Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-8mjnm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-19T04:12:55.167Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

15 - Conclusion: Topographies of the Said and Unsaid

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 June 2019

Amy Jo Murray
Affiliation:
University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Kevin Durrheim
Affiliation:
University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Get access

Summary

The concluding chapter seeks to develop a model of how human talk and action can be simultaneously expressive and repressive, and for understanding how a collective and ideological unsaid may be produced by human action. We draw together the contributions to this book, showing how these identify “signs of silence” and develop an analysis of the unsaid from qualitative studies of social interaction. We use ideas from ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, and discourse analysis to explain how the said and unsaid provide the ground for normative and accountable conduct, which, in turn, provides the foundation for qualitative studies of silence. We exploit the topographical metaphor of a “discursive terrain,” likening human action to paths that emerge to channel conduct along the contours of the said, and which simultaneously constitute the untrodden hinterlands of the unsaid. This “stigmergic” model of discursive action allows us to imagine how to bridge divides that are evident in the chapters of the book and elsewhere: between the conditions and outcomes of action and between discursive and psychoanalytic conceptions of the unsaid.

Type
Chapter
Information
Qualitative Studies of Silence
The Unsaid as Social Action
, pp. 270 - 292
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Billig, M. (1999). Freudian repression: Conversation creating the unconscious. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Billig, M. (2006). A psychoanalytic discursive psychology: From consciousness to unconsciousness. Discourse Studies, 8, 1724.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blumer, H. (1969). Symbolic interactionism: Perspective and method. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Burford-Rice, R., & Augoustinos, M. (2018). “I didn’t mean that: It was just a slip of the tongue”: Racial slips and gaffes in the public arena. British Journal of Social Psychology, 57, 2142.Google Scholar
Butler, J. (1993). Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of “sex.” New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Condor, S., Figgou, L., Abell, J., Gibson, S., & Stevenson, C. (2006). “They’re not racist … ”: Prejudice denial, mitigation and suppression in dialogue. British Journal of Social Psychology, 45, 441462.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Durrheim, K. (2012). Implicit prejudice in mind and interaction. In Dixon, J. & Levine, M. (Eds.), Beyond the prejudice problematic (pp. 179199). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Durrheim, K. (2017). Race trouble and the impossibility of non-racialism. Critical Philosophy of Race, 5, 320338.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Durrheim, K., Quayle, M., & Dixon, J. (2016). The struggle for the nature of “prejudice”: “Prejudice” expression as identity performance. Political Psychology, 37, 1735.Google Scholar
Durrheim, K. Okuyan, M., Twali, M.S., García-Sánchez, W, Pereira, A., Portice, J.S., … & Keil, T. (2018). The interactional functions of racist discourse for mobilizing right-wing populism: The construction of identity and alliance in reactions to UKIP’s Brexit “Breaking Point” campaign. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 28(6) 385405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edwards, D. (1997). Discourse and cognition. London: Sage.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ephratt, M. (2008). The functions of silence. Journal of Pragmatics, 40, 19091938.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and social change. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Foucault, M. (1972). The archeology of knowledge and the discourse on language (A. M. Sheridan Smith, Trans.). New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Foucault, M. (1973). The birth of the clinic: An archaeology of medical perception (A. M. Sheridan Smith, Trans.). London: RoutledgeGoogle Scholar
Frosh, S. (2012). Hauntings: Psychoanalysis and ghostly transmission. American Imago, 69, 241264.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldstone, R. L., & Roberts, M. E. (2006). Self-organized trail systems in groups of humans. Complexity, 11, 4350.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hook, D. (2006). “Pre-discursive” racism. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 16, 207232.Google Scholar
Helbing, D., Schweitzer, F., Keltsch, J., & Molnár, P. (1997). Active walker model for the formation of human and animal trail systems. Physical Review E, 56, 25272539.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Helbing, D., Molnár, P., Farkas, I., & Bolay, K. (2001). Self-organizing pedestrian movement. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 28, 361383.Google Scholar
Heritage, J. (1984). Garfinkel and ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Heylighten, F. (2016). Stigmergy as a universal coordination mechanism I: Definition and components. Cognitive Systems Research, 38, 413.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jaworski, A. (1993). Power of silence: Social and pragmatic perspectives. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Johnson, S. (1818). A dictionary of the English language; in which the words are deduced from their originals; and illustrated in their different significations, by examples from the best writers (Vol. II). London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown.Google Scholar
Laclau, E. (1993). Politics and the limits of modernity. In Docherty, T. (Ed.), Postmodernism: A reader, pp. 329344. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf.Google Scholar
Levine, H. B. (2014). Psychoanalysis and trauma. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 34, 214224.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marsh, L., & Onof, C. (2008). Stigmergic epistemology, stigmergic cognition. Cognitive Systems Research, 9, 136149Google Scholar
Murray, A. J., & Durrheim, K. (2018). “There was much that went unspoken”: Maintaining racial hierarchies in South African paid domestic labour through the unsaid. Ethnic and Racial Studies, doi https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2018.1532096.Google Scholar
Parker, I. (1992). Discourse dynamics: Critical analysis for social and individual psychology. London: RoutledgeGoogle Scholar
Potter, J., & Wetherell, M. (1987). Discourse and social psychology: Beyond attitudes and behaviour. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Rappert, B., & Bauchspies, W. K. (2014). Introducing absence. Social Epistemology, 28, 13.Google Scholar
Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. A., & Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turn taking in conversation. Language, 50, 696735.Google Scholar
Schegloff, E. A. (1992). Repair after next turn: The last structurally provided defense of intersubjectivity in conversation. American Journal of Sociology, 97(5), 12951345.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, E. A. (2007). Sequence organization in interaction: A primer in conversation analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Schlant, E. (1999). The language of silence: West German literature and the Holocaust. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Schröter, M. (2013). Silence and concealment in political discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Schröter, M., & Taylor, C. (2018). Introduction. In Schröter, M. & Taylor, C. (Eds.), Exploring silence and absence in discourse: Empirical approaches (pp. 1–21). London: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shotter, J. (1993). Conversational realities: Constructing life through language. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Stokoe, E. (2015). Identifying and responding to possible -isms in institutional encounters: Alignment, impartiality and the implications for communication training. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 34, 427445.Google Scholar
Times Media Digital (2017, June 9). Never use the “k-word”: HRC. Retrieved from www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2017–06-09-never-ever-use-the-k-word-hrc/Google Scholar
Wetherell, M. (1998). Positioning and interpretative repertoires: Conversation analysis and post-structuralism in dialogue. Discourse & Society, 9, 387412.Google Scholar
Wetherell, M. (2001). Debates in discourse research. In Wetherell, M., Taylor, S., & Yates, S. J. (Eds.), Discourse theory and practice: A reader (pp. 380399). London: Sage.Google Scholar
Whitehead, K. A. (2015). Everyday antiracism in action: Preference organization in responses to racism. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 34, 374389.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whitehead, K. A. (2018). Managing the moral accountability of stereotyping. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 37, 288309. doi:10.1177/0261927X17723679CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical investigations (G.E.M. Anscombe, Trans.). Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Zerubavel, E. (2006). The elephant in the room: Silence and denial in everyday life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×