talk and silence in the interrogation

ARTICLE

Talk and silence in The Interrogation1

Adam Jaworski, Universky of Wales, Cardiff

Abstract

Talk and silence are two general, analytic categories applied to a pragmatic study of afilmscript Przesltichanie (’The Interrogation’) by Ryszard BugajskL The analysisfollows a frame analytic approach in demonstrating how talk and silence areinterchangeably used as dominant surface linguistic forms across different interactiveframes. It is also shown how talk and silence are part of the metamessage ofinteraction, i.e. how they frame utterances and how they are used to establish thefooting between interactants.Frame analysis is a dynamic framework for the analysis of discourse. Frame shifting

can account for many impediments in communication as well as the negotiation ofparticipants’ multiple goals in discourse. The text of The Interrogation, which islargely centred on conflict between the main character (Tonia) and two interrogatingofficers, lends itself particularly well to such a dynamic analysis.

Keywonds: jrame analysis,- Polish; Pmesluchanie (The Interrogation’); silence; talk

I Iniroduction

Agar (1994) has postulated that miscommunication in intercultural settings isdue to clashes between the interactants’ interpretive frczmes (see also Watanabe,1993). For example, if an American businessman goes to Mexico and in a seriesof brief meetings suggests to his Mexican partners: ’Just have your purchasingagent call our guy when you’ve decided what you want’, he is not likely tosucceed in his trade mission because such an aggressive and directconversational style is not part of the Mexican frame ’doing business’ (see Agar,1994: 228-9 for a more detailed description of this example). The idea ofclashing frames being a source of miscommunication is not entirely new and notrestricted to &dquo;intercultural’ contexts. Tannen and Wallat (1993 [1987]) haveshown that in a paediatric consultation mismatched knowledge schemas(organization of what is known about the social situation, participants, goals andactions) resulted in the shifting of frames which impeded communicationbetween a paediatrician and the mother of a child undergoing examination.Likewise, Coupland et al. (1994) have demonstrated that although the medicalgeriatric interviews they have studied were not characterized by ’perniciousinteractional asymmetry and frame conflict’ (p. 119), the initial stages of theseconsultations abound in ’complex processes of frame negotiation, where doctorsand patients blend their socio-relational and bio-medical priorities’ (p. 94) 2 Suchmanipulations of frames often result in changing the interpersonal dynamicsbetween social actors with the effect of changing patterns of personal

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relationships between them. These changing patterns of alignment have beenreferred to by Goffman (1981 [1979]) as ’footing’.

As all the abovementioned studies suggest, the notions of the ’interactiveframe’, ’knowledge schema’ and ’footing’ prove to be useful analytic concepts inthe study of negotiation of interactants’ goals, possible miscommunication andconflict. In the remaining part of this Introduction I elaborate on the notion offrames and suggest how I will use the technical vocabulary introduced above inthe analysis to follow. In Section 2, I discuss briefly some uses of talk andsilence in communication, and finally, in Section 3, I examine how thecharacters in the text of Ryszard Bugajski’s (1983) film script Przesluchanie(‘The Interrogation’) manipulate these two linguistic forms to manageinterpersonal frames depending on their knowledge schemas, and how talk andsilence affect the participants’ footing.

The notion of the interactive frame has been used by Tannen (1993a [1979]).(See also Tannen and Wallat (1993 [1987]), who build on the work of Bateson(1972), Goffman (1974, 1981 [1979] and others.) Frame is a ’psychologicalconcept’ (Bateson, 1972: 187) which organizes our ’cognitive maps and makesinterpretation possible&dquo;. In organizing these cognitive maps we rely on ourknowledge of what Frake calls ’basic units of interpretive context’ which involvevarious social occasions such as ’weddings, parties, ceremonies, legal cases, etc.’(Frake, 1977: 5). Without reference to different frames in which people interact,we could not interpret or disambiguate each other’s behaviour. For example, aperson waving his or her arm may be stopping a car, greeting a friend, dispellingflies or increasing blood circulation (Goffman, 1974). In order to interpret agiven utterance or instance of behaviour correctly, we must ’know’ what frame itis performed in. This information is available through the reading of variousframing devices (Goffman, 1974; Bauman, 1977; Tannen, 1993a [1979]) whichcan take the form of verbal or non-verbal cues - for example, the lecture framecan be signalled by the lecturer’s saying well or by looking up at the students.The framing device usually forms a part of the communicated message but, as itis used to label the communicative process itself, it also constitutes theutterance’s ’metamessage’ (for discussion see Watzlawick et al., 1967; Tannen,1986). Thus, when we look for ways in which frames are ’made’ and ‘shifted’,we try to identify how participants convey their metamessages through variousverbal and non-verbal cues. In this article, my primary concern is with how suchmetamessages are conveyed through talk and silence. ,

The organization of frames depends on our experience of different cultures,relationships, belief systems, values and goals. In other words, we act and drawinferences about others’ behaviour according to how we comprehend the worldand what we know about it. I will refer to these patterns of knowledge as’knowledge schemas’, and I will demonstrate how the clashes of knowledgeschemas between the characters in The Interrogation lead to the strategicmanipulation of linguistic resources in the interpersonal frames in which thecharacters interact.



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Finally, as the characters engage in the negotiation of meaning (defining andredefining interactive frames through exchange of metamessages), they alsomanage language use for alignment or, put differently, to establish a particular’footing’ between them. Through this dynamic process, which is largelymanaged linguistically, participants co-construct and adjust their relativepositions of power and solidarity (Brown and Gilman, 1960), attitudes rangingfrom empathy to hostility, degrees of cooperativity and recognition of commongoals in interaction. Changes in footing are likely to trigger frame shifting. Forexample, Friedrich (1966) demonstrates how, in Russian, pronominal ’switching’between vy and ty (formal and informal pronouns of address, respectively)between characters in 19th-century novels affects their interpersonal distance(solidarity) and how these switches send also metamessages of frame shifting.For example, when Svidrigailov declares his love for Dunja in Crime andPunishment, he uses respectful vy. However, when Dunja rejects him and tries tofree herself from him by nearly killing him, he desperately reaches out for herlove and tries to bridge the gap between them by addressing her with ty.Eventually, he allows Dunja to leave the room in which he had kept her byforce, and hands her the keys, addresssing her with a distant vy again. In thesame scene, Dunja’s switch from vy to ty in addressing Svidrigailov signals notonly her lack of respect for him (minimizing distance) but also sends ametamessage of terror and contempt.

However, changes in footing are not always synonymous with frame shifting.As Ragan (1990) demonstrates, for example, laughter and verbal play ingynaecological examinations are used to achieve relational goals betweeninteractants in this highly face-threatening situation, but even with joking andlaughter present, the frame of medical examination does not shift to the frame ofplay.

In sum, this article focuses on how talk and silence are used by the charactersin The Interrogation to construct their metamessages, i.e. how they define andredefine interactional frames, especially in situations of participants’ conflictingknowledge schemas, which refers here to the participants’ prior knowledge aboutthe world and their expectations towards each other, their activities andcommunicative goals. I will also examine the interplay between the negotiationof interactional frames and changes in footing between participants.

Although the literary material selected for analysis here is particularlyamenable for the analysis of interpersonal conflict, I am not making any claimsabout how real-life interrogations are conducted. However, I agree with Lakoffand Tannen (1984: 345) that the examination of fictional, literary dialogue’enables us to inspect pragmatic competence - speakers’ abstract knowledge ofwhat is expected of them in discourse’. As far as this study is concerned, I hopeto shed some more light on interactants’ communicative exploitation of whatseems like the most basic contrasting pair of linguistic forms: talk and silence.



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2 Talk and silence

Talk and silence are treated in this article as complementary linguistic items incommunicative behaviour uawocski, 1993). As such, they are said to form partof communicators’ expectations about which of the two items (and their differentforms) is appropriate in a particular interactive frame.

Talk and silence are also assumed to have no predetermined valuation orinherent meaning. As Jensen’s (1973) well-known taxonomy of the functions ofsilence suggests, silence can assume both ’positive’ and ’negative’ aspects offunctions such as linking (bonding vs separation), afj’ecting (healing vswounding), judgemental (assent vs dissent), revelational (learning and self-exploration vs ignorance), activating (thoughtfulness vs mental inactivity).Likewise, Tannen (1993b) argues that in interpersonal relations talk and silencecannot be unanimously linked to the expression and management of power andsolidarity - both linguistic forms can be used to express and maintain differentaspects of these dimensions.

Although speech and silence are decidedly different as far as their fonnal andfunctional properties are concerned, their treatment in this article does notassume any superiority or dominance of one over the other. By doing so, I rejectany view prioritizing talk over silence (or vice versa), as is the case withmarkedness theory.

In his account of speech and silence in terms of markedness theory,Sobkowiak (1997) argues that communicative silence is the pragmaticallymarked member of the opposition silence-speech. His claim is based on theexamination of several markedness criteria: function, distribution, content andform.

(a) Fonn: The only formal dimension for the description of silence is itsduration, which, in principle, makes silence less complex than talk. Thissituates silence as less marked vis-a-vis speech, but the very fact ofsilence’s lack of formal structure rules out linguistic discussion of its‘form at all (just as it may not make sense to talk about the colours ofdarkness or about the humanity of an embryo)’ (Sobkowiak, 1997: 53).

(b) Distribution: Silence appears in a relatively restricted range of pragmaticcontexts, which may also negatively affect its frequency of occurrence.For example, silence is never (or very rarely) used as a first part of anadjacency pair. The number of communicative situations in which silenceis preferred to talk, or in which it is expected globally, is rather low.Silence can only be considered the unmarked or normative due to’markedness reversal’, i.e. in situations which themselves are sociallymarked.

(c) Content: Silence is a non-prototypical method, strategy or device forhuman communication, due to the limited range of communicativefunctions it can perform (see below), the limited number of



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communicative contexts in which it is anticipated, and due to theindeterminacy of its meaning.

(d) Function: Speech is capable of fulfilling all six of the classic Jakobsonian’functions of verbal communication’ (Jakobson, 1960: 357): referential,poetic, phatic, metalingual, emotive and conative. ’Normal’ speech is thusclearly an unmarked entity. Silence, however, is functionally deficient asits referential value is minimal and it is extremely limited in how it canperform the metalingual function.

As far as I do not want to claim that silence is in any way ’equal’ to talk, themarkedness theory approach to the contrasting of talk and silence seems to leadto a rather one-sided negative view of silence as a communicative resource. It isprecisely the advantage of the frame analytic approach to the study of silencewhich allows a more positive, strategic view of silence as a linguistic resourcewhich is complementary to talk.

For example, the rather abstract notions of frame shifting and frameembedding (of the play-within-a-play type) offer a view of social situationswhich is culturally less biased than the notion of markedness reversal. It is asunlikely to find a socially unmarked situation as it is to find a person who speaks’without an accent’. Besides, in some situations, silence may be marked forsome participants but not for others. For example, Jaworski and Sachdev(forthcoming) argue that in the teaching/learning situation in the classroom, talkis unmarked for the teacher while it is marked for the pupils. Conversely, silenceis unmarked for the pupils but marked for the teacher.

In markedness theory, silence is said to be restricted with regard to the rangeof communicative functions it can perform, for example, the metalingual one,due to its limited ability to describe or refer to itself or language in general.However, as I hope to demonstrate in this article, silence can be used to producemetamessages signalling various framing and re-framing processes. In my view,this is a metalingual (metapragmatic) function which silence is perfectly capable,of performing.3

In sum, this article recognizes the communicative limitations of silence incomparison to talk (too complex to venture their analysis here), but as it centreson the interpersonal and metapragmatic domains of language use, rather than,broadly speaking, the propositional or ideational, it will assume analyticequivalence between both forms.

3 The Interrogation ’

The film script of The Interrogation was published in 1983 in the form of anovel, which is written as a diary of its main character, the actress ToniaDziwisz. After one performance in December 1951, at the height of the Stalinistterror in Poland, she is arrested by the secret police. At first, neither her husband



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nor her numerous friends know what has happened to her, and Tonia herself hasno idea why she has been arrested. Eventually, she spends five years in prisonuntil she is released in 1956 (the year which marked a political ’thaw’ followingStalin’s death a few years earlier).4

The screenplay of The Interrogation centres on Tonia’s life in two differentdomains, which are construed here in terms of two dominant frames: the’freedom’ frame and the ‘prison’ frame. The former frame refers to the time priorto Tonia’s arrest and imprisonment. Tonia approaches the freedom frame withher baggage of a rather unhappy, restrictive childhood and the horrors (includingnear-death) of the war. This is her ’knowledge schema’, which prompts herliberated, care-free, disinhibited life-style of work in a cabaret, parties andromance.

In turn, the experience of her regained freedom, personal independence andhappiness provide a basis for the knowledge schema through which sheorganizes her interaction and interpretation of what goes on in the prison frame.Relying on her experience of new-found love, loyalty and freedom, she stands inconflict to the prison frame, which is manifested by her strategic use of talk andsilence and manipulating changes in footing between self and others.

Both dominant frames are multilayered and include several subframes. Thefreedom frame, for example, involves the ’public’ and ’private’ subframes, andthe prison frame involves the ’interrogation’ frame and the ’confinement’subframes. The following analysis discusses how talk and silence are differentlyused as underlying linguistic forms in these frames and subframes, and how theyare manipulated by the characters in their attempts to define and redefineinteractive frames and their mutual alignments (footing).

3.1 7Qlk and silence in the freedom’ frame .

The Interrogation starts with a brief glimpse into Tonia’s life prior to her arrestby the secret police. As has been already stated, after the end of the war (WWII),Tonia’s life is a happy one. She lives a fulfilling life of work, friendship andromance. She marries a poet, Kostek Dziwisz, with whom she shares a bohemianlife-style.

Although the focus of The Interrogation rests primarily on the time spent byTonia in prison, the reader of the script is also informed of her life before thearrest. In the ’public freedom’ frame the dominant form of Tonia’scommunication and alignment with others is talk; the main underlying linguisticfoan in the ’private freedom’ frame is silence.. _

The public, social sphere of Tonia’s life is dominated by acting, the primaryactivities of which are speaking and singing. After the evening performances shetakes part in wild parties with a lot of chatter, joking, singing, and loud outburstsof laughter. Tonia describes her life as ’carefree’ and ’princely’, involving‘masses of friends’ and being ’transient and-frenzied’ (p. 6).



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This depiction of Tonia’s public life is contrasted with the newly acquiredstability of her married life. Kostek is the only close person she has, all herfamily having been killed in the war. Tonia’s private life - being married toKostek - is marked by dominant silence. The minimal talk that Kostek and Toniaengage in is limited to constant reassurances of their love for each other. Their

mutual feelings are expressed more through physical love than discourse, or touse Philips’s (1985) terminology, their communication is largely structuredthrough ’silence’ rather than through talk. Consider the following example:

EXCERPT. I

Nasze wieczory i noce wypelnialy pieszczoty, pocalunki okrzyki rozkoszy,zapewnienia milos‘ci. Zasypialam p6llywa w jego ramionach i budzilam sigjut w polowie nastgpnego razu. Calymi dniami nie wstawalilmy z ldika.dylilmy jak w wif1zieniu. 7ylko Dziunia wsuwala nam przez szparf1 w drzwiachmleko, bulki, jahj1 zvgdlin~. [p. 71Our evenings and nights were full of cuddling, kissing, cries of pleasure anddeclarations of love. I would fall asleep half alive in his arms and wake upmaking love to him again. We did not get up from bed for days, and we livedlike in prison. Only Dziunia passed us some milk, rolls and sausage throughthe slit in the door.

This description of Tonia’s life with Kostek is very brief and, understandably,contains no dialogue. The only talk which is mentioned here amounts to‘declarations of love’ and contrasts sharply with the content-oriented talkrequired of Tonia in the interrogation frame (discussed later). The non-talkbetween Tonia and Kostek can also be described in terms of Jensen’s (1973) .

linkage function of silence in its positive, bonding, intimacy marking use.Interestingly, this excerpt evokes a striking analogy between Tonia’s futureimprisonment and Tonia and Kostek’s voluntary isolation from the outside world.Even their food is brought to them by a friend who acts almost like a prisonguard, although here she seems to be protecting the two lovers from the outsideworld rather than isolating them from it.

3.2 Talk and silence in the prison frameThe central part of the story of The Interrogation revolves around Tonia’scross-examination by two officers: Zawada and Morawski. After a series ofhumiliating cross-examinations about her intimate life, past lovers and marriage,Tonia is confronted with the information that one of the men with whom she hadhad a brief affair - Colonel Olcha - is accused of treasm, spying for westernsuperpowers and sabotage. Tonia is named as the key witness in his trial and is .

to provide the condemning evidence against him. As Olcha’s past ’lover’, she is



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believed to know his secrets, especially those used by him in conspiring towreck the new Communist state of Poland and to start the third world war.

At the end of a long cross-examination where the ’truth’ about Olcha isrevealed to her, Tonia takes time to reflect on what she hears and becomesconvinced that all the accusations against Olcha have been fabricated. Sherealizes that the police need her false testimony against Olcha in order toproceed with his trial. This gives rise to a mismatched schema between Toniaand the interrogators: for her Olcha is a friend to whom she needs to stay loyal.For the interrogators, he is a pawn in the political game they are playing, anecessary victim of a justifiable struggle against foreign imperialism.

The course of action adopted by Tonia in the interrogation frame is the refusalto testify against Olcha. She resorts to silence as a strategy of non-collaboration,and her silence takes several different forms. She either refrains from speakingcompletely, or announces that she would not testify in the way the interrogatorswish her to, or she produces talk which violates the expectations of what she issupposed to say. These types of silence are reminiscent of Bilmes’s (1994)classification of silence into ’conversational silence’ (absence of talk) and’notable silence’ (absence of particular, relevant kind of talk).5 In the formercase, there is no talk at all, for example, when Tonia refuses to answerinterrogators’ questions. In the latter, Tonia violates Grice’s (1975) maxims ofrelevance and quantity (speaking or singing incessantly in order to block off anyquestioning), or produces ’irrelevant talk’ (Jaworski, 1993).

In the following extract, for example, Tonia blatantly refuses to cooperatewith Zawada and announces ’silence’ as a response to his questioning about Olcha:

EXCERPT 2

- Nie mogg pomagaé panu przeciwko niemu. On jest maim przyjactelen4 apan, nawet nie wien4 jak sig nazywa. [p. 41]I cannot help you against him. He is my friend, and you, sir, I don’t evenknow your name.

Tonia adopts her strategic silence by explicitly referring to her knowledgeschema in relation to all the participants concerned. She identifies Olcha as herfriend, and Zawada as stranger (if not enemy) by using a distancing form ofaddress, pan ’sir’, and pointing to a clear lack of social proximity between themmarked by the officer’s absence of prior self-introduction.

This example illustrates how clashing knowledge schemas (assumptions aboutparticipants and communicative goals) lead Tonia and Zawada to adoptingdifferent styles of managing verbal interaction in the prison frame. At this time,Tonia’s knowledge schema is already influenced by her experience of prison lifeand she knows that for her refusal to cooperate she faces harsh consequences.Indeed, Zawada threatens her with severe torture if she refuses to sign her



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’testimony’ against Olcha. However, Tonia remains unmoved and she continuesto smoke a cigarette, which she took out of Zawada’s packet earlier on withouteven asking for his permission. He becomes furious and orders a guard to takeher back to her cell.

EXCERPT 3

’

Nacisnqldzwonek Natychmiast wszed(strainik- - Odpmwa*id.Wolno podeszlam do drzwi. V,5,glqWo, ie pogrd.tki zrobily na mnie wraienie.Zatrzyma.Iam sig w progu.- Chcialabym cos powiedzieé ...- Tak? - spojrzal z nadziejq.Wrdcüam do biurka, rozdusilam zgaslego papierosa w popielniczce:- Do dupy sq te belvedery.Odwrdcüam sie na pigcie i wyszlam. Od dawna nie czulam sig tak wspaniale.[p. 42]He rang the bell. The guard came in at once. - Take her away.I came to the door slowly. It looked like his threats had an impact on me. Istopped in the doorway.- I’d like to say something ...- Yes? - he looked up with hope.I retumed to his desk, and crushed the burnt-out cigarette in the ashtray:- These Belvederes [cigarette brand-name] are fucking lousy.I turned round and left. I had not felt so wonderful for a long time.

In the above excerpt Tonia demonstrates her ultimate defiance of Zawada’sauthority through the employment of what Bilmes (1994) calls ’notable silence’,i.e. absence of relevant, expected talk, the testimony against Olcha. It is notTonia’s conversational silences (long pauses, refusal to talk) which infuriateZawada, but rather her notable silences through which she makes it clear to himthat she is not going to say what is expected of her (clashing schemas ofexpected goals). Her notable silence in Excerpt 3 is especially acute through herannouncement Chcialabym cos powiedziec ... ’I’d like to say something ...’,which initially raises Zawada’s hopes only to be shattered by Tonia’s flippantcomment about his cigarettes Do dupy sq te belwedery ’These Belvederes arefucking lousy.’ Besides, this comment changes Tonia’s alignment with Zawada as itputs her in a one-up position, as a powerful member of the dyad who can passjudgement on Zawada’s taste or his financial constraints to buy better cigarettes.

This type of comment is common between friends in casual talk when theyswitch into teasing in order to reaffirm their solidarity (Straehle, 1993). Thedifference here is that Tonia and Zawada are not friends, and her derisory remarkserves to distance herself from him and to win symbolic power over him,however transient such a victory may be.



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A similar example can be found in a scene with Morawski, in which Toniaopenly defies her oppressor. After Morawski threatens her with torture (which iscuphemized in Excerpt 4 as Kwestia metody ’a question of method’), Toniaridicules and insults him by calling him gn ida ’louse’ and questioning theeffectiveness of his ’methods’:

EXCERPT 4

... Jeszcze sig do was, wHzi odpowiednio nie zabraljmy! Ale i tak powieciewszystko! Nie ma takiego, co by nie powiedzial tego, czego sic od niego dadmTo tylko kwestia metody.- Jakie ty gnida jednx mo2esz mied metody? Zrz ma.lg masz wyohradniqa 2ebymnie do czegokolwik zmusié.- Milczed! Milcze6! [p. 68]

... I can see we haven’t started dealing with you properly! Anyway, you willtell us everything! There’s no one who won’t say what is demanded of him.It’s only a question of method.- Your methods, you louse? Your imagination is too small to force me intoanything.- Silence! Silence!

This offensive and insulting outburst gives Tonia temporary power overMorawski. Again, although the two characters’ relationship is unequal, Tonia’sresort to terms of abuse, accusing Morawski of stupidity Za nuzZ7 maszwyobratnig ’Your imagination is too small’ and calling him offensive names tygnida jedriâ ’you louse’, functions not unlike the competitive verbal exchangesin ritual insults among members of adolescent peer groups (cf. Labov, 1972;Dundes et al., 1972). Following the ritual insults analogy further, Morawskiclearly loses in this exchange, as he can think of nothing better to counterTonia’s verbal attack than, paradoxically, admonishing her to silence.

So far, I have considered the interrogation subframe of the prison frame, inwhich Tonia’s knowledge schema, based on her experiences from the worldoutside the prison and on her positioning of the interrogating officers outside therealm of her allies, resulted in her use of conversational and notable silences(Bilmes, 1994) to manipulate the footing between her and the interrogators andto reframe the interrogation as her own, personal attacks on the interrogators.

In the interrogation frame the prisoner is expected to talk. However, not anytalk will do, which allows Tonia to use notable silence as a strategy to reframethe interrogations. The interrogators want to hear their version of the ’truth’. InExcerpt 4, Morawsld declares: Nie ma takiego, co by nie powkdzw tego, czegosig od niego tada ’There’s no one who won’t say what is demanded of him’. Allother talk is deemed irrelevant or a prisoner’s ‘lie’. This is also why employing



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defiant talk, irrelevant talk or silence is capable not only of breaking theinstitutional norms but also the interactive frame of the interrogation. The three

; excerpts above illustrate how Tonia uses these strategies to break the/ interrogation frame. All the instances of conversational and notable silence (and

unexpected/irrelevant talk) quoted above are used by Tonia as her protectiveshields and tools for breaking the interrogation frame. Silence is particularlyeffective in opposing the interrogators’ coercion and indoctrination. Being aprisoner, Tonia is not free to walk away from the interrogation room. However,she can exit the scene symbolicalty. As Ng and Bradac (1993) argue, thelinguistic manifestation of power is effective only as long as the hearer ispresent. Therefore, the powerless party may oppose the powerful one by ’exiting’the scene. If the physical removal of self is not possible one can do sosymbolically by adopting a ’passive resistance angle’ (Ng and Bradac, 1993: 88):

j looking away, sulking and silence (see also Gilmore, 1985 on silence and sulking’ of school students as a means of challenging the power and authority of teachers)./ Tonia’s silences contrast sharply with the officers’ loud voices. They shout to/ intimidate Tonia and gain control over her. Ng and Bradac (1993) quote Scherer’ (1979) who reports that in the United States passive listeners associate speaker

influence with loudness (whereas in Germany the association is with rapidspeech). Many reporting words in The Interrogah.on explicitly refer to the high

. volume of the officers’ voices: krzyczeé ’shout,’ ryczeé ’roar’ and wrzeszczed’scream’. It is clearly through the high volume of their talk that the officers’authority in The Interrogation is constructed.

As has already been said, institutionally, the interrogation frame ischaracterized for prisoners by imposed talk. They can resist it but this is likely tobring about punishment. Conversely, when prisoners return to their cells after theinterrogation, the imposed norm is that of silence. One form of torture ofprisoners is total lack of physical or mental exercise in the long periods betweeninterrogations. Tonia states that she is ’killed by inactivity’ (p. 31). She receivesno books or newspapers and has nothing to do. Like all other political prisonersshe is denied the right to contact her husband. She must not say her name loudly,and she is beaten when on one occasion she starts to talk to a prisoner whom shepasses in the prison corridor. What happens in the confinement frame is that, likeother prisoners, she is literally and mentally silenced.

Silence is also used by the guards to ignore prisoners and their most basicneeds. When prisoners ask for small favours or changes in the penitentiaryprocedures, the refusal of the guards takes the form of silence, for example:

EXCERPT 5

’

Kopngkm drzwi. W lipie ukazalo siq oko.- Patrzebujemygorqcej herbaty. Tej pani zrobüo sig niedobrze.Lipo zamknglo sig i zapadla cisza. Zdjqlam z kibla pokrywg i zaczglam walie



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ni4 monotonnie w drzwi.- Pmszg pnesmd, mnie jut lepiej - prdhowak uspokoié mnie Mira. [p. 24]

.

I kicked the door. An eye appeared in the peep-hole.- We need hot tea. This lady is sick.The peep-hole was shut and there was silence. I picked up the lid from thetoilet and started to beat it monotonously against the door.- Please, don’t, I feel better already - Mira tried to calm me down.

Tonia’s literal and symbolic silencing (mental inactivity, concealing names,denying contact with other prisoners and with the outside world) in theconfinement frame acts to reduce her to the status of a non-person. In her articleon the silencing of women in the private and public domain, Lakoff (1992) givesa powerful and convincing argument for treating all silencing as politicallymotivated and creating a power imbalance. Consider Lakoff’s argument:

Silencing is always political. To be silent is - literally or figuratively - tohave no voice. To be voiceless is to have no ’say’ in what gets done, whathappens to one, to have no representation.... To be deprived of speech is tobe deprived of humanity itself - in one’s own eyes and in the eyes of others.Speech is the capacity we consider definitely human. Not to speak, then,removes one from the category of human beings, and therefore, for otherhumans, from the ’us’ that we must treat as we would be treated. Todehumanize by depriving of language is to take the first step towardlegitimating unequal treatment. So the silencing of women, in all its forms, ismore than a convenience allowing men to enjoy conversation more: it is thebasic tool by which political inequity is created, reinforced, and made to seeminevitable.

(Lakoff, 1992: 355)

Lakoff’s work deals specifically with the silencing of women but her commentsapply to all politically oppressed and powerless individuals and groups. A fittingexample of a tragic, literal and symbolic (discursive) silencing of politicalopposition is offered by Lavandera (1986) in her article on the formation of’intertextual relationships’ in a series of government texts dealing withdesaparecidos ’missing people’ in Argentina in 1983. The desaparecidos werepolitical opponents of the government who had been known to be detained inprisons and concentration camps, tortured and in most cases executed (theultimate in literal silencing). In 1983 the Argentinian government published adocument (known as the ’Final Document’) in which the military governmentwas to publicly acknowledge for the first time that there were missing people inArgentina. However, through the linguistic manipulation of the main lexicalentries of the text: desaparecidos ’missing people’, termrismo ’terrorism’,represion ’repression’ and subversion ’subversion’, the desaparecidos become



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identified with terrorism and subversive actions. Civilians and the military areidentified in the text as the casualties of the desapamcidos, which allows thegovernment to shun all responsibility for its criminal activities while denying thedesaparecidos the status of victims and imposing a false, dispreferred identity onthem, which resulted in another - discursive - form of their silencing.

In Excerpt 5, Tonia attempts to manage the confinement frame by invokingher schema of dignity and humane concern for others. When she saysPotrzebujemy gorqcej herbaty. Tej pani zmbio si4 niedobrze ’We need hot tea.This lady is sick’ she first asks for a simple, everyday, almost mundanecommodity (tea), which in the context of prison becomes an inaccessible luxury,and she refers to her sick cellmate as pani ‘lady’, which also demonstrates thatthe way she regards her companion (part of her knowledge schema) is derivedfrom the experience of managing interpersonal relations (helping others, caringfor friends, and so on) in the freedom frame.

On the other hand, the silence of the guard in response to Tonia’s plea forhelp reinforces the institutionally sanctioned power of the guard over prisoners.Again, an analogy from gender research on the use of silence may serve as anillustration of how silence is used to re.assert the dominant position of apowerful party. Sattel (1983) argues that the (stereo)typical silence of men in USsociety results from men’s socialization into holding powerful positions.

What better way is there to exercise power than to make it appear that allone’s behavior seems to be the result of unemotional rationality. Beingimpersonal and inexpressive lends to one’s decisions and position an apparentautonomy and ’rightness’. This is a style we quickly recognize in the recenthistory 9f American politics: Nixon guarded the assault to his position by‘stonewalling’ it; Gerald Ford asked us to ’hang out tough and bite the bullet’;while Edmund Muskie was perceived as unfit for the Presidency because hecried in public.

(Sattel, 1983: 120)

The guard’s non-talk in Excerpt 5 also creates an aura of ’apparent autonomyand &dquo;’rightness&dquo; ’ around him. If he responded to Tonia’s request with anythingelse than silence he would either have to admit that his knowledge schema waslike hers (it is necessary to help a sick person), which would have the impossibleeffect of admitting some kind of equity with a prisoner, or he would have toexplicitly demonstrate a conflicting schema in refusing the sick woman any help.

Excerpt 5 demonstrates the imposition and maintenance of silence in theconfinement frame at an institutional level: between prisoners and guards. Thenext extract illustrates how the prisoners are silenced in what might correspondto the private domain in the freedom frame:



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EXCERPT 6

W Wigilie zaczgtam sobie nucié kolgdy Po chwili dotgczyty inne. Strainikzakmolal w drzwi, nakazujqc cisz~. Przerwalys‘my, a gdy sic oddalff,zaczglygmy znowu, jh4 ciszej i tylko we trzy. Zalomotal ponownie. Obiekobiety ucichly i pozostatam sama. Wreszcie otworzyl drzwi i obrzucit mnienajordynarniejszymi wyzwiskami jakie mu przyszly do glowy Zagrozit, 2e naswszystkie tny£Ie§ci wsadzi do karceru. Nie zamierzalam go usluchad, aledostrzeglam strach w oczach innych. Nie spiewalam wiqc ju2 wi~cej.[pp. 14-151On Christmas Eve I started to hum Christmas carols. After a little whileothers joined in. The guard banged on the door ordering silence. We stoppedbut when he walked away we started again; only quieter and only three of us.He banged again. The other two women became quiet and I continued alone.Finally, he opened the door and called me all the most vulgar names thatcame to his mind. He threatened to lock up all the thirty of us in a dark cell. Iwas not going to obey him but I noticed fear in the eyes of the others. I didnot sing any more.

The singing of Christmas carols on Christmas Eve by Tonia and other prisonersis derived from their freedom frame schema of celebrating the festive season.However, they are again threatened and silenced. This instance of silencingimposes yet another taboo on Tonia (invoking the memories and experiences oflife prior to her imprisonment) and renders her inarticulate. Tonia becomes amember of a ’muted group’ of prisoners. Kramarae (1981) borrows the term’muted group’ from Ardener in her discussion of the silencing of women, whichhas taken many forms: ’namelessness, denial, secrets, taboo subjects, erasure,false-naming, non-naming, encoding, omission, veiling, fragmentation and lying’(Rich, 1978: 18, quoted in Kramarae, 1981: 25; see also Kramarae and Houston,1991). Many of these strategies for silencing are present in The Interrogation, inthe attempt of the officers to coerce prisoners into accepting the new status quo,that is, changing the prisoners’ knowledge schemas about the world, politicalviews and values of self-worth and dignity.

The above discussion of Extracts 5 and 6 can be summed up by referringonce again to Lakoff’s (1992) article in which she lists three reasons forsilencing others: (1) to deprive the silenced person of the ability to name anddefine self and environment (both treated by Lakoff as the quintessentiallyhuman property); (2) to deprive the silenced person of the ability to demonstratethe capacity to be and see oneself as a rational being; and (3) to punish forspeaking, or to deter from speaking what must not be said.

Contrast between talk and silence is also important in the prisoners’maintenance of interpersonal relations in the confinement frame. However, heresilence acquires a different meaning from that of the prisoners’ relationship withtheir interrogators and guards.



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As I suggested in section 2, talk establishes the footing of camaraderiebetween Tonia and her friends in the freedom frame. In the confinement frame,the same is achieved through silence. When Tonia first meets her cell-mate andnew friend, Mira, she attempts to create a solidary footing between them byengaging Mira in small talk. However, Tonia’s knowledge schema for buildingrapport in the confinement frame turns out to be inadequate. Consider thefollowing example:

EXCERPT 7

-Jak masz na imig? Ja Tonia.Dlugo mi sie przyglqdala, jakby zastanawiajqc si~, czy mnie oplué, czy rzucidmi sig na szyjq. Wmszcie odpowiedziala troche wyzyi4,ajqco: --Mira Szajned- ale bylo to slabiu§kie, zalosne. Najgorszy psycholog od razu by iviedzia4 testara sie udawaé bezczelnq i niedostgpnil aby uniknqd upokorzen.- Za co cit; zamkn~li?-- A panid?- Mnie? Za to, ie SÜ1 calo walam z kolegq w piqtej klasie. A powaln ic, to niewiem.... Dawno tu jestes?- Pdltora rakt~ [po 231

- What’s your name? Mine’s Tonia.She looked at me for a long time, as if trying to decide whether to spit at meor to throw herself at me and embrace me. Finally she answered, in a mannerwhich was a little too daring: - Mira Szajnert - but it was very weak andpathetic.-7be worst psychologist would have realized right away that she wastrying to pretend to be impudent and inaccessible in order to avoid anyhumiliation.- What did they lock you up for?- And you?- Me? Because I kissed a boy in the fifth form. And seriously, I don’t know.- Have you been here long? - I asked.- A year and a half.

’

Small talk invokes solidarity only outside of the prison walls. Mira’s response toTonia’s display of verbal friendliness is marked by acute silence. This signals aclash of schemas between the two women. Tonia follows her freedom knowledgeschema to establish rapport by engaging in phatic communion (Malinowski,1972 [1923] and avoiding silence (Laver, 1981). Therefore, at first, she interpretsMira’s silence as distancing and hostile, but Mira has been in prison for too longto volunteer talk to a complete stranger. She operates with a prison schema,which dictates mistrust when meeting new people (self-defence againstinformers), especially in not disclosing what goes on in interrogation rooms. Thisis why Mira remains silent about her own cross-examinations:



114

EXCERPT 8

Mirg wzywano przewatnie popoludniami, na bardzo krdtko. 0 co jq pymno -nie chckk powidzied. [p. 31]Mira was usually summoned in the afternoons for short periods. What wasshe asked about? - she did not want to say.

Mira’s pattern of behaviour is reminiscent here of the Western Apaches’refraining from speaking upon ’meeting strangers’ (Basso, 1972). Basso arguesthat in this speech community, when the status of the focal participants is unclearor ambiguous, silence becomes the preferred or dominant form of linguisticbehaviour. Two newly met people will tend to listen to the talk of the other withsomeone he or she already knows, and will observe each other’s behaviour,rather than engage in highly formulaic and ideationally insignificant small talk.Only when participants feel comfortable with each other do they start to addresseach other. In fact, this is what eventually happens between Mira and Tonia. Oneday when Tonia comes back to her cell beaten, exhausted and depressed, withouther usual vigour and talkativeness, confused and unable to understand what ishappening around her, she also becomes withdrawn and sulks:

EXCERPT 9

W celi usiadlam na stoku i zaczglam two wpatrywaé sig w s~cian~. [p. 35]In the cell, I sat on a stool and stared mindlessly at the wall.

Paradoxically, when Tonia falls silent for the first time, Mira initiates aconversation between them:

EXCERPT o

- Tak nie motna. --Na ramieniu poczulam rgkg.We wzroku Miry po raz pierwszy zobaczylam jaw tywy blysk Zwrdcila namnie u wagq dopiero, gdy ja zaczglam milczee. [p. 35]- This cannot be. - I felt her hand on my arm.For the first time in Mira’s look there was a livelier reflex. She paid attentionto me only when I became silent.

In the above excerpt Tonia’s silence renders her as yet another confused,humiliated and vulnerable prisoner. Mira finally accepts Tonia as ’one of us’ andsilence becomes a mark of their shared identity and solidarity of the oppressedvictims of the totalitarian system. This bonding nature of silence is reinforced inthe next excerpt in which Mira continues to console Tonia, and eventually thelatter finds comfort in a long, silent embrace of the former:



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EXCERPT I I

- Nie wolno sic zalamywaé - powledzala cicho.- Sk4d wiesz, te siq zalamalam?-Widzq.Milczn.lys~my dlugo ...Gdy po apelu letalygmyju.1 na pryczach i w calej celi rozlegaly sig

po§wl3ywan k i sapanie, wstalam i 1Ul palcach podeszlam do niej - nagle naprzegubie rgki zacisngla mi siq jej dlorl. Przestraszylam sig - w pienvszejchwili nie zrozumirr~am gestu.Przyciqgn£;la mnie do siebie. Objgb7gmy sig mocno. Trwalysmy tak dlugo, a~ zkorytarza dobiegly krok; zhlitajqcego sig strainika. [pp. 35-6]

- One must not break down - she said quietly.- How do you know that I broke down?- They can see it.We were silent for a long time.[...] IWhen we were lying in bed after the evening roll-call ... I got up and cameup to her. I bent down and kissed her lightly on the cheek. I wanted to goback - suddenly her hand firmly gripped my wrist. I got scared - in the firstinstance I did not understand this gesture. She pulled me closer. We embracedtightly. We remained like this for a long time until we heard the steps of theguard approaching in the corridor.

The silent, solidary bond between Tonia and Mira continues after that night. Asis clear from the next example, this bond gives Tonia the necessary strength tocarry on her struggle for survival in prison. However, her becoming closer toMira does not result in more talk between both women. Unlike in other

culturally determined frames in which persistent talk aimed at finding muchpersonal detail of the conversational partner is a mark of interpersonalinvolvement, e.g. that of a dinner-table conversation in the Jewish New YorkEnglish conversational style (Tannen, 1985), silence remains the dominantvehicle of Tonia and Mira’s involvement. Despite their interpersonal closeness,Tonia still does not know who Mira is or why she is in prison:

EXCERPT 1 ~

o tamtej nocy nie rozmawialygmy, ale powstala migdzy nami jakaSniewidoczna wigi, szczegdlny szyfr - wystarczylo jedno pozornie nieznaczqcestoivo, sposdb pochylenia glowy albo zmrutenia oczu, wyraz twarzy, delikatnyruch dlonio, abygmy w lot chwytaly o co nam chodzi. Moje siedzenie wwigzieniu nabralo sensu - jestem tu. mdwilam sobie, bo jest tu Mira. Nawet

. gdyby chcieli mnie teraz zwolnié, nie moglabym przec14 jej opzdcid. Barrlzo



116

mnie to wewngtrzniepodbudoi4,ato i ukoüo ... W gruncie rzeczy niewiedzialam. kim jest Mira. Starczylo mi to, co robila dla mnie. [pp. 44-5]We never talked about that [first] night but an invisible bond was createdbetween us, and a peculiar code; a small seemingly insignificant word, theway we tilted our heads or closed our eyes, a grimace on the face, delicatehand movement may have all been enough for us to understand each otherinstantly. My stay in prison gained sense - I am here, I told myself - becauseMira is here. Even if they wanted to release me now, I could not leave her.This strengthened me spiritually and calmed me down... As a matter of fact,I did not even know who Mira was. I thought that if she was not telling meabout herself, she had to have important reasons for that. What she was doingfor me was enough.

The silence of both women is clearly that of mutual support, understanding andsolidarity. In the prison frame political prisoners are often forced to talk, to givefalse testimony, to incriminate themselves and others. Thus, for prisoners, silencebecomes a liberating and uniting sign of resistance and rapport with each other.

From a theoretical point of view it is interesting to note that in the prisonframe silence functions as a mark of two extremes along the solidaritydimension. Tonia maintains an intimate silence with Mira but she also uses it asa distancing device with her interrogators (see Excerpt 2). This conceptualizationof silence is reminiscent of Wolfson’s (1988) (bulge) theory which postulatesthat with regard to the dimension of distance between interactants (from intimateto distant), interactants may employ similar linguistic forms at the extreme endsof the continuum. These linguistic forms are usually less elaborate than thosewhich are used with casual acquaintances and friends. For example, apologiesfor relatively small offences tend to be rather brief and formulaic between extremeintimates and strangers, but they are likely to be far more profuse betweenpeople whose distance occupies the position towards the middle of the range.

The reason for this differentiation in the behaviour of intimates and strangerson the one hand and of the casual acquaintances and friends on the other is thatthe relationships at the far ends of the continuum are not in need of constantrenegotiation. They are fixed and stable. Elaborate verbal behaviour is thereforeneeded between people who rely on verbal assurances that their relationships arekept at the accepted level of involvement and independence (see also Holmes,1995). This is probably why silence is often felt to be very awkward betweencasual acquaintances, but not between intimates and strangers. As in Jensen’slinkage function of silence, the intimates feel bonding through silence whilestrangers can use it safely as a separating measure (Saville-Troike, 1985).

Rapport and solidarity between Tonia and Mira are also established throughtalk whose role is to break symbolically the confinement frame. In order to breakaway from their prison life, Tonia tells Mira amusing stories from her past actingcareer. These stories help them pass the time and, in a more important sense,



117

create involvement between Tonia and Mira outside of the confinement frame,however illusocy the linguistic construction of the freedom frame may be.

3.3 Role shi ftlng: Tonia and Kostek

In the section devoted to the freedom frame (3.1), I suggested that silencebetween Tonia and Kostek signified intimacy and bonding, not unlike thatbetween Tonia and Mira in the confinement frame. When Kostek and Tonia meetin prison, months after Tonia’s arrest, their relationship is characterized by adifferent form of silence; silence of distance, hostility and betrayal Oensen’s[1973] ’negative* valuation of the linkage function):

EXCERPT 13

Rozdusj papiemsa butem i zapalü nowego. Nie odchodzü jednak, jakby mialjeszcze co§ do powiedzenia albo liczyl, :te jakimS cudem udowodniq muczamo na bialym. de to wszystko bajki..- No odezwij sig - krzykn4l zniecierpliwiony. - Powiedz co§ wreszcle, dojasnej choleq!Bylam jak sparali1.owana.- Kostek - powiedzialam cicho - Kostek ... - Nic ponad to nie przychodzüomi do glowy. Pnecie4 powinien zmzumied. W tych slowach bylo wszysfko. Aleon nie chclhl zmzumied. PosM£ postal rzucü papierosa I wybiegl. [p. 86]

He crushed a cigarette with his shoe and lit up another one. He did not leaveas if he had something else to tell me or maybe he was hoping that I wouldmiraculously prove all this to be fables.- Well, say something - he shouted impatiently. - Say something goddamit! Ifelt paralysed.- Kostek - I said quietly - Kostek ... Nothing else came to my mind. Heshould understand. Everything was in these words. But he did not want tounderstand. He stood there for a while, dropped his cigarette and ran out.

The above scene follows Kostek’s ’interrogation’ of Tonia about her affairs withother men and his announcement that he has decided to divorce her. Tonia is

unwilling and unable to ’confess’ her affairs, which seem rather insignificantunder the circumstances. Kostek’s decision to divorce her is an act of cowardiceand accords him the status of one of Tonia’s oppressors. She is unable to talk tohim as he now appears a total stranger to her. All that Tonia can say is his nameas if recreating the image of the familiar man. Eventually, in order to avoid openconflict (in which he would easily be identified as the ‘guilty’ party), Kostekresorts to silence and ’runs out’ of the meeting room without saying anything.The strategy of using silence for conflict management has been used in other



118

literary texts (Tannen, 1990), and as Hocker and Wilmot (1995) observe, talkavoidance is one of the strategies for handling situations of interpersonalconflict.

The silence between Tonia and Kostek results from the clash between theframes in which they approach each other. Kostek comes to meet Tonia in theprison frame. His expectation is to treat Tonia as a prisoner ’guilty’ of betrayinghim. He expects her to produce a confession of her affairs which amounts tonothing less than the ’imposed talk’ of her prison interrogations. The only way inwhich Tonia can realign herself to him in this situation is to remain silent. Shestill loves him, however, and when he betrays her personally and politically, shehas no schema for successful communication with him.

This example seems to reinforce the analytic value of frame analysis over,say, markedness theory (see section 2) as it is impossible to unequivocally decidewhether Tonia and Kostek operate in the ’same’ situation or context. In terms of

setting, they are obviously in the prison building, but cognitively they definetheir encounter differently. Their schemas are mismatched as each perceivesthemself as ’victim’ and the other as ’traitor’, and each manages the frame oftheir meeting differently, Tonia through silence and Kostek throughtalk.

3.4 Role reversaL Tonia and Morawski

Two years after her arrest Tonia collapses and is taken to prison hospital. After amiraculous recovery the only person who appears to care for her is Morawski.As the political thaw after Stalin’s death in 1953 progresses, Morawski’s hatredfor Tonia turns to remorse. His confidence in the communist ideology isseriously undermined, his guilt for Tonia’s suffering grows, and he appears to beas lonely as she is having been deserted by Kostek and betrayed by Mira in oneof the cross-examinations.

Of course, Morawski will always remain Tonia’s oppressor and enemy, butthe dialectic of love and hate leads them one night, on Christmas Eve, to makelove in the prison hospital. This brief affair results in the birth of a daughter.Morawski continues his work in the secret police but when his one-time affairwith Tonia and the birth of their child become public knowledge, he facessacking and imprisonment. Eventually, he commits suicide while Tonia and herchild are released from prison in 1956, having survived due to a relaxed prisonregime and parcels from Morawski.

The crucial aspect of the new relationship between Tonia and Morawski isthat before his suicide Morawski writes many letters in which he gives his’testimony’ to Tonia. He tries to understand who he used to be, what was behindthe ideology for which he used to work, and who he has become. Tonia is theonly person who can ’listen’ to him now and through this process they symbolicallychange places: he becomes the defendant testifying in his ’case’ before his



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former victim. Tonia remains silent, but her silence is no longer a mark ofsubordination or defiance of power. It is a judgemental (Jensen, 1973) andpowerful silence through which she asserts her moral righteousness and integrity.

4 Conclusion

This article has demonstrated that talk and silence are useful analytic categoriesin the study of shifting frames in a literary text. The examination of talk andsilence as the underlying linguistic forms in various interactional frames allowsus to articulate better the characters’ alignments and discourse goals. Likewise, itis also possible to argue that talk and silence can be used by speakers (charactersin the film script) strategically to manage interpersonal frames.

According to Bateson ’frames are metacommunicative’ (1972: 188), whichmeans that the linguistic forms framing communication are incorporated into themessages communicated within the frames they create. This dual nature oflinguistic framing devices explains also how talk and silence can be used tocreate and break frames, as well as to contribute to the pragmatic meaningscreated within frames. For example, when (imposed) talk is expected of Tonia inthe interrogation frame and she resorts to silence, this silence performs twointerrelated functions. At the level of the metamessage, it marks Tonia’s defianceand (symbolically) breaks the interrogation frame, and as a part of the messageitself her silence is a rejection of all accusations and a defence of her and herfriend’s innocence.

It is also hoped that this article can make a contribution to a betterunderstanding of the way in which silence works in communication. The aboveanalysis has re-emphasized the communicative importance of silence in itsinterpersonal function as a means of managing social relations betweenparticipants, especially in maintaining extreme distance and intimacy (Jensen’s1973 linkage function). As in many previous studies, silence and silencing havealso been shown here to create and maintain power inequity and oppression,both at the interpersonal and intergroup level. On the other hand, silence cansignal defiance of power by the powerless as refusal to explicitly acknowledgethe oppressive status quo. Finally, I have argued that as a framing device, silenceis capable of performing the metalingual (metapragmatic) function as it encodesa metamessage, or information on how communication is to be interpreted.

Notes

1 I thank Nik Coupland, Geoff Hall, Mick Shorr, Katie Wales and two anonymous reviewers fortheir useful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.._ -.

2 See also Levinson (1992) on shifting activity types, and Coupland and Jaworski (1997) on aI

related view of shifting frames in an audiological consultation.



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3 Elsewhere (Jaworski. 1997) I have also argued that silence’s metalingual (metacommunicative)function can be recognized in the frequent description of various communicative situations withreference to the concept of ’silence’. So the following extract, which reports how Ulster’sgeneral public refuses to give information on who paints political mural in theirneighbourhooct comes from a newspaper story titled ’Ulster’s art of silenee’:

The biggest mural was a~n the house wall of an old chap scraping ice from his doorstep.&dquo;It just appeared there,&dquo; he said. You mean by magic?&dquo;No, I don’t mean anything. I simply don’t know.&dquo; Can you be saying someone did thatenormous painting on your wall and you know nothing about it?&dquo;Whst I’m saying is I don’t want to say anything. Ask somebody else&dquo; (John Edwards,Daily Mail, 1 March 1994).

Although the interviewee does not simply engage in nontalk, his utterance can be interpreted ascontaining a ’notable silenoe’ (Bilmes. 1994), and the title of the article refers to itmetacommunicatively with the phrase ’art of siknt:e’ (my emphasis).

4 Interestingly, there is a story of ’silence’ behind both the film script and filrn The Interrogation.The script was written by Bugajski in 1980. The shooting of the film began in September 1981and the production was finished in February 1982. On 13 December 1981, martial law wasdeclared in Poland and the film was banned from distribution. Although the film was availableon a video cassette in ’underground’ circulation, it was not until 1989 that it was officiallyreleased and then shown on national television a few years later. All the translations of theexcerpts from 7he Intermgation are my own. The numbers in brackets indicate page referencesto the Polish original (Bugajski, 1983).

5 Homes (1994) distinguishes also ’absolute silence’ (awoke of any sound), but this type of silencecontrasts with sound or noise in general, not with talk. and I disregard it in the present analysis.

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Adam Jaworski, Centre for Language and Communication, University of Wales, Cardiff, P.O. Box94, Cardiff CFl 3XB, UK.



talk and silence in the interrogation

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