This edited collection aims to fill a gap in the field of discourse studies by addressing the issue of silence and absence in discourses and by introducing routes into the empirical analysis of what is absent in discourses. While (critical) discourse analysis has been interested in the phenomena of absence (for example, hiding agency through the use of the passive voice), little attention has been devoted to how we can systematically identify and analyse absences more broadly. How do we come to notice absences? How can we argue the existence of absences, what shapes they take, where and why they occur? What sense can we make of them, how do they determine what is present? Are they entailed in what is semiotically perceptible to us, or how are absences determined by what is semiotically present? Can we analyse them empirically in a way that is systematic and methodologically sound?
What arises from questions like these is, first of all, the need for more conceptualisation of how and why silence and absence in discourse can be meaningful and, second, how we can identify and analyse what is absent in discourse. By assembling contributions that use different methodological approaches to analysing silence and absence, the volume seeks to promote the empirical study of phenomena of discursive absences and to incorporate silence and absence as a line of enquiry in discourse studies.
The contributions in this volume therefore do not so much pursue the conceptualisation or theorisation of silence and absence, but suggest approaches to the empirical analysis of absences. Taken together, they contribute to the aim of this volume to provide an initial toolkit for anyone who wishes to pursue the study of silence and absence in discourse.
There is still a lack of empiricism when it comes to the study of silence and absence especially from a (critical) discourse analysis viewpoint. This lack first of all prevents a better understanding of phenomena of absence in discourse and communication and, second, it prevents a better understanding of discourse itself.
Regarding the first point, until now many pragmatic, sociolinguistic or discourse-oriented studies on silence have either mapped out different types, meanings and functions of silence on the basis of either constructed or context-isolated examples (e.g. Bruneau, 1973; Ephratt, 2008; Jaworski, 1993; Kurzon, 2007; Tannen & Troike, 1985)—contributing more to conceptualising, classifying and theorising silence— or they aim to situate the phenomena of silence within the study of language/discourse (e.g. Achino-Loeb, 2006; Glenn, 2004), again discussing various aspects of silence illustrated with examples, rather than letting them emerge from an analysis of silence in particular discourse contexts. Where there is a focus on specific discourse contexts, the focus on silence/ absence can be partly lost, and methodologies of tackling absence are not deliberately explored, discussed or explicated. However, the ambiguity and context-dependency of silence have often been noted (Bergmann, 1982; Clair, 1998; Jensen, 1973; Sifianou, 1997). It therefore seems all the more important to build a pool of empirical studies of silence and absence in specific contexts. Bergmann (1982) argues that within an ethnographic framework, the “context and placing of stretches of silence need to be understood as resources for interpretation for the interactants themselves, and need to be analysed as such” (145, translated MS). This is in line with van Dijk’s (2008) socio-cognitive conceptualisation of context, as well as with Blommaert’s (2005) premise that when analysing language in social contexts, “the focus should be on what language [and the absence thereof, MS/CT] means to its users” (14; italics in the original).
Regarding the second point, the focus on discourse in this volume brings with it a focus on socio-political contexts, on patterns of and resources for social interaction, on representation (including the notion of foregrounding and backgrounding) and on power/hegemony. Important questions have been raised as to how silence and absence relate to these, but have yet to be addressed. Regarding contexts that structure discourse, and patterns and resources available for interaction, Blommaert remarks that
[t]he emphasis on linguistic analysis implies an emphasis on available discourse, discourse which is there. There is no way in which we can linguistically investigate discourses that are absent, even if such analyses would tell us an enormous amount about the conditions under which discourses are being produced (by whom? When? For what purpose?) and circulated (who has access to them and who doesn’t?). It also means that discourse analysis starts from the moment that there is linguistically encoded discourse, bypassing the ways in which society operates on language users and influences what they can accomplish in language long before they open their mouths, so to speak. (2005, p. 35)
The question of power and hegemony is closely related to this since “[t]he road to overt ideological domination rests on a bedrock of silence running through different layers of suppression that […] begin at selective perception of significance and end in the consensus that […] is the necessary condition for the effective wielding of power” (Achino-Loeb, 2006, p. 13f.). The conditions for accessing, producing, receiving and participating in discourse are not afforded randomly, but interact with social status, resulting in “differential access to forms, to linguistic/communicative resources, resulting in differential capacities to accomplish certain functions” and in “differential access to contextual spaces, i.e. spaces of meaning ratification where specific forms conventionally receive specific functions” (Blommaert, 2005, p. 76; italics in the original). This is relevant for silence and absence since “[s]ignificance involves something other than mechanical registering; it involves a selection of sorts […]. Therefore, at the heart of our meaning construction process is an act of suppression: hence the need to look at agency in such a process” (Achino-Loeb, 2006, p. 38). Once established, “hegemonic discourse can be at its most powerful when it does not have to be invoked, because it is just taken for granted” (Baker, 2006, p. 19). Unless social contexts change, it can be very difficult to resist the suppression of alternative versions of social reality, of the viewpoints of marginalised groups, of tabooed narratives.
Regarding representation , the discursive construction of reality in “discourse which is there”, critical discourse analysis has often considered the question of “which elements of events or events in a chain of events are present/absent, prominent/ backgrounded” (Fairclough, 2003, p. 139). Systemic functional linguistics (Halliday, 1994), social actor analysis (van Leeuwen, 2008) and the notion of conceptual metaphor since Lakoff and Johnson (1980) all help identify which aspects are foregrounded and backgrounded aspects in discourses, for example, hiding individual agency by use of the passive voice, by vague characterisation of social actors or by metaphorically conceptualising events which involve human agency as natural catastrophes. However, tools like these are hardly ever employed to decidedly shed a light on silence, and they are hardly ever drawn together in order to decidedly carve out what is arguably absent in any given text.
In the following, the Introduction will serve to propose some conceptual clarification, not least a differentiation between silence and absence in so far as they can be regarded as relevant for linguistic and discourse analysis (Sect. 1.1). This differentiation, however, focuses on the scope and aims of this volume and does not aim to provide an all-purpose definition of discursive absence. We will also discuss a variety of ma...