CMCstudent, Macherey

"Silences shape all speech, Macherey" says. The sound of spoken and unspoken is language just as the difference of sound and is language. When a person pauses, it means they are moving onto a new sentence, topic, or paragraph. If one asks a question and stops speaking we know that the speaker is expecting us to respond to them. If the speaker asks a question and keeps going with his lecture, we presume it was a rhetorical question. The same idea goes that if I told a joke and there was complete silence after, I would feel really stupid and that my joke was not funny. However, if I told a joke and people immediate responding by laughing, I would feel successful in my joke telling.

Silence can be more valuable than words. Silence can be a good thing and a bad thing because it can be read in so many different ways. For example, when the President leaves a pause after his speech it can be interpreted in many ways. His silence could be to let everyone think about what he just said, let him catch his breath, or maybe he forgot his next line. Depending on social and environmental factors one may perceive silence in a varity of ways

Often silence speaks more strongly than words do. If I asked somebody if I was fat they could try to convince me I wasn’t. However, if when I asked they responded by being silent and not answering me I would be offended. Their saying nothing at all said it all.
Silence or unspokenness is a universal concept although it may signify diverse things in different cultures. One may go anywhere in the world and find silence among people