Silence as a Message Conveying Process: A Hausa-Yorùbá Paradigm
Keywords:
Discourse Analysis, Silence, Discursive Silence, CultureAbstract
Usually, the picture that comes to the human mind at the mention of the word, silence, is absence of sound. This could be linguistically explained as a situation where nothing is uttered. In a way, it may be counted as something out of place when it comes to achieving a communication purpose in discourse as it is believed that speech is central in this regard. Meanwhile, during discourse, apart from speech, several discursive strategies including silence are usually exploited by interlocutors to maximise their communicative competence regardless the language(s) they use. It is not surprising then to identify certain instances in which speakers of Hausa and Yorùbá languages exploit this process to covey messages during linguistic interaction. Precisely, the reality of this is
culture specific and thus hopeful to be meaningful enough for evaluation in actualising discourse analysis objectives especially from a Hausa – Yorùbá perspective using Clair’s (2003) provision as a theoretical framework.
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