Abstract
As part of the Postdisciplinary Studies in Discourse series, the volume Exploring Silence and Absence in Discourse aims to ‘fill a gap in the field of discourse studies by addressing the issue of silence and absence in discourses’ (p. 1) and even attempts to put ‘silence and absence’ into a more central position in the field of discourse. This invaluable and innovative edited collection provides a rather unique angle as well as a practical methodological toolkit for those who are interested in the study of silence and absence in discourse communication.
It consists of 13 chapters and an index. Excluding the Introduction (Chapter 1), the contents could be divided into three parts: Part I (Chapters 2–7), Part II (Chapters 8–10) and Part III (Chapters 11–13). Serving as an introduction to the volume, Chapter 1 sets out the theoretical framework by specifically shedding light on how to differentiate between meaningful absence and silence. Melani Schröter and Charlotte Taylor draw upon Blommaert’s (2005) work by arguing that ‘[t]here is no way in which we can linguistically investigate discourses that are absent’, but this should not ‘lead us to erase absence from any research agenda when we can still use what is present to look at what constitutes, produces or indicates absence’ (p. 14).
In Part I, the authors use corpora and corpus analysis tools to empirically compare the location, tracking and evaluation of absences from corpora as well as the contrasting of presence and absence. Different from most chapters in this volume that deal with absence, Chapter 2 focuses specifically on digital silence. Manuel Alcántara-Plá and Ana Ruiz-Sánchez compile three corpora, including the main parties’ electoral manifestoes, candidates’ tweets and articles from the Spanish digital newspapers in 2015, to ‘empirically prove the relevance of migration in 2015 and its absence from Twitter’ (p. 30). Then, they discuss the silenced political discourse concerning migration from multifaceted perspectives to reveal the relationship between silence and power in today’s political agenda setting on digital media, for example, Twitter. Moving to Chapter 3, Sameera Durrani uses both qualitative and quantitative techniques to compare the visual treatment of Iran and Pakistan in Time magazine from 1981 to 2010. What is worth mentioning here is that the employment of diachronic analysis and historical contextualization adds another dimension to the analysis of absence. In Chapter 4, it is rather thought-provoking that based on a variety of corpora of the early Arab Spring uprisings in the UK Press, White House briefings and CNN coverage, Alan Partington chooses the word ‘speculation’ instead of ‘interpretation’ or ‘explanation’ through the whole comparative analysis of the discourse of absence. Cecilia Strand, in Chapter 5, utilizes a cross-media research design to contrast Ugandan sexual minorities’ high level of activism in the main LGBTQI organization’s Twitter account with the invisibility of the topic in two leading domestic daily newspapers, which contributes to ‘the identification of silencing practices and discursive absences’ (p. 127). In Chapter 6, Kieran O’ Halloran shows both the efficiency and effectiveness of software-based methods in detecting relevant absences from arguments as well as the scrupulous evaluation of the argument’s straw man status. Halloran uses Sketch Engine, a software tool, to find recurrent words and expressions in the argument written by environmentalist and left-wing activist George Monbior, which is significantly helpful to reduce human error and labour in identifying the dominant framing of the standpoints it criticizes as well as to enhance the rigour of any subsequent evaluation of straw man status. By examining a corpus of 415 news articles explicitly mentioning the word ‘smog’ in Chapter 7, Jiayi Wang and Dániel Z. Kádár apply corpus-assisted discourse analysis to demonstrate that ‘Chinese media discourse relies heavily on official discourse’ (p. 208).
Compared with Part I, the content in Parts II and III seems somewhat thin, but still worth reading. In Chapter 8, Patricia von Münchow puts forward a series of interrelated logical research questions and then draws on different types of discourse studies to answer them as well as to discuss theoretical and methodological challenges in identifying meaningful absences in discourse. Impressively, Chapter 9 focuses on two conceptual tools, namely, frames and patterns of absence in understanding how environmental refugees are framed. Nina Venkataraman also delves into ‘how environmental reporting frames an issue that may lead to selective absences of other factors’ (p. 241). Taking examples of Nigerian news reports on the Chibok girls’ abduction saga, Taiwo Oluwaseun Ehineni, in Chapter 10, illustrates how topicalization and omission are used to achieve absence as discourse strategies in the news media context.
Part III features three articles analysing surface indicators of silence and absence. Chapter 11 examines ‘the multimodal tactics used by newspaper journalists and their editors to represent taboo language’ (p. 305). The authors, Crispin Thurlow and Jamie Moshin, argue that ‘what is even more important is not simply what is or is not absent, but how this absence is performed in practice’ (p. 312). After presenting the analyses from the perspectives of ‘top-down strategies’ and ‘bottom-up tactics’, Thurlow and Moshin then make three interrelated critical remarks by way of conclusion. By focusing on the use of the phrase ‘no comment’ in police interviews, Joanna Garbutt, in Chapter 12, adopts tools from conversational analysis (CA) to analyse how police officers respond to these metadiscursive silences used by the suspects. For those who lack linguistic background, Chapter 13 is not very easy to digest. In it, Dorte Madsen employs the example of ‘interdisciplinarity’ as an empty signifier and elaborates upon the distinction between the function of the signifier and its linguistic manifestation.
Given a relative lack of empiricism in the study of silence and absence so far, this collection, to a large extent, contributes to ‘promote the empirical study of phenomena of discursive absences and to incorporate silence and absence as a line of enquiry in discourse studies’ (p. 2). As a whole, it is an inspiring and well-organized volume. On the one hand, it is wide-ranging and diverse in content. Aside from bringing together a broad selection of essays pertinent to silence and absence, ranging from various media discourse to police interviews, it also presents cross-disciplinary studies on multiple issues, such as migration, national images, Middle East and North Africa (MENA) uprisings, discrimination of sexual minorities and environmental problems. On the other hand, it employs both quantitative and qualitative research in most chapters, and it also provides multitudinous methodological approaches, encompassing but not limited to content analysis, semiotic analysis, corpus-assisted discourse studies (CADS), framing, conversation analysis and diachronic analysis. Nevertheless, it would be more comprehensive and persuasive if more cases of meaningful silence discourse were offered and analysed, since ‘most of the contributions deal with absence’ (p. 10) on the basis of media discourse.