On Wed, 16 Feb 2000, Katherine Goff wrote:
> between the many committments, ... i did want to respond to rosa
> and to encourage all those who have
> posted recently for the first time, or the first time in a while.
> what sustains me often is a belief that silence is a form of response,
> highly ambigous,
Thanks Kathie,
I appreciate your message especially because I think some of the topics
that are pending are important since they seem to come up again and
again both in the more personal and in the more theoretical discussions
on this list (for example the discussion of connotations of language
register which is also out there still pending).
Silence as a conversational response is something that I am interested
in, both in my personal life and in my research, as a topic of study.
There's a pretty hefty bibliography in the conversational and language
interaction literature on differentiating silences for example. And a
question that is often begged when referring to silence: whose silence?
When I first wrote the message, I was reacting to my own silence
to what had been the discussions on the list. Being a silent
reader is a very comfortable position, no risks involved. However,
it's a pretty selfish one and an incongruent one for someone who
believes and teaches about collaborative co-constructions of knowledge.
When there was no immediate response to my message, I started reacting
to other people's silences. I doubt I would have insisted again in some
re-wording or re-try. It would have felt too much of a conversational
imposition and unthinkable according to my own self-imposed rules.
Even when I re-posted the original failed message, I prefaced it with
all kinds of face-saving outs, almost inviting people to not reply: "this
is too late", "conversation has moved on", "it's ok if nobody answers ...
however ..." :-)
But the "list" as a conversational situation is a whole 'nother ball-game
(oops!) ... arena ... (oops again!) ... ballroom. The same rules don't
apply, and many of the problems that often seem to arise are due to a
transposing of conversational norms of interaction to the list situation.
As added dimensions to the problem are the question of language, the
question of time and timing and the question cultural heterogeneity (hmm,
are we in the Fifth dimension already?)
Just some thoughts on silence, so I can bring a little coherence back into
my life.
Rosa
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