Psychosocial Factors of Silence

Abstract

Silences are as much a part of speech as vocal utterances. Each sequence in spoken communication is characterized by consecutive sound-silence segments. Common grammatical silences may include:

• “Natural” punctuation points, e.g. the end of a sentence.

• Immediately preceding a conjunction whether (i) co-ordinating, e.g., and, but, neither, therefore, or (ii) subordinating, e.g., if, when, while, as, because.

• Before relative and interrogative pronouns, e.g., who, which, what, why, whose.

• When a question is indirect or implied, e.g., “I don’t know whether I will.”

• Before all adverbial clauses of time (when), manner (how) and place (where).

• When complete parenthetical references are made, e.g., “You can tell that the words — this is the phonetician speaking — the words are not sincere” (Goldman Eisler, 1968, p. 13).