L’ÉLOQUENCE DU SILENCE: UNE ÉTUDE PSYCHOLINGUISTIQUE DU SILENCE DANS LA COMMUNICATION
THE ELOQUENCE OF SILENCE: A PSYCHOLINGUISTIC STUDY OF SILENCE IN COMMUNICATION

Summary/Abstract: The eloquence of silence ‒ apparent paradox ‒ is transculturally confirmed by the persistence of different phrases and sayings. Excessively valued by means of sayings and of fairy tales, silence only keeps its symbolic authority in the presence of verbal, non-verbal or para-verbal contextual indices; its disconnection from any possible body support, from any pre-existent or subsequent context would actually abolish its value as a message. One could therefore estimate that turning silence into an eloquent, meaningful instance is strictly dependent upon the existence of these indices. The first axiom of communication from the Palo Alto school perspective, « One cannot not communicate », concerns this very fundamental property of intersubjectivity: the simple fact of keeping quiet is correctly decoded by the entourage as a message and not as the absence of a message and it also involves the punitive function of silence and of isolation. Silence underlines or abolishes, according to circumstances, the effect of words and of gestures. The fairy tale euphemises, by resorting to silence and to sleep, the fear of death: the fairy tale characters keep quite or fall asleep for long periods of time in order to elude the evil spells of their existential condition, imposed by third parties (stepmothers, evil fairies, witches, etc.) or, according to Bettelheim, in order to « overcome ambivalences » and « control adolescence ».

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