Download PDFManipulative Silences
By intervening on the side of those with less power, the analysis of manipulative silences affords the critique and display of power relations. It indicates an intention behind concealing the truth and the maintenance of said power dynamics. Due to its manipulative and developing nature, this is a tough topic; as Thomas Huckin notes, “manipulative silence is the least linguistically constrained and therefore [the] most difficult type of silence to identify and analyze” (Huckin 348). However, since manipulative silences cannot depend on semantics, “the discourse analyst has fewer formal cues to work with and must compensate with more attention to sociopolitical, cultural and rhetorical factors” (Huckin 353). With this understanding, I am going to look at two historical narratives on individualism to depict what manipulative silences look like. After an analysis of print media, it should be clearer how to identify manipulative silences and their recognizable features.
The first narrative is sourced from the Chicago Defender in the 1920s and the 1930s. With its progressive stance, the Defender consistently highlighted the disadvantages and historical, manipulative silences of individualist norms that harmed marginalized people in Chicago and the Southern region. Conversely, the Chicago Tribune represents a traditional take on the potential benefits of individualism, such as “higher long-run growth than countries with a more collectivist culture,” freedom, and economic prosperity (Gorodnichenko and Roland 1). Consequently, the narratives in historical newspapers will be used to examine how the past has shaped the socio-economic state. These historical narratives highlight that individualism’s continuation depends on the manipulated silences of the marginalized.
Furthermore, the concept of implicature is referred to while discussing truth and intention, specifically that of J.W. Du Bois, which describes “meaning without intention,” (Johnstone 235). The discussion of intention and implicature is grounded in the idea of “‘sincerity’ or ‘truth’ [being] culturally relative and dependent on local ideologies” (236).