Teets, Macherey

"By speech, silence becomes the centre and principle of expression, its vanishing point. Speech eventually has nothing more to tell us: we investigate the silence, for it is the silence that is doing the speaking" (Page 17). In American society today, people want to know what is going on at all times. It seems to me that people are afraid of silence, or a lack of words. Silence makes people uncomfortable, whether it is brief or for a long period of time. There are some things in life that "words can't even express..." Silence fills the void in those situations.

Silence can represent many things; fear, anger, stupidity, etc. Regardless, it is an interesting topic of study. Similar to silence are implications. In text there is always an explicit meaning; that which is clearly stated. However, in most cases there is also an implicit meaning. "Either all around or in its wake the explicit requires the implicit: for in order to say anything, there are other things which must not be said" (Page 17). A song with esoteric lyrics is a great example of the relationship between explicit and implicit. The lyrics literally say something, but the deeper meaning is a bit more ambiguous. The listener can try to understand the implications of the song, but often times the lyricist is the only one who understands.

Thought requires speech, but speech also requires thought. I see a parallel between thought<>speech and implicit<>explicit. Both connections can go either way. In my opinion, an author has some sort of motive for writing a story, poem, song, etc. The author conveys his message in a certain way, which can be understood explicitly. However, because the piece came from the thoughts of one person, readers will imply different things. I guess what i got from this article is that words aren't enough to express a feeling or an idea. Sometimes silence is the key, while other times it is implications that are the key.