Talk:Silence

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"Feelings of loneliness with uncomfortable silence is easier in early life, but most people have roughly the same experience throughout their whole life. Most people often have problems finding words to say, but also many people have no problem finding things to say, and might never have this feeling at all."

Who the hell wrote that? LOL


1926 seems a bit late for South Africa to have had its first casualty list. Sure we don't mean 1916?

Yes, thanks for spotting the error. Impi 22:43, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Someone please acknowledge the title of this page as moderately amusing. I cannot be the only person who enjoys cheesy humor. 82.92.119.11 22:45, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] 9/11 silences

The victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks were commemorated by two minutes' silence in the UK, three elsewhere.

SNIyer12 changed this to:

The victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks were commemorated by three minutes of silence throughout Europe.

Are you sure about his? Do you have a source? My info came from the Guardian G2 of 5.1.05. If yours cannot be reliably sourced it should probably be reverted. Flapdragon 10:57, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Does the history of silence merely consist of the history of "x minutes of silence"?

[edit] "interjectional command"

The wor[l]d itself is often used as an interjectional command for someone (or a group of people) to stop talking to cease any noises.

As an interjection, it is an order for someone, usually the reciever in communication, to cease speech or noise, and it is usually spoken by supervillains, megalomaniacs, and people in authority, like kings or queens.

(etc)

This seems to be the fourth time you've added this sentence or some variant thereof, without any justificaton. Strangely you haven't done the same at order, warning, patience, nonsense, nightmare and a hundred other words that can be used as an interjection or a command.

Remember, Wikipedia is not a dictionary. The article is supposed to tell us something about the subject of silence, rather than explain why people might exclaim "silence!" (which anyway you might think was pretty obvious really).

Given that you're so keen on this sentence, I'm surprised you don't have anything to say to defend it; but since you don't, please don't keep reinstating it. I'm sure we both have better things to do...

Best wishes, Flapdragon 23:59, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Topic outline for future reference

As usual, the topic is treated here with a strong bias towards the discursive and political. Since silence is a fundament of communication, I think it needs more attention, so I'm posting this (admittedly excessive) suggestion of an outline for a truly encyclopedic treatment:

Physical foundations

  • Sound and its absence
    • physics and acoustics
    • hearing and touch
    • ambience and 'quiet' (relative use of the term)
  • Communication
    • binary codes and analog experience
    • context and relevance
    • systems, constraints, orders of complexity
    • metaphors of silence
  • Rhythm
    • difference
    • continuity and punctuation
  • Language
    • linguistic study of silence
    • framing and sequencing
    • non-verbal discursiveness
    • psycholinguistic silences

Cultural foundations

  • Negotiated silences
    • social constraints
    • kinesics
    • roles
    • emotions
    • symbolic uses
  • Institutions
    • silent spaces
    • ritual
    • authority and submission
  • Cultural difference
    • variations in contextual sensitivity
    • cross-cultural encounters
    • silence is both differentiating and unifying

Political and personal uses of silence

  • Repression
    • censorship
    • taboo
  • Political resistance strategies
    • refusing participation
    • maintaining integrity through secrecy
    • redefining silence at the margins
  • Regeneration
    • personal retreat
    • quiet design
    • mediation and community
    • heightened sensitivity as ecological awareness
  • Religious and existential inquiry
    • meditation
    • mystical silences, contemplation, solitude
    • art

Disagreements and suggestions welcome. This outline is based on information from Acoustic Communication and Handbook for Acoustic Ecology by Barry Truax, and "Silence in the Contemporary Soundscape" by Wreford Miller (myself), and generally based on work done by the World Soundscape Project. I'll contribute more as soon as I have time (and figure out markup and formatting rules).

Wreford 06:34, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Human effects of silence

I think it would be a good idea to include some info on the effects of prolonged silence on a persons state of mind. It is known that some people find silence uncomfortable, and to the extream, unbarable. Think outside the box 15:45, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

"In labs, animals that have been subject to a total lack of noise have shown signs of [...] death.[citation needed]" Lit. lol. I'm removing this until someone finds some evidence. Jameshfisher 11:13, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

In modern society, especially in the western society, when people are meeting and talking to each other, people often start talking nonsense to skip moments of silence. People seem to have the same feeling all over the world, however silence seems to be much more appreciated in the eastern world (China etc.)

Etc. Can anyone supply anything to make this less vague and anecdotal? If not it would be better pruned right back to something concrete as it's at risk of spoiling the article. It also duplicates what is said elsewhere about the embarrassing effect of silence in social situations in most (not all) cultures. Flapdragon 13:28, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

The whole "Human effects" section has very simplistic language. Also, I'm fairly certain that it isn't most cultures that avoid silence. I always believed the avoidance of silence to be a Western phenomenon, with the constant need for background music, a television, or small talk. I don't know specifically of any research on this, but I'm sure it would not be hard to find.

[edit] Proposed Disambiguation page

"Quiet" redirects here without any mention of the Jazz album Quiet by John Scofield. I propose either a disambiguation for the word quiet or a mention on the top of this page of the album.

I've changed the Quiet page to a disambiguation for the Jazz album and Silence. Think outside the box 11:22, 15 May 2007 (UTC) 72.95.213.74 22:05, 30 June 2007 (UTC)James

[edit] Repaired vandalism

Replaced the section on music that had been vandalized with a short quote from a relevant wiki article.

58.169.205.201 04:02, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Silence in Social Interaction: Functions, Meanings, and Interpretations

"Silence is noticed through the basic human need of social interaction: communication. Categorized into forms and functions, silence can fall into three distinct sections..." -- already this section is looking pretty vague and poorly expressed. Phrases like "the sociocultural framework of silences in which it can be found through the cultural communicative habits, that is, that communication is formed through cultural norms and that it follows the culturally defined patterns of social interaction" and "a Christian Methodist faith organization" are pretty verbose to say the least. The section also sounds as if it might be original research. If not we could use a reference to what it's taken from. At the moment it doesn't really seem to add anything to the entry and should probably be deleted. It should certainly not be the top section. Flapdragon (talk) 18:59, 10 February 2008 (UTC)