Book contents
- Qualitative Studies of Silence
- Qualitative Studies of Silence
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: A Turn to Silence
- 1 Literal and Metaphorical Silences in Rhetoric: Examples from the Celebration of the 1974 Revolution in the Portuguese Parliament
- 2 Seeing Silenced Agendas in Medical Interaction: A Conversation Analytic Case Study
- 3 Listening to the Sound of Silence: Methodological Reflections on Studying the Unsaid
- 4 Social Silences: Conducting Ethnographic Research on Racism in the Americas
- 5 Intimate Silences and Inequality: Noticing the Unsaid through Triangulation
- 6 Silence in the Court: Moral Exclusion at the Intersection of Disability, Race, Sexuality, and Methodology
- 7 Silencing Self and Other through Autobiographical Narratives
- 8 Gendering the Unsaid and the Unsayable
- 9 The Language Ideology of Silence and Silencing in Public Discourse
- 10 Propaganda by Omission: The Case of Topical Silence
- 11 Silencing Whistleblowers
- 12 Between Sound and Silence: The Inaudible and the Unsayable in the History of the First World War
- 13 Affect and the Unsaid: Silences, Impasses, and Testimonies to Trauma
- 14 The Unsaid and the Unheard
- 15 Conclusion: Topographies of the Said and Unsaid
- Index
- References
3 - Listening to the Sound of Silence: Methodological Reflections on Studying the Unsaid
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 June 2019
Book contents
- Qualitative Studies of Silence
- Qualitative Studies of Silence
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: A Turn to Silence
- 1 Literal and Metaphorical Silences in Rhetoric: Examples from the Celebration of the 1974 Revolution in the Portuguese Parliament
- 2 Seeing Silenced Agendas in Medical Interaction: A Conversation Analytic Case Study
- 3 Listening to the Sound of Silence: Methodological Reflections on Studying the Unsaid
- 4 Social Silences: Conducting Ethnographic Research on Racism in the Americas
- 5 Intimate Silences and Inequality: Noticing the Unsaid through Triangulation
- 6 Silence in the Court: Moral Exclusion at the Intersection of Disability, Race, Sexuality, and Methodology
- 7 Silencing Self and Other through Autobiographical Narratives
- 8 Gendering the Unsaid and the Unsayable
- 9 The Language Ideology of Silence and Silencing in Public Discourse
- 10 Propaganda by Omission: The Case of Topical Silence
- 11 Silencing Whistleblowers
- 12 Between Sound and Silence: The Inaudible and the Unsayable in the History of the First World War
- 13 Affect and the Unsaid: Silences, Impasses, and Testimonies to Trauma
- 14 The Unsaid and the Unheard
- 15 Conclusion: Topographies of the Said and Unsaid
- Index
- References
Summary
This chapter recommends that we study silence not merely as the absence of speech but also as the presence of non-speech, thereby featuring discursive absences as manifestations of active avoidance. By highlighting hesitations, the use of euphemisms, the use of effectively elusive generics, and the lexical gaps surrounding default assumptions we habitually take for granted, it offers an introduction to the sociological study of absence.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Qualitative Studies of SilenceThe Unsaid as Social Action, pp. 59 - 70Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019
References
Adair, B., & Gazella, K. (1998, January 28). It lasted 72 minutes without a mention. St. Petersburg Times, p. A8.Google Scholar
Adams, R. M. (1985). Soft soap and the nitty-gritty.” In Enright, D. J. (Ed.), Fair of speech: The uses of euphemism (pp. 44–55). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Andreyev, L. N. (1971 [1910]). Silence. In The little angel and other stories (pp. 121–147). Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press.Google Scholar
Barnes, B. (2017, October 9). “Almost radio silence”: Movie producer is the (whispered) talk of Hollywood. New York Times, p. A13.Google Scholar
Bauder, D. (1999, January 19). For TV networks, big coverage day. Associated Press Online.Google Scholar
Bird, F. B. (1996). The muted conscience: Moral silence and the practice of ethics in business. Westport, CT: Quorum Books.Google Scholar
Bloch, D. A. (1987). Foreword. In Greenwald, D. S. & Zeitlin, S. J. (Eds.), No reason to talk about it: Families confront the nuclear taboo (pp. vii–x). New York: W. W. Norton.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, P. (1977 [1972]). Outline of a theory of practice. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, P. (1984 [1979]). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Brazile, D. (2015, July 22). Why “All Lives Matter” misses the point. CNN. Retrieved, from www.cnn.com/2015/07/22/opinions/brazile-black-lives-matter-slogan/.Google Scholar
Brekhus, W. H. (1996). Social marking and the mental coloring of identity: Sexual identity construction and maintenance in the United States. Sociological Forum, 11, 497–522.Google Scholar
Brekhus, W. H. (2003). Peacocks, chameleons, centaurs: Gay suburbia and the grammar of social identity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
“Bush says it is time for action.” (2001, November 6). CNN. Retrieved from http://edition.cnn.com/2001/US/11/06/ret.bush.coalition/index.html.Google Scholar
Cheung, K-K. (1993). Articulate silences: Hisaye Yamamoto, Maxine Hong Kingston, Joy Kogawa. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Dauenhauer, B. P. (1980). Silence: The phenomenon and its ontological significance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Doyle, A. C. (1986 [1892]). Silver blaze. In Sherlock Holmes: The complete novels and stories (vol. 1, pp. 521–546). New York: Bantam Books.Google Scholar
Ephratt, M. (2017). The silence address: Silence as it emerged from media commentators and respondents following Prime Minister Netanyahu’s 2015 address at the UN. Israel Studies, 22, 200–229.Google Scholar
Garfinkel, H. (1967). What is ethnomethodology? In Studies in ethnomethodology (pp. 1–34). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Goffman, E. (1963). Behavior in public places: Notes on the social organization of gatherings. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Gray, R. (2017, May 25). Trump declines to affirm NATO’s Article 5. The Atlantic. Retrieved from www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/05/trump-declines-to-affirm-natos-article-5/528129/.Google Scholar
Harper, J. (1999, January 19). Media highlights surreal day with trial, State of the Union. Washington Times, p. A11.Google Scholar
Heath, M. (2013). Sexual misgivings: Producing un/marked knowledge in neoliberal marriage promotion policies. Sociological Quarterly 54, 561–583.Google Scholar
Jacobs, B. (2017, January 27). No mention of Jews in White House’s Holocaust Remembrance Day tribute. The Guardian. Retrieved from www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/27/white-house-holocaust-remembrance-day-no-jews.Google Scholar
Jacobs, B., & Murray, W. (2017, August 12). Donald Trump under fire after failing to denounce Virginia white supremacists. The Guardian. Retrieved from www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/12/charlottesville-protest-trump-condemns-violence-many-sides.Google Scholar
Jaworski, A. (1993). The power of silence: Social and pragmatic perspectives. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Jordan, M. (2000). The silence of Sodom: Homosexuality in modern Catholicism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kaplan, A. (2017). Effacing the vulva: Producing the West. Unpublished manuscript, Rutgers University.Google Scholar
Kern, S. (1983). The culture of time and space 1880–1918. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Koronowski, R. (2017). Trump conspicuously avoids condemning white supremacists in Virginia, blames “many sides” for violence. Retrieved from https://thinkprogress.org/trump-charlottesville-statement-6624f029b0e0/.Google Scholar
Lewis, A. R., & Djupe, P. A. (2016). Where to say “Merry Christmas” vs. “Happy Holidays” – 2016 edition. Retrieved from http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/where-to-say-merry-christmas-vs-happy-holidays-2016-edition/.Google Scholar
Lifton, R. J. (1982). Imagining the real. In Lifton, R. J. & Falk, R. (Eds.), Indefensible weapons: The political and psychological case against nuclearism (pp. 3–125). New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
McGill, A. (2016, December 20). Merry Christmas vs. Happy Holidays, round 2,016: The perennial debate gets a new coat of cheers from Donald Trump. The Atlantic. Retrieved from www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/12/merry-christmas-vs-happy-holidays-round-2016/511115/.Google Scholar
Mullaney, J. L. (1999). Making it “count”: Mental weighing and identity attribution. Symbolic Interaction, 22, 269–283.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mullaney, J. L. (2006). Everyone is NOT doing it: Abstinence and personal identity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Petulla, S. (2016, December 24). “Merry Christmas” versus “Happy Holidays”: Why Trump may prefer the former. NBC News. Retrieved from www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/merry-christmas-versus-happy-holidays-why-trump-prefers-former-n699611.Google Scholar
Pinder, C. C. & Harlos, K. P. (2001). Employee silence: Quiescence and acquiescence as responses to perceived injustice. Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management, 20, 331–369.Google Scholar
Pollock, M. (2004). Colormute: Race talk dilemmas in an American school. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Ryan, D. (2006). Getting the word out: Notes on the social organization of notification. Sociological Theory, 24, 228–254.Google Scholar
Stack, L. (2016, December 19). How the “War on Christmas” controversy was created. New York Times. Retrieved from www.nytimes.com/2016/12/19/us/war-on-christmas-controversy.html?_r=0.Google Scholar
Stein, A. (2007). Trauma stories, identity work, and the politics of recognition. In Gerson, J. M. & Wolf, D. L. (Eds.), Sociology confronts the Holocaust: Memories and identities in Jewish diasporas (pp. 84–91). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stein, A. (2014). Reluctant witnesses: Survivors, their children, and the rise of Holocaust consciousness. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Stolberg, S. G. (2017, November 12). Bannon paints a target on McConnell’s back. His response? “Ha-ha.” New York Times, p. 20.Google Scholar
Tannen, D. (1993, June 20). Marked women, unmarked men. New York Times Magazine (pp. 18, 52, 54).Google Scholar
Wajnryb, R. (2001). The silence: How tragedy shapes talk. Crows Nest, Australia: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Yancy, G., & Butler, J. (2015, January 12). What’s wrong with “All Lives Matter”? New York Times. Retrieved from http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/12/whats-wrong-with-all-lives-matter/?_r=0.Google Scholar
Zerubavel, E. (1979). Patterns of time in hospital life: A sociological perspective. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Zerubavel, E. (1997). Social mindscapes: An invitation to cognitive sociology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Zerubavel, E. (2006). The elephant in the room: Silence and denial in everyday life. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Zerubavel, E. (2015). Hidden in plain sight: The social structure of irrelevance. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Zerubavel, E. (2018). Taken for granted: The remarkable power of the unremarkable. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Zubrzycki, G. (2017). The politics of Jewish absence in contemporary Poland. Journal of Contemporary History, 52, 250–277.Google Scholar
- 6
- Cited by