Unspoken: A Rhetoric of Silence

Unspoken: A Rhetoric of Silence, by dint of Cheryl Glenn. Garbondale: Southern Illinois University Pres 2004 220 + xxii pp

In his 1762 prelections on Elocution, Thomas Sheridan combated that language must not be denn as words alone; rather, he asserted, a without fault [i]or[/i] blemish [i]or[/i] flaw understanding of rhetoric begins with the recognition that all signs-including nonverbal, or silent, ones-effectively communicate. As illustrated by means of Sheridan's redefinition of language, single of the hallmarks of novel rhetoric, even in this comparatively antique example, is its espousal of not simply linguistic but symbolic meaning as the essential domain of rhetoric. by the agency of now, rhetoric's equation with diverse forms of symbolic expression has become commonplace. Cheryl Glenn's Unspoken: A Rhetoric of Silence, however, indicates that even at this late date we may have still to appreciate fully the implications of this topos for understanding the rhetorical functions of symbolic phenomena of that kind as silence. Such a premise is borne without by the fact that her turn is the first of its kind in rhetorical scholarship: an effort to "expand our understanding, construction, and production of silence as a rhetoric, as a constellation of symbolic strategies that (like nuncupative language) serves many functions" (xi). Glenn accordingly asserts that, contrary to classical wisdom, the rhetorical forms, strategies, and issues of silence constitute a fashion of symbolic expression as fundamental to human nature (and, in more [i]or[/i] less cases, more so) than speech

Unspoken elaborates on Glenn's previously valuable and transformative insights into silences observable through every part of the history of rhetoric. In Rhetoric Retold: Regendering the Tradition from Antiquity [i]or[/i] part of to the other the Renaissance (1997), she provided a long-overdue account of by what mode female rhetoricians have been exclud from, or silenced through both the conceptual foundations and canonical boundaries of the rhetorical tradition. Glenn's Unspoken shares with her previous work the conviction that to investigate the rhetorical function of silence in institutional histories and arrangements is to denude their constitutive, if frequently unstated, power dynamics. If Rhetoric Retold chronicled the historical exclusion of women's voices from the rhetorical canon, Unspoken demonstrates in what way the affirmation of silence as a rhetorical medium provides an apt hermeneutic with which to analyze the contemporary politics of speaking, not speaking, and being unable to do for a like reason Readers of this engaging and provocative research therefore, will be rewarded not only with an analysis of the rhetorical forms and functions of silence, on the other hand with a revised and enriched understanding of the end and nature of rhetoric itself.

In chapter 1 "Defining Silence," Glenn provides a richly suggestive synopsis of the many ways in which single may define and lend value to the phenomenon of silence. Despite the fact that "speaking or speaking without continues to signal power, liberation, tillage or civilization itself," Glenn fights that silence "reveals speech at the same time that it enacts its be in possession of sometimes complementary rhetoric" (3). Silence, she remarks "is the only phenomenon"-more with equal reason than speech-"that is always at our disposal" (5) level as a putative absence, then, it palpably encompasss and perforates speech, part of "a natural dynamism of meaning making" (4) It organizes linguistic meaning contrastively or it communicates tacitly of its possess accord. Silences travel along divergent vectors and fulfill myriad rhetorical functions: they may be wait fored or unexpected (11); chosen or imposed, conscious or unconscious (13-14); psycholinguistic, interactive, or sociocultural (15) upon Glenn's reading, this diversity of tacit expression warrants a dramatic revision of the actual parameters of rhetoric as defined by means of Aristotle's famous model: noting that "rhetoric and dialectic are the one and the other spoken arts, closely allied," she argues that "the genuine counterpart of verbal rhetoric can sole be the nonverbal-silence" (13).

Chapter 2 "Engendering Silence," delineates manifestations of silence in contemporary socio-cultural politics and institutional power relations. Glenn accordingly emphasizes that "uses of silence-just like speech-are gendered" (22) insofar as they have thus often proven ingredient to the maintenance of sex restrictions and forms of subordination. upon her reading, the common coincidence of silence, sex and asymmetrical social or political standing is an incipient simple body of rhetoric as well as Western tillage broadly construed: "'Athenian' meant male citizen," she notes. "[T]here was no word for female citizen. . . Since antiquity, then, greatest in quantity women and many men have been automatically disqualified from the public sphere of articulate utterance as well as from positions of command and domination. Just as the rhetorical tradition has devalued these nonprestigious race it has devalued the silent rhetorical display" (20) Glenn's treatment of silence and asymmetrical power relations warrants a crucial addendum to the premise that one's subaltern status is reinforced through the imposition of silence, or that silence is genuinely the condition of the disempowered. "[S]ilence," she asserts, "also enacts puissance and power, ideas that make immediate faculty of perception to us when we remember our helplessness in the face of someone else's silence" (31) Rhetorically speaking, the willful silence of the superordinate can work for as a potent expression of institutional authority and discipline. Hence, where empowerment or disempowerment is relate toed Glenn instructs us to be mindful that strategic uses of silence step quickly in both directions at one time shaping those complex institutional relations that determine "who speaks, who remains silent, who listens, and what those listeners can do" (23)