeable, too. There may be occasions on which the S would be embarrassed to
mention a particular topic. Unlike conversational silence, where the S may be unintentionally
silent because of shyness, in the case of thematic silence, the S deliberately chooses not to talk on
a specific topic because it may embarrass him or her if s/he does (Berger, 2004). If we want to
give this type of silence a modal gloss, as in conversational silence (see section 2, above), then we
can say that the S is ‘saying’ ‘‘I will not speak about this topic’’.
Moreover, the S’s decision to refrain from speaking about a certain topic tends to be internal.
The cause of the decision comes from the speaker him- or herself. However, there may be
instances where a person is told not to speak about a particular topic, possibly under some sort of
threat. We can imagine a politician in the pay of an underworld organization who would not talk
about matters that affect the group which support him or her. For example, if the politician were a
minister of justice or minister of police, within his or her purview are matters concerned with
crime. But since s/he works for a criminal organization, s/he will not relate to matters concerned
with the organization or possibly with other organizations. As with the case of the Mafia omertà
(see section 2 above), it is difficult to ascertain whether the motive for S’s silence is internal – s/he
has decided to be silent because of his or her personal interests, or external – s/he has been told
not to speak of the topic.
In the same way, it may be asked whether a man’s silence about women (see above) is internal
or external. It may be argued that the speaker will not relate to women because that is the way he
looks upon the world — in a nutshell, it’s a man’s world! On the other hand, it may be argued that
social norms – external sources – force the speaker not to talk about women, even though he may
want to do so.
An anonymous reviewer suggested that the rhetorical pause is a type of thematic silence. This
silence may be found, for example, at the end of a line of verse when, though the sentence
syntactically continues to the next line (‘‘enjambment’’), a pause nevertheless occurs. This
silence allows A to interpret the line in any way that fits the text. The rhetorical pause does not fit
squarely with thematic silence discussed in this section, since this type of silence relates to a
specific, but unsaid, topic, not to a variety of possible texts or interpretations the rhetorical pause
may offer.
 D. Kurzon / Journal of Pragmatics 39 (2007) 1673–1688 1679

In this discussion on thematic silence, I have singled out speeches and interviews. But
thematic silence may also relate to written texts, for example a newspaper report being silent
about a particular topic, and a politician writing an article leaving out any mention of a specific
topic.
A feature which seems to differentiate thematic silence from the other types of silence is the
time factor. While in conversational silence, as well as in textual silence (see sections 4 and 5
below) and in situational silence, the silence may be timed – although the length of the silence is
in fact irrelevant for present purposes – thematic silence cannot be timed because the speaker
does not stop talking, but continues to speak. The silence in such a case is a metaphorical
expansion of actual silence. In other words, the word silence in ‘‘thematic silence’’ does not carry
the same meaning as in other types of silence as approximately synonymous with speechlessness
(see section 1 above). In section 6.1, the question whether thematic silence should be considered
a type of silence will be discussed more fully.

4. Textual silence

While in thematic silence, we are talking of silence concerning a specific subject matter
(normally initiated by the speaker or writer), under textual silence we are talking of a social
interaction in which the S or Ss in a given context reads or recites a particular text in silence.2 The
term ‘‘text’’ relates here to a specific pre-arranged written or spoken text, and not one created by
the S (see section 1 above). The length of the silence in such a case is approximately equivalent to
the time it takes for S to read or recite the text. Textual silence is context-specific, by which I
mean that we have to specify the contexts in which such a silence may take place.
Some of the contexts are of a general nature such as one’s own home or the library, while
others are more specific in nature. The home or library tends to be the setting for people to sit
down and read silently whatever they pick up to read. At home, it could be the reading of the
newspaper or of a book. So, the S reads the text of the newspaper silently. Such a case is not
directly relevant to the present discussion, since there is no social interaction whenever a person
is on his or her own (even if the person speaks to him- or herself).
Let us look at cases in which there is more than one S. In a library, where silence is supposed
to reign, the text which is silently read may be a book or journal or newspaper or some other
text found in the library. This type of silence may not be glossed as a speech act, since unlike
conversational and thematic silences where the speech act involved is a modal expression, e.g.
‘‘I cannot speak’’, in the case of textual silence, the speech act performed relates directly to the
text that is being silently read. The nature of the text may then be known — a newspaper or a
book, a novel or other texts which are visible to the observer. In this respect, this may also be
compared to thematic silence in that in both cases the text or topic is known to the A and/or to
observers, but the S does not utter it aloud. In contrast, the silence of a person in a dyadic
interaction, viz. conversational silence, does not often allow the A or observer to fill in the
missing information.
In the cases of textual silence given above, the S is an individual who has chosen to read a
specific text in silence. There may be other people present; this would usually be the case of a
library. But there, each S may be reading a different text. Textual silence also covers occasions
when the S is one of a group of Ss, often in an institutional setting. The Ss could be students in a
class who may have been told by the teacher to read a specific text. We may imagine a situation

2
‘‘Textual silence’’ in Huckin (2002) would in the present approach be a type of ‘‘thematic silence’’.
1680 D. Kurzon / Journal of Pragmatics 39 (2007) 1673–1688

when the teacher tells the class to take out a particular book and read a text – a page, a chapter –
silently.
Another instance of textual silence within an institutional setting is silent prayer. Here, we have
to distinguish between the reciting or the reading of a specific prayer and the reciting of any prayer
(or any text); this will be discussed under situational silence (below, section 5). At certain times in a
religious service, the congregation (the Ss in our model) may read or recite a given prayer silently —
possibly by heart. Under textual silence may be placed, for example, the silent prayer in each of the
three daily services in the synagogue. The major part of such a service is the Eighteen Benedictions
which are read silently while standing (in addition to being called in Hebrew tefilla = ‘‘prayer’’, this
part is also called the shmona-esrei = ‘‘eighteen’’, or amidah = ‘‘standing’’). In two of the three
daily services the prayer leader repeats the prayer aloud after the congregants recite it in silence. The
Quaker form of silence, on the other hand, has to be ruled out as a form of textual silence; it is more
appropriately classified as situational silence (see section 5 below).
As part of our setting up of this type of silence, we again relate to the various features of
silence. The silence adopted by an S at home in his or her living room, while reading a book or
newspaper, is intentional, especially if someone else is present in the room. The silence that may
reign in such a situation may be the result of a mutual understanding among the people in the
room. So, all who are involved are intentionally silent, and the silence is internal. It may be
broken when one of the silent readers gets up and offers, for example, to make a drink. Once s/he
gets a response and the drink is made, all the Ss may return to silent reading. The feature presence
v. non-presence does not seem to play a significant role in this type of silence. It is irrelevant in the
case an S is sitting on his or her own, but when an S sitting in the same room as another S breaks
the silence to offer a drink, s/he thereby indicates presence.
In the library, where we are talking about individual Ss, the silence is intentional in that each S
is following some code or convention which states that one should be as quiet as possible in a
library. This makes the silence external, and since each S is an individual sitting on his or her own
in the library reading a specific text, they probably want to indicate non-presence. Each S wants
to get on with reading in silence, and does not want to be disturbed. Disturbance could come from
another S sitting in the library, or a general disturbance. We can imagine someone shouting out
that s/he does not like the silence of the library after sitting there for hours without opening his or
her mouth. Another type of disturbance may be a fire alarm, which means that everyone must
leave the library and make their way outside the building.3
Let us now deal with the textual silence which seems to be imposed by some external source—
the teacher in a classroom, or a priest/prayer-leader in a religious service. Firstly, the question of
intention. In the case of a classroom at school, the students’ intention may be irrelevant, for not
only is the silence being imposed upon them, but their physical presence has been imposed upon
them, too. They have no choice.4 So, the source of the silence of the Ss in the classroom is
obviously external — by order of a person in authority. As for presence, we could say that each of
the Ss is non-present, not wishing to be disturbed, in other words, the S may want to be ignored.
In the religious service, the congregant usually wants to be there in the place of worship, and
accepts the relevant code of behaviour. When the prayer-leader suggests silent prayer, or when

3
From personal experience, people’s reaction when this happens is very slow. The alarm is a highly unexpected noise in
a quiet place like a library, and the silent readers take some time before they realize what they should do.
4
The model presents ideal situations, while specific examples may present more natural situations. So the classroom
situation described here is a place where whatever the teacher says is listened to and obeyed. Obviously, reality may often
be quite different.
 D. Kurzon / Journal of Pragmatics 39 (2007) 1673–1688 1681

the prayer-leader in a synagogue reaches the place of the Eighteen Benedictions in the prayer
book, the congregant reads the text silently to him- or herself. The silence is intentional, while the
feature of non-presence is probably irrelevant in such a case (see below). Whether the silence is
internal or external is unclear in many situations. In a non-conformist religious ritual, when the
prayer-leader decides to ask the congregation to read a prayer silently, the source of this silence
may be said to be external. When the prayer-leader in a Jewish religious service reaches the
Eighteen Benedictions in the prayer book (which is a more or less uniform prayer book among
orthodox and conservative communities), all the congregants silently read the prayer. In origin,
the source of this silent prayer is external, but today among observant Jews this has been
internalized, so the silence is internal.
In terms of presence v. non-presence, the desire to move away from the limelight, as it were,
and not to be present, is seen in conversational silence when the S ‘‘hides’’ from the A(s) by
keeping silent. When we are in a situation in which we have Ss – a group, a congregation, a class –
it is difficult to speak of presence or non-presence as a significant feature of the situation. Coming
into a place where silence reigns, into a place of worship when silent prayer is taking place, into a
classroom when the students are silently reading a text may give the observer the initial feeling
that no one is there, i.e. non-presence. But of course, the observer will see the group of Ss. Their
presence is visible by the fact that they are silent. On the other hand, each individual S is a
member of the group, and may want to be considered non-present as an individual.

5. Situational silence

While in textual silence a group of people (Ss) may be silent when they read or recite a specific
text, in situational silence a group of people are silent but are not reading or reciting any specific
text or anything at all. Any text that may be recited in silence is unknown to the observer. While
situational silence may be maintained by an individual on his or her own, it is normal that
situational silence takes place in the presence of a large group of people. Bruneau, in the context
of what he calls sociocultural silence (see section 1 above), talks of places of silence, which
include ‘‘[c]hurches, courtrooms, schools, libraries, hospitals, funeral homes, battle sites, insane
asylums, and prisons’’ (Bruneau, 1973:41). He also adds silence in rhetorical control such as
ceremonial public events, e.g. flag raising, military remembrance occasions. Because one of the
features that distinguish situational silence from textual silence is the absence of a specific text
during the silence, we may exclude most of the places from the list, but Bruneau has implicitly
put his finger of one of the major features of situational silence — it is usually institutionalized.
We are talking here about events in which all participants are silent, such as the moment of
silence (1 or 2 min) on a remembrance day for the war dead, e.g. Armistice Day (UK) or
Veterans’ Day (US), November 11 (Gregory, 1994).5 Let us examine which of the features
discussed above are appropriate to situational silence. Since a potential S has to be in a situation
in which silence is observed, we may say that the silence is intentional. If, however, a person finds
him- or herself in such a situation without intending to be there, s/he is unintentionally silent. It is
physically possible not be silent in such a situation, but the result would be social ostracism—it is
considered an anti-social act to speak or make a noise during an occasion of situational silence
(Bruneau, 1973:42). If a person is alone in a house, and it is the hour at which remembrance
ceremonies are taking place, and the participants at the ceremony stand silent for one minute or

5
The term ‘‘moment of silence’’ tends to be used in the United States, while ‘‘one-minute/two-minute silence’’ is used
in Britain and the Commonwealth. The advantage of the US term is that no specific length of the silence is specified.
1682 D. Kurzon / Journal of Pragmatics 39 (2007) 1673–1688

two, s/he may decide to join the silence of those standing outside at a ceremony. In this case the
silence is intentional, while if the person continues to act as previously, s/he ignores the silence.
Presence and non-presence may function here in the same way as they do in textual silence. By
being one of a crowd, an S ‘‘dissolves’’ into it. The silence, just as in textual silence, may seem at
first to indicate non-presence, but once the silent crowd is noticed, it is very much present,
although each individual is non-present. The same thing that was said for textual silence
concerning the source of the silence – whether it is internal or external – may also be applied to
situational silence. Its ambiguity exists, too. If a person goes to a place where a ceremony takes
place, it is his or her intention to participate in the ceremony, which includes the silence, and the
intention is internal — the person wants to be there.6 In other cases, however, people find
themselves in such a situation, as mentioned above, but are forced by social norms to be silent. In
this case, we are talking of an external source for the silence. By acting according to the norms,
the S does not indicate his or her presence. An individual’s presence would be indicated in such a
situation by violating the norms.
There are further similarities between this type of silence and textual silence in that certain
social norms and conventions seem to regulate the silence. When a teacher tells the students to
read a passage silently, it is clear that the source is external — a person in authority authorizes the
silence. When a person enters a library to read something, the source is ambiguous. The reader
wants to be silent, to read the text and not to be disturbed. In such a case, we may talk of
intentional silence with an internal source. But being silent in a library is a social norm; such a
norm may be said to exist in order to take into account an individual’s wants, but to ensure that the
individual’s personal wishes are addressed, this silence may be considered an imposed silence,
i.e. external source. This ambiguity is present in situational silence, too, as we have seen. But
what differs is the presence of a specific text in textual silence, and its absence in situational
silence. At the remembrance ceremony, there is no text which needs to be read or recited silently.
Everyone may think of what they want.
Under situational silence we may also place the silence at Quakers’ meetings. Each meeting –
this is the name Quakers give to their services – begins and ends with a period of silence. No
prayer or other text is proposed to be recited in silence. Those present may allow their minds to
think of all sorts of uplifting issues; it has to be ‘‘a worshipful silence’’ (Louis, 1994). During a
discussion at the meeting, it may also be felt that a period of silence is necessary to allow the
congregants to think more deeply about an issue. In fact, silence at a Quaker meeting may be
considered the norm — there is ‘‘a continuing state of incipient talk’’ (Davies, 1988:120). Speech
is not central to the event of the meeting. To say something may even be an effort, hence ‘‘the
attested psychological stress and physical strain that precede’’ speaking (Davies, 1988:118). All
silences, writes Kelly (1966:84, quoted by Davies, 1988),
seem alike, as all minutes are alike by the clock. But inwardly the Divine Leader of
Worship directs us through progressive unfoldings of ministrations and may, in the silence,
bring an inward climax which is as definite as the climax of the Mass when the host is
elevated in adoration.7

6
Again, an ideal situation (see fn. 4). There may be occasions when a person will go to such a ceremony, not to become
one of the Ss, but to demonstrate, e.g. the story of Stanley Storey, who demonstrated against ‘‘all this hypocrisy’’ on
Armistice Day, November 11, 1937, at the Cenotaph in London in the presence of the King and government (Gregory,
1994:163–164).
7
This is not the case, as a reviewer pointed out. The climax of the Mass is at the end of the Canon (the Eucharist prayer
after the ‘‘Sanctus’’).
 D. Kurzon / Journal of Pragmatics 39 (2007) 1673–1688 1683

A similar situation has been described by Szuchewycz (1997:274) in the religious service of the
Catholic Charismatic Renewal, in which the purpose of silence ‘‘is to be blank – to be nothing –
empty. And to let God do the work. Just to be in the presence of God’’. The natural situation at a
Quaker meeting is, then, silence. So, it is an appropriate example of situational silence on par with
the one-minute silence at remembrance ceremonies, and performances of musical works where no
sound is played.
In this last example of situational silence, I am not referring to the silence of an audience when
listening to a musical performance (the audience’s silence will be discussed in the following
section 6), but to the silence of the performers themselves, as in a performance of John Cage’s
40 3300 written in 1952. In this work a pianist walks on to the stage, sits by the piano in order to play
it, but does nothing. The piece, lasting for just over 4.5 min, is divided into three movements. One
version of the score reads simply:

I
TACET8
II
TACET
III
TACET

Although the piece is performed in silence, there are noises going on during the silence. These
are the noises that would normally occur, but are unscripted. On the surface, the Ss are both the
performer and the audience, but what may happen is that audiences feel uncomfortable after a
short stretch of silence on the part of the performers. The audience may still maintain
speechlessness (see section 1 above), but may shuffle, make slight noises here and there, and of
course cough between movements. It was these types of noises that Cage wanted the audience to
hear — incidental noises.9 As the composer wrote in his ‘‘40’ for a Speaker’’:
There is no
such thing as silence. Something is al-
ways happening that makes a sound.
(Cage, 1961:191)
The noises Cage expected during a concert of silences are similar to those that Hubbard speaks
of during the silence at a Quaker meeting:
Their breathing, the odd cough, the rustling in a handbag for a handkerchief. The turning of
the pages of a book. . . (Hubbard, 1974:196, quoted by Davies, 1988).
I am excluding the silence of meditation from the purview of situational silence, and in fact
from the area of silence in social interaction in general. It is true that, like the silence at Quaker
meetings, there is no text involved — ‘‘the meditator is simply aware, but not of anything in

8
Latin for ‘‘one is silent’’.
9
The conductor Daniel Barenboim, in his first Reith lecture in 2006 (Barenboim, 2006), would not accept this silence
during the performance of music, but rather the total silence as implied in the following:
And therefore the music does not start from the first note and goes onto the second note, etc., etc., but the first note
already determines the music itself, because it comes out of the silence that precedes it.
He demonstrates this in the opening of the Prelude to Wagner’s opera Tristan and Isolde in which there is a contrast
between the silence and the first note of the work.
1684 D. Kurzon / Journal of Pragmatics 39 (2007) 1673–1688

particular’’ (Osho, 2006), but unlike the Quaker meetings and the remembrance ceremonies with
its minute or two of silence, the silence of meditation is on the individual level, without any
communication between people. The silence discussed and classified in this paper all occur as
part of social interaction. The silence of meditation does not.
In the following section, I will discuss some problematic issues concerning the typology of
silence as presented here.

6. Problematic cases

In this section, I shall deal firstly with one basic question concerning one of the types of silence
proposed above (below section 6.1). I shall then turn to two problematic cases — cases in which the
border between one type of silence and another is not clear. Firstly, we will deal with the feature
internal v. external silence that has been used in some of the analysis in sections 2–5 above (section
6.2). Finally, we will discuss the silence of the audience at a theatrical performance (section 6.3).

6.1. Thematic silence—is it silence?

Bruneau (1973) relates to psychological time in his discussion of silence. I have not addressed
this issue of time. It seems mainly to be part of the perception of silence in conversation, for example
the length of a pause. However, if we take real time — time that may be measured, we may
distinguish thematic silence from the other three types. The period of silence in conversational
silence, textual silence and situational silence may be measured in terms of seconds and minutes
(and hours, if need be). The length of these silences is the length needed to ‘‘recite’’ the text that is
not said aloud, the answer that is not given, the text read in the library, or the one-minute silence at a
remembrance ceremony. With thematic silence, however, there is no silence. What the speaker does
is leave out a text – a topic – but there is no silence to replace the missing text. For many scholars,
however, this is still a type of silence. Bilmes, for example, writes: ‘‘The actual talk does not merely
conceal or overlay a silence; rather, it constitutes the silence’’ (1994:84).
Thematic silence may then be considered a metaphorical form of silence, linked to silencing.
One of the examples mentioned in section 3 above is gender-related silence, the silence about
women and the silencing of women until the feminist revolution in the 1960s. Statements such as
the following, from one of the authors cited in this article:
Man’s mental imposition of silence upon his own mind appears to be a variable function
(Bruneau, 1973:17; sexist expressions indicated in bold)
abound, ignoring that half the world population is female. However, silencing may also be the
cause of silence in the other three types — when an external source imposes the silence on the
individual or on the group. For example, a criminal code silences the suspect in police custody, a
teacher silences the class so that they can read a text without disturbance, or a social code silences
a crowd or congregation for the duration of a minute or two.
Thematic silence, therefore, may be considered a different type of silence, not on par with
conversational, textual or situational silence, on the basis of real time.

6.2. Internal and external source

It appears from the discussion in the preceding sections that there is very little difference
between determining the internal/external source of the cause of the silence and deciding the
 D. Kurzon / Journal of Pragmatics 39 (2007) 1673–1688 1685

question of authority. A person in authority – an external source – may order the S to maintain
silence. However, an S could be silent because of other external sources. One such example is
when someone is silent because of a social code. The community of which the S is a member
may have a code which opposes cooperation with any authoritative body. The social code does
not force the S to be silent, and there may be examples when the S disobeys the social code, and with
no peril to his or her safety. For this reason, we do have to distinguish between the source of the
silence, whether it is internal or external to S, and any authoritative figure or body involved in the
silence.
On the whole, features such as internal v. external source of silence, as well as presence v. non-
presence, are best seen in the context of an individual S in a dyadic and multi-party interaction.
When S is one of many, the psychological state of the individual S would have to be laid aside
(‘‘collective behaviour’’ is a topic more at home in social psychology, see, e.g. Turner and
Killian, 1987).

6.3. Artistic silence

J.L. Austin, in introducing his version of what has become known as speech act theory
(Austin, 1962:21–22), spoke of the parasitic nature of speech acts in literary texts in that their
pragmatic nature ‘‘feeds on’’ what happens in natural conversation, and discourse in general.
Little did he realize that not only would this approach be criticized on principle (Derrida,
1975), but, even more so, that speech acts would enter literary studies as a major player (e.g.
Felman, 1980; Petrey, 1990). As far as silence is concerned, we have to take into consideration
the nature of silence in theatrical and other artistic performances. I am not referring here to the
pauses and silences on the stage which are performed by the actors; this has been widely
discussed especially in relation to specific playwrights (e.g. Chekhov, Beckett; see Kane,
1984). What I would like to focus on is the silence of the audience. The Ss are the members of
the audience, and not the performers on stage. Since the actors are speaking to the audience, as
well as among themselves, it is the audience that keeps silent to a certain extent. The audience
does not respond to questions – rhetorical or otherwise – which seem to be addressed to them.
At the beginning of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, for example, Tom addresses
the audience directly:
Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage
magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the
pleasant disguise of illusion. (p. 4; my italics)
but no response is expected from the audience, though they have apparently been addressed.
On the other hand, we may imagine a performance in which the audience does respond. Let
us take a performance of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, in which Hamlet is reciting one of his
monologues, e.g. in Act 2, scene 2, and the audience comments on what he is saying and asking.
Here is a version of such a dialogue, with the audience’s possible – but fictional – verbal
reaction in italics:

Now I am alone. Oh, yes you are. O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I! You
can say that again.
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
1686 D. Kurzon / Journal of Pragmatics 39 (2007) 1673–1688

That from her working all his visage wann’d,

Tears in his eyes, distraction in’s aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? You’re right there.
(Shakespeare, Hamlet, 2.2.555–562, with additions)

But that would not happen in modern theatres. What could occur are expressions of discontent
on the part of the audience – catcalling – thereby on occasion stopping the performance. That is,
the conventional set up of an artistic performance in which one side – the actor on stage for
example – speaks, while the other side – the audience – is silent has been undone. One such
instance – of many – occurred in a performance of Verdi’s opera Nabucco at the Deutsche Oper in
Berlin when ‘‘the chorus came out bizarrely dressed as bumblebees, provoking the outraged
audience to shout the performance to a standstill’’ (Littler, 2002).
In pantomimes, on the other hand, the audience’s verbal response may be deliberately asked
for, creating verbal interaction between the actors on stage and the audience. An actor may say of
a character that he or she is wicked and ask the audience to support him. In Snow White, for
example, we may find the following exchange between the character on stage and the audience:

Wicked Queen: ‘‘I am the fairest of them all’’

Audience: ‘‘Oh no you’re not!’’
Queen: ‘‘Oh yes I am!’’
Audience: ‘‘Oh no you’re not!’’
(http://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/Pantomime.htm)

In normal circumstances, however, the audience may react in non-verbal ways such as
laughter or even tears at an emotional scene. The same type of silence also takes place in a cinema
when watching a film. Here, even more than in the theatre, the audience does not react verbally to
what is happening on the screen, even though they may seem to be addressed.10
Although we are speaking of silence in a specific location and at a specific event, I do not
categorize this silence as situational (see section 5 above), since verbal communication does take
place. Although there is usually no verbal dyadic interaction in theatrical performances, the silence
of the audience may be considered conversational silence. What is going on in the audience’s head
is unknown, just as the unknown answer in the form of a silent response to a question in
conversational silence. Moreover, members of the audience are intentionally silent. The audience
becomes the Ss to speaking addressers. There is verbal communication in this context, which is not
the case in situational silence. It is true that the communication is mainly unidirectional, but apart
from deviant, exceptional behaviour, this is the conventional way in which audiences act.

7. Conclusion

In this paper, I have extended a previous model of silence in which I showed how the silence of
an individual in some types of conversation may be interpreted. Silence in conversation

10
Occasions when actors leave the screen to address the audience directly may occur, e.g. Woody Allen’s The Purple
Rose of Cairo released in 1985, in which Jeff Daniels, who plays the role of an actor, Gil Shepherd, who in the film-
within-the-film plays the role of Tom Baxter, an explorer, steps out of the screen, after being fascinated by Cecilia, a poor
waitress, played by Mia Farrow, who has seen the film five times.
 D. Kurzon / Journal of Pragmatics 39 (2007) 1673–1688 1687

(conversational silence) is regarded only as one type of silence in social interaction. The features
used to distinguish the types of silence are the relationship between the S and the A, the number
of people involved, the presence of a text, the intention of the S to maintain silence, the presence
or non-presence of Ss, and the question of authority and social norms. So, apart from
conversational silence, I have discussed the so-called silence that occurs when a topic is not
mentioned (thematic silence), the presence of a specific text that is read or recited when silent
(textual silence), and finally a general silence that is maintained without the silence being replaced
by a text (situational silence). Furthermore, three of the types of silence may be measured in time,
while one – thematic silence – may be considered a metaphorical expansion of the term.

Acknowledgments

My thanks to Richard Johannesen and Alan Davies for sending me copies of their articles.

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Further reading

Williams, Tennessee, 1966 [1945]. The Glass Menagerie. New Directions Books, New York.

Dennis Kurzon, professor of linguistics at the University of Haifa, Israel, has published extensively on legal language,
especially in the field of speech act theory, and on the pragmatics of silence. His book The Discourse of Silence appeared
in 1998. His research interests have recently extended to the sociology of languages in India, and has published a book on
English in Goa Where East Looks West: The Success of English in Goa and on the Konkan Coast (2003).

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