Silence in Second Language Learning: A Psychoanalytic Reading (Second Language Acquisition, 6),Used

Excerpt. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Silence in Second Language LearningA Psychoanalytic ReadingBy Colette A. GrangerMultilingual MattersCopyright 2004 Colette A. GrangerAll rights reserved.ISBN: 9781853596988ContentsForeword, vi, Acknowledgements, ix, Silence in Second Language Learning: A Present Absence, 1, 1 Averting the Gaze: Silence in Second Language Acquisition Research, 14, 2 Changing the Subject: Psychoanalytic Theory, Silence and the Self, 40, 3 Looking and Looking Again: Memoirs of Second Language Learning, 64, 4 Reading Between the Lines: Language Learner Diaries, 89, 5 Taking the Hint: Working with Silence, 108, References, 126, Index, 135, CHAPTER 1Averting the Gaze: Silence in Second Language Acquisition ResearchWe live inside the act of discourse. But we should not assume that a verbal matrix is the only one in which the articulations and conduct of the mind are conceivable. There are modes of intellectual and sensuous reality founded not on language ... [and] there are actions of the spirit rooted in silence. It is difficult to speak of these, for how should speech justly convey the shape and vitality of silence?George Steiner The Retreat from the Word, 1970Even silence speaks. Hausa proverbDefining SilenceThe problem of silence in second language acquisition begins with a problem of language itself, specifically a question of meaning: what is silence, and more precisely what is the silent period, within the second language acquisition process? The terms are not as transparent, nor is the question as easily answered, as they at first appear. There are clues within SLA research itself about the elusiveness of the silent period as a subject of study, but second language research has reached no clear consensus on the more specific issue of the meaning of the term silent period, or on the larger question of what actually constitutes silence in the context of second language acquisition. This lack of consensus has the potential to be problematic for, while difference among different researchers is not unusual since research, like much of human endeavour, is an interpretive act to undertake an investigation without setting out what is being investigated would be to flounder immediately. And so I begin this chapter with an exploration of some of the ways in which the silent period is constructed by language acquisition researchers, and some of the problematic aspects of those constructions, followed by an examination of the question of silence writ large in language learning.Like its progeny silent period, the term silence seems at first blush quite unambiguous. Silence in general is simply the absence of sound; in language it is the absence of speech. The silent period must therefore be a span of time where there is no talking. Can it be otherwise? Certainly for some linguists it cannot. However, for others silence is a much less clear concept. Let us examine these conflicting views.It is apparent that a categorically silent period occurs in at least some secondlanguage learners. Kenji Hakuta's (1976) observation of a silent period in a Japanese child learning English, and the autobiography of Richard Rodriguez (1988), in which he recounts his own silent period, are but two documented examples of the occurrence of precisely such a silence. And the anecdote told at the beginning of the introduction to this book narrates a moment at which an utterly silent period ended. Indeed, that first excited shouting, in his new language, of the young newcomer to Toronto and to English, which shattered a previously unbroken silence of several months' duration, appears initially to be an archetypal example of the concept of the silent period. For months that child did not speak at all; then he spoke suddenly, articulately, passionately, and without hesitation. Certainly such a story must fit even the most unyielding definition of silence. Paradigmatic though that example might seem, however, it