Los actos silenciosos en la conversación de los jóvenes españoles: ¿(des)cortesía o “anticortesía”?

Abstract

ResumenEl silencio es un elemento tan complejo y diverso como habitual en la comunicación humana, por lo que debe ser atendido en la investigación pragmática. Para ello, ha de conocerse qué lo motiva y qué funciones cumple en la interacción conversacional. Los estudios sobre cortesía verbal aportan referencias esenciales sobre el fenómeno silencioso asociándolo a la descortesía (Leech, 1983;Brown y Levinson, 1987;Jaworski, 1997;Haverkate, 1994;Sifianou, 1997). Asimismo se ha considerado el silencio como un componente cultural que puede ser interpretado de manera positiva o negativa pero jamás como un elemento vacío (Cestero, 1999;Nakane, 2007).En este trabajo se mostrará que muchos silencios propios de la conversación en español no constituyen actos que dañen la imagen del interlocutor, sino que son simples estrategias comunicativas intencionales que pueden, en algunos contextos, relacionarse con la anticortesía (Zimmermann, 2003). Para demostrarlo, se presentará: 1) una taxonomía de las funciones pragmáticas del silencio en la conversación informal en español; 2) una escala de (des)cortesía a partir de aspectos como las duración del silencio y el coste/beneficio que tiene este para hablante y destinatario; y 3) la relación entre silencio y "anticortesía".PALABRAS CLAVE: Silencio, Pragmática, (Des)cortesía, Anticortesía, Conversación espontánea. AbstractAs a complex, diverse but also very common element in human communication, silence needs to be investigated by Pragmatics. In order to understand the phenomenon, we have to know what motivates silence and what functions it accomplishes during conversational interaction. The studies in Politeness have provided essential references on the silent phenomenon, often associating it to impoliteness (Leech, 1983;Brown y Levinson, 1987;Jaworski, 1997;Haverkate, 1994;Sifianou, 1997). Silence is also regarded as a cultural component that can be interpreted in a positive or negative way, but never as an empty element (Cestero, 1999;Nakane, 2007).In this paper it will be shown that many silences in Spanish conversation are not Face Threatening Acts, but elements acting as intentional communication strategies that might, in some contexts, interact with Anti politeness (Zimmermann, 2003). To demonstrate this thesis, we will present: 1) a pragmatic taxonomy of silence's functions in Spanish informal conversation; 2) a scale of impoliteness including aspects such as the duration of silence and the cost/benefit both for speaker and addressee; and 3) the relationship between silence and Anti politeness.

The Use of Silence in Conversation among Women in Spanish: An Expression of Feminine Conversational Style?

“…Analyzing a specific community of practice, young university women from Mallorca talking with friends in informal situations, has allowed us to better explain the behavior of the informants. The choice of the sample is based on the fact that recent studies have interpreted speech absences in communicative exchanges among some groups of Spanish young men and women as a habitual communicative resource in their conversations with other young friends, identifying them socially, allowing them to create complicity or affiliations, and strengthening ties with members of their group, as it differentiates them from other groups or communities of practice without harming their social image (Camargo-Fernández and Méndez-Guerrero 2013b;Méndez-Guerrero 2015b, 2017. The concept of a community of practice has been used in this work as conceived by Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (2003), that is, as a group of people who come together around a common commitment for a purpose, and in the course of this common effort, ways of doing things, ways of speaking, beliefs, values, and power relationships emerge, in other words, practices.…”

“…In this paper, we consider silence not as an omission, but as an action, as a nonverbal sign of a pragmatic character that is consubstantial to conversation and belongs to the paralinguistic system, whose meaning is neither assumed nor taken for granted, but interpreted in the broader context of interaction (Jaworski 1993(Jaworski , 2018Poyatos 1994Poyatos , 2002Kurzon 1997Kurzon , 2018Ephratt 2008Ephratt , 2022Cestero-Mancera 2000Camargo-Fernández and Méndez-Guerrero 2014a;Méndez-Guerrero 2014, 2024. Specifically, following Cestero-Mancera's (2014, p. 142) proposal, we include silence in the group of paralinguistic regulators, along with pauses, and define it as an absence of speech equal to or longer than 1 s that appears in interaction and is used to communicate (Knapp 1980;Poyatos 1994;Cestero-Mancera 1999;Camargo-Fernández and Méndez-Guerrero 2013a;Méndez-Guerrero and Camargo-Fernández 2015;Méndez-Guerrero 2023).…”

“…Since the middle of the last century and from different currents of the analysis of human communication, numerous investigations on silence have highlighted the importance of the cultural, contextual, social, political, anthropological, and psychological factors linked to its production and interpretation (Hall 1959;Basso 1970;Bruneau 1973;Jensen 1973;Sacks et al 1974;Knapp 1980;Tannen and Saville-Troike 1985;Sperber and Wilson 1986;Gal 1989;Castilla del Pino 1992;Gallardo-Paúls 1993;Jaworski 1993;Bilmes 1994;Poyatos 1994;Kurzon 1997;Huckin 2002;Cestero-Mancera 2006;Escandell-Vidal 2006;Nakane 2007;Ephratt 2008;Contreras-Fernández 2008;Wharton 2009;Camargo-Fernández and Méndez-Guerrero 2013a;Schröter 2013;among others).…”

“…The relationship between gender and silence in oral interaction has also been explored from the angles of conversation analysis, ethnography of communication, sociolinguistics, and discourse analysis, highlighting the different meanings and forms of management of turns of speech, interruptions, and silences by men and women, as well as the influence of social and contextual factors on such management (Zimmerman and West 1975;Fishman 1978Fishman , 1980Gal 1989;DeFrancisco 1991;Tannen 1993Tannen , 2005Cestero-Mancera 2000, 2007Bengoechea-Bartolomé 1993García-Mouton 2003;Camargo-Fernández 2010;Camargo-Fernández and Méndez-Guerrero 2013b;Acuña-Ferreira 2009Méndez-Guerrero 2014, 2015b, 2017. In the face of the commonplaces, which are contradictory and variable according to culture, that either women are condemned to silence by men, or that they are incapable of being silent and, therefore, their most valuable attribute is silence, the aforementioned empirical studies have shown a very varied casuistry that is far removed from the clichés regarding the use and functions of silence by women.…”

Estudios de pragmática y traducción

“…Así, no habría una sola forma de expresión (femenina o masculina), sino una serie de estilos más o menos indicativos de diferentes identidades que los hablantes eligen. Estas elecciones se realizan dentro de ciertas posibilidades -dependiendo del contexto sociosituacional-para representar la identidad que desean trasmitir (Bengoechea, 2003;Etxebarria, 2007;Serrano, 2008;Acuña, 2009, Camargo y Méndez, 2013b. Este enfoque de corte construccionista se ha denominado enfoque interactivo o dinámico.…”