Silence acts: Pragmatics of silence in communication

Silence, like speech, is an act. Even though silence is more ambiguous than speech, its contextual effects enable it to carry an illocutionary force, as much as speech does. Silence that carries an illocutionary force is referred to as eloquent silence and is often equivalent to speech acts. This study attempted to build on the existing literature by investigating pragmatics of silence in a tradition where it plays an important role in communication, namely Islam. It is firmly based on an examination of the relevant texts in two sources which are the basis for the Muslim way of life: the Qur'ān and the Sunnah. To investigate pragmatics of silence in communication in the selected texts, we first identified the main elements of communication, namely speaker (S), message, addressee (A), and response. Second, we tried to answer the following questions: 1)What did S or A do with silence? and 2) Why did S or A remain silent? The answer to the first question helped us understand functions of silence and the answer to the second question helped us identify its motives. Each chapter ends with a discussion of pragmatics of silence in light of communication theory in general, and speech act theory, in particular. We concluded from our analysis that silence is not only equivalent to a performative but may, in some communication settings, be equivalent to a transformative act. We referred to silence that has a performative effect as performative silence and to silence that has a transformative effect as transformative silence.