Unsaid

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The term "unsaid" refers what is not explicitly stated, what is hidden and/or implied in the speech of an individual or a group of people.

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The unsaid may be the product of intimidation; of a mulling over of thought; or of bafflement in the face of the inexpressible. [1]

Linguistics

Sociolinguistics points out that in normal communication what is left unsaid is as important as what is actually said [2] —that we expect our auditors regularly to fill in the social context/norms of our conversations as we proceed. [3]

Basil Bernstein saw one difference between the restricted code and the elaborated code of speech is that more would be left implicit in the former than the latter. [4]

Ethnology

In ethnology, ethnomethodology established a strong link between unsaid and axiomatic. Harold Garfinkel, following Durkheim, stressed that in any given situation, even a legally binding contract, the terms of agreement rest upon the 90% of unspoken assumptions that underlie the visible (spoken) tip of the interactive iceberg. [5]

Edward T. Hall argued that much cross-cultural miscommunication stemmed from neglect of the silent, unspoken, but differing cultural patterns that each participant unconsciously took for granted. [6]

Psychoanalysis

Luce Irigaray has emphasised the importance of listening to the unsaid dimension of discourse in psychoanalytic practice [7] —something which may shed light on the unconscious phantasies of the person being analysed. [8]

Other psychotherapies have also emphasised the importance of the non-verbal component of the patient's communication, [9] sometimes privileging this over the verbal content. [10] Behind all such thinking stands Freud's dictum: "no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips...at every pore". [11]

Cultural examples

See also

Related Research Articles

Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any or all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on language and the ways it is used. It can overlap with the sociology of language, which focuses on the effect of language on society. Sociolinguistics overlaps considerably with pragmatics and is closely related to linguistic anthropology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Conversation</span> Interactive communication between two or more people

Conversation is interactive communication between two or more people. The development of conversational skills and etiquette is an important part of socialization. The development of conversational skills in a new language is a frequent focus of language teaching and learning. Conversation analysis is a branch of sociology which studies the structure and organization of human interaction, with a more specific focus on conversational interaction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Listening</span> Hearing what others are saying, and trying to understand what it means

Listening is giving attention to a sound. When listening, a person hears what others are saying and tries to understand what it means.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Body language</span> Type of nonverbal communication

Body language is a type of communication in which physical behaviors, as opposed to words, are used to express or convey information. Such behavior includes facial expressions, body posture, gestures, eye movement, touch and the use of space. The term body language is usually applied in regard to people but may also be applied to animals. The study of body language is also known as kinesics. Although body language is an important part of communication, most of it happens without conscious awareness.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nonverbal communication</span> Interpersonal communication through wordless (mostly visual) cues

Nonverbal communication (NVC) is the transmission of messages or signals through a nonverbal platform such as eye contact, facial expressions, gestures, posture, use of objects and body language. It includes the use of social cues, kinesics, distance (proxemics) and physical environments/appearance, of voice (paralanguage) and of touch (haptics). A signal has three different parts to it, including the basic signal, what the signal is trying to convey, and how it is interpreted. These signals that are transmitted to the receiver depend highly on the knowledge and empathy that this individual has. It can also include the use of time (chronemics) and eye contact and the actions of looking while talking and listening, frequency of glances, patterns of fixation, pupil dilation, and blink rate (oculesics).

In English, the word like has a very flexible range of uses, ranging from conventional to non-standard. It can be used as a noun, verb, adverb, adjective, preposition, particle, conjunction, hedge, filler, quotative, semi-suffix.

Paralanguage, also known as vocalics, is a component of meta-communication that may modify meaning, give nuanced meaning, or convey emotion, by using techniques such as prosody, pitch, volume, intonation, etc. It is sometimes defined as relating to nonphonemic properties only. Paralanguage may be expressed consciously or unconsciously.

Unconsciouscommunication is the subtle, unintentional, unconscious cues that provide information to another individual. It can be verbal l or it can be non-verbal. Some psychologists instead use the term honest signals because such cues are involuntary behaviors that often convey emotion whereas body language can be controlled. Many decisions are based on unconscious communication, which is interpreted and created in the right hemisphere of the brain. The right hemisphere is dominant in perceiving and expressing body language, facial expressions, verbal cues, and other indications that have to do with emotion but it does not exclusively deal with the unconscious.

Norman Fairclough is an emeritus Professor of Linguistics at Department of Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University. He is one of the founders of critical discourse analysis (CDA) as applied to sociolinguistics. CDA is concerned with how power is exercised through language. CDA studies discourse; in CDA this includes texts, talk, video and practices.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">High-context and low-context cultures</span> Anthropological notion

In anthropology, high-context culture and low-context culture are ends of a continuum of how explicit the messages exchanged in a culture are and how important the context is in communication. The continuum pictures how people communicate with others through their range of communication abilities: utilizing gestures, relations, body language, verbal messages, or non-verbal messages. "High-" and "low-" context cultures typically refer to language groups, nationalities, or regional communities. However, the concept may also apply to corporations, professions, and other cultural groups, as well as to settings such as online and offline communication. High-context cultures often exhibit less-direct verbal and nonverbal communication, utilizing small communication gestures and reading more meaning into these less-direct messages. Low-context cultures do the opposite; direct verbal communication is needed to properly understand a message being communicated and relies heavily on explicit verbal skills. The model of high-context and low-context cultures offers a popular framework in intercultural-communication studies but has been criticized as lacking empirical validation.

The ethnography of communication (EOC), originally called the ethnography of speaking, is the analysis of communication within the wider context of the social and cultural practices and beliefs of the members of a particular culture or speech community. It comes from ethnographic research It is a method of discourse analysis in linguistics that draws on the anthropological field of ethnography. Unlike ethnography proper, though, EOC takes into account both the communicative form, which may include but is not limited to spoken language, and its function within the given culture.

John Joseph Gumperz was an American linguist and academic. Gumperz was, for most of his career, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. His research on the languages of India, on code-switching in Norway, and on conversational interaction, has benefitted the study of sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, linguistic anthropology, and urban anthropology.

Basil Bernard Bernstein was a British sociologist known for his work in the sociology of education. He worked on socio-linguistics and the connection between the manner of speaking and social organization.

Allan Bell, is a New Zealand academic and sociolinguistic researcher. He has written extensively on New Zealand English, language style, and media language. He is a founding co-editor of the international quarterly Journal of Sociolinguistics and is known for his theory of audience design. Currently, he is working as the Director of the Institute of Culture, Discourse & Communication and is a Professor of Language & Communication at Auckland University of Technology.

Characteristics of Harold Pinter's work identifies distinctive aspects of the works of the British playwright Harold Pinter (1930–2008) and gives an indication of their influence on Anglo-American culture.

Social semiotics is a branch of the field of semiotics which investigates human signifying practices in specific social and cultural circumstances, and which tries to explain meaning-making as a social practice. Semiotics, as originally defined by Ferdinand de Saussure, is "the science of the life of signs in society". Social semiotics expands on Saussure's founding insights by exploring the implications of the fact that the "codes" of language and communication are formed by social processes. The crucial implication here is that meanings and semiotic systems are shaped by relations of power, and that as power shifts in society, our languages and other systems of socially accepted meanings can and do change.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to communication:

Interactional sociolinguistics is a subdiscipline of linguistics that uses discourse analysis to study how language users create meaning via social interaction. It is one of the ways in which linguists look at the intersections of human language and human society; other subfields that take this perspective are language planning, minority language studies, quantitative sociolinguistics, and sociohistorical linguistics, among others. Interactional sociolinguistics is a theoretical and methodological framework within the discipline of linguistic anthropology, which combines the methodology of linguistics with the cultural consideration of anthropology in order to understand how the use of language informs social and cultural interaction. Interactional sociolinguistics was founded by linguistic anthropologist John J. Gumperz. Topics that might benefit from an Interactional sociolinguistic analysis include: cross-cultural miscommunication, politeness, and framing.

Contextualization in sociolinguistics refers to the use of language to signal relevant aspects of an interaction or communicative situation. This may include clues to who is talking, their relationship, where the conversation is occurring, and much more. These clues can be drawn from how the language is being used, what type of language is being used, and the participants tone of voice. Contextualization includes verbal and non-verbal clues of things such as the power dynamic or the situation apparent from a conversation being analyzed or participated in. These clues are referred to as "contextualization cues". Contextualization cues are both verbal and non-verbal signs that language speakers use and language listeners hear that give clues into relationships, the situation, and the environment of the conversation. An example of contextualization in academia is the work of Basil Bernstein. Bernstein describes the contextualization of scientific knowledge in pedagogical contexts, such as textbooks.

Personal narrative (PN) is a prose narrative relating personal experience usually told in first person; its content is nontraditional. "Personal" refers to a story from one's life or experiences. "Nontraditional" refers to literature that does not fit the typical criteria of a narrative.

References

  1. Robyn Brandenberg, Powerful Pedagogy (2008) p. 104
  2. R. Wardhaugh, An Introduction to Sociolinguistics (2011) p. 310
  3. J. P. Gee/M. Handforthed., The Routledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis (2013) Ch 10
  4. R. Mesthrie, Introducing Sociolinguistics (2009) p. 353
  5. A. Giddens, Positivism and Sociology (1974) p. 72
  6. Edward T. Hall, The Silent Language (1990) p. vii-viii
  7. S. Todd ed., Learning Desire (2013) p. 249
  8. M. Edelson, Language and Interpretation in Psychoanalysis (1984) p. 2
  9. Eric Berne, What Do You Say After You Say Hello? (1974) p. 314-7
  10. Fritz Perls, Gestalt Therapy Verbatim (1970) p. 57-8
  11. Quoted in M. Argyle ed., Social Encounters (1973) p. 133
  12. Edward T. Hall, The Silent Language (1990) p. 33
  13. David Lodge, Small World (1985) p. 265

Further reading