Understanding Silence and Reticence: Ways of Participating in Second Language Acquisition

This is an important and original book which deserves wide attention. For one thing, it deals with a subject which is all-pervasive but little acknowledged: a kind of elephant in the room both of second language acquisition (SLA) research and ELT practice. The whole thrust of most SLA research is towards analysing what people say, not what they do not say, as they acquire another language. And the current communicative teaching paradigm is based on the centrality of verbal interaction, not on the silences which, in fact, occupy large tracts of time between what we choose to say and not to say. What is more, in the western tradition at least, silence has acquired almost exclusively negative connotations; all too often it is regarded as some kind of pathological deficiency or as an act of resistance, or the result of demotivating teaching. The more positive benefits of silence have rarely been acknowledged.