This edited book examines silence and silencing in and out of discourse, as viewed through a variety of contexts such as historical archives, day-to-day conversations, modern poetry, creative writing clubs, and visual novels, among others. The contributions engage with the historical shifts in how silence and silencing have been viewed, conceptualized and recorded throughout the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, then present a series of case studies from disciplines including linguistics, history, literature and culture, and geographical settings ranging from Argentina to the Philippines, Nigeria, Ireland, Morocco, Japan, South Africa, and Vietnam. Through these examples, the authors underline the thematic and methodological contact zones between different fields and traditions, providing a stimulating and truly interdisciplinary volume that will be of interest to scholars across the humanities.
Author(s): Mahshid Mayar, Marion Schulte
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 367
City: Cham
Acknowledgments
Contents
Notes on Contributors
List of Figures
List of Tables
1 Silences in History, Linguistics, and Literature: An Introduction
Silence and …
Silence as …
Silencing, Keeping Silent, Breaking Silences
Works Cited
2 Towards an Ontology of Silence in Music
Introduction
Methodological Considerations
Silence as Non-Sounding
Silence as Interruption of Music
Silence as Part of Music
Silence as Music
Concluding Remarks
Works Cited
3 Linguistic Considerations on the Awkward Silence
Introduction
Background: A Brief History of Hesitation Research
Types of Hesitation
Grounding Silence
Method
Corpus Data
Data Preparation and Analysis
English
German
French
Italian
Discussion and Further Exploration
Conclusion
Works Cited
4 Dissonant Silence: Susan Sontag and the Aesthetics of Silence
Introduction
The Production of the New
On the Battlefield of Art
Silence and Agency
An Echo of What Was Never Said
The Silent Democracy
Silence as Waiting: Agnes Martin
Conclusion
Works Cited
5 Talkative and Taciturn Nations: Ethnographic and Political Perspectives in European Discourses on Communicative Cultures (c. 1750–1850)
Introduction
Talkative and Taciturn Peoples: Multilayered Mental Maps
Reframing the Question: Ernst Moritz Arndt and Constantin François Volney
Political Dimensions of Speech and Silence
Conclusions
Works Cited
6 Corpus-Linguistic and Cultural-Cognitive Perspectives on Silence in Black South African English
Linguistic Perspectives on Silence
Cultural-Cognitive (Socio)Linguistic Perspectives on Silence (in Sub-Saharan Africa)
Data and Method
Silence in Corpora of BSAE
Conceptualisations of Silence in BSAE
Silence as Social-Hierarchical Convention: Silence as Respect
Silence as (Integral Part of a) Ritual
Silence as Ancestral Intervention
Discussion and Outlook
Works Cited
7 Organic Archives and Generative Silence: A Case Study of the Nlele Institute’s Photographic Archives
Introduction
TNI Collection
Silence
Conclusion
Works Cited
8 Voices in a Silenced Archive: The Photographs of the Menage Scientific Expedition
Introduction
Works Cited
9 Silence as Masquerade: Punctuation, Prosody, and Performance in “A Primer for the Punctuation of Heart Disease”
Introduction
Silence (Un-)Spelled
Silencing the Heart Disease
Conclusion
Works Cited
10 The Hatred of Speech and the Poetics of Silence
Introduction
The Hatred of Speech
Windows: John Cage and Larry Eigner
Works Cited
11 Night and Silence: Five Breaths at the End of the World
Introduction
FIRST NIGHT (of the Lunatic’s Silence)
SECOND NIGHT (of the Climber’s Silence)
THIRD NIGHT (of the Wolf’s Silence)
FOURTH NIGHT (of the Dream-Reader’s Silence)
FIFTH NIGHT (of the Gravedigger’s Silence)
Epilogue: Five Breaths; Five Stories of Silent Ends
Works Cited
12 No Quiet Place—Breaking the Silence, Speaking the Unspeakable, or: How Cultural Critique Thrives on a Paradox
Part One. “Silence Like a Cancer Grows”? or: How Sound and Silence Interdepend
Part Two. “The Sounds of Silence,” or: How Silence Produces (Plenty of) Discourse
Part Three. The Silence of Sounds, or: How Soundings (Necessarily) Produce New Silences
Works Cited
13 Frankenstein’s Resounding Silence on Industrialisation: An Ecocritical Reading of the Novel’s Production and Reception
Works Cited
14 “No noise of any kind”—Silence and Silencing in First World War Correspondence
Introduction
Understanding Silence and Silencing
Communicative Event
Nothing to Write Home About
No Noise of Any Kind
Conclusion
Primary Sources
15 The Body Without Organs: On Silencing the Self
Introduction
Part I: The Desiring Machine
Part II: A Short History of Unreasonable Reason
Part III: Power and Memory
Part IV: Persecution and the Art of (Silent) Writing
Concluding Remarks
Works Cited
16 The Silences and Silencing of First Languages Among L2 Speakers of English in Ireland
Introduction
Immigration and Language Use in the Republic of Ireland
Data and Methodology
Language Choice in the Writers Group
Writers as Learners of English
Standard English, Avoidance of Language Mixing, and the Limitation of Linguistic Creativity
Discussion and Conclusion: Language Choice and Power
Works Cited
17 Silencing the Winning Opposition: An Irish Pre-election Interview
Introduction
The Socio-Political Background to the Interview
Overview of the Interview
Analysis
Dobson’s Attempts at Managing Sinn Féin’s Public Image
McDonald’s Resistance to Dobson’s Management
Summary and Conclusion
Works Cited
Index
