“Your Silence Speaks Volumes”: Silent Implicature and its Political Significance

This thesis is an exploration of the linguistic and political implications of conversational silences, where “conversational silence” describes an instance of remaining literally silent in an exchange, and where this act of remaining silent is understood as an active conversational contribution. In a first step, I draw on the Gricean account of conversational implicature, arguing that we can conversationally implicate with silences, by discussing and identifying an altered version of the Gricean account which is able to accommodate cases of remaining silent. I further think about ways to grasp various “levels” of (silent) implicature to assess more complex cases, where misunderstandings and other complexities underpin an exchange, by drawing on Saul’s notions of utterer- and audience-implicature. Using these tools, I then analyse the role and features of silence in relation to several political phenomena: I think about ways in which silence can be used to maintain deniability about what was implicated, and how this feature can be used in both deliberate and planned, as well as inadvertent and spontaneous, ways. I discuss the issue of silence and assent by rejecting Goldberg’s interpretation of silence which holds that, absent defeating conditions, audiences are entitled to expect no silent rejections. I extend this discussion by thinking about silence and dissent, specifically referring to Tanesini and Lackey, whose approaches to silence (and dissent) I contrast with my own account of silent conversational implicature. Finally, I analyse the relationship between conversational silence and silencing, by arguing that even the silences that we intend to communicate with can be distorted, misinterpreted, ignored, and silenced. I end by summarizing the central arguments of the thesis, and give an outlook on further questions for research.