Working With Inhibitive and Attentive Silences
المؤلف:
Tara Goldstein
المصدر:
Teaching and Learning in a Multilingual School
الجزء والصفحة:
P72-C4
2025-09-27
280
Working With Inhibitive and Attentive Silences
In an interview about the silences in her classroom, Anne Yee told us that she believes that:
... silence is a signal for lack of trust. It also means insecurity: I don't feel good about my English. I want to hide it, I don't want to hear it, I don't want to be picked on. It requires a lot of courage for me to say something in a language in which I know I have an accent, in which I know that I may not be able to use the right word. I may use it wrong and people may laugh at me. I am not going to show you something that I am not good at.
[Interview, May 27, 1998]
Working with Mrs. Yee's understanding of inhibitive silences as being related to feelings about accents and language use, pedagogy that works toward helping students negotiate silences is pedagogy that asks teachers and students to deconstruct the myths and stereotypes they hold about accents and different varieties of English. Some excellent work in this area has been undertaken by American linguist Rosina Lippi-Green. In her book, English with an Accent: Language, Ideology and Discrimination in the United States, Lippi-Green discusses the way linguistic discrimination manifests itself in the classroom, the court, the media, and corporate culture.1 Of particular interest to teachers in multilingual schools is Lippi-Green's examination of how the notions of "nonaccent" and "standard language" are really myths used to justify social order and how language ideology affects students. Of additional interest are Lippi-Green's discussions of how the media and the entertainment industry promote linguistic stereotyping and how employers discriminate on the basis of accent. The work that has been undertaken by Lippi-Green could be used to develop a classroom unit on language awareness that aims to engage students in critical analytic skills around issues of language, power, and racism.
Greg Dunn, whose work with mixed linguistic and racial groups, suggested direct teacher intervention as a way of responding to inhibitive silences that emerge in group work:
I think the teacher has to be watching for the dynamics in the various groups and intervene when they see [silence] happening. And go and sort of find out and see what's going on and sometimes maybe talk to the students individually about what's happening. Suggest ways for the group leaders to encourage the students who feel they maybe don't have something to contribute. Have them prepare something, maybe even show it to me ahead of time. Show me what you are going to give your group today so that they have something to contribute and they know that it's okay.
[Interview, May 13, 1998]
The strategy of encouraging students to bring something they have previously prepared for their next group meeting gives the rest of the group members something with which to work. Showing the work to teachers or sympathetic classmates before the group meets for approval or suggestions for improvement challenges the likelihood that students are not going to show group members something "that they are not good at."
Mrs. Yee told us that one of her strategies for a response of "dead silence" to a question she has asked the class is to ask students to talk about the question with a partner for a couple of minutes. When she asks the same question again, the students are able to answer the question with greater ease and she is able to elicit participation from students who were silent the first time. Another one of Mrs. Yee's strategies is calling on students who don't volunteer answers. When Tara suggested that calling on students in this manner may put them in "a bad position," both Mr. Dunn and Mrs. Yee told her that they have used the strategy with success.
Tara: ... I've learnt to call on people who don't speak out because you recognize sometimes they need that space created for them. But when there is no answer, it's just, you feel like you've put somebody in a bad position.
Greg: Yes. And what do you do? 'Cause if you just sort of come off and call on someone else, then they look bad. So how do you handle it? 1 used to say, "It's okay to say if you don't know right now. You can think about it and we'll come back and look at your response later." To give them that option rather than just saying, "You don't know. we'll go to someone else."
[Interview, May 13, 1998]
Tara: ... some teachers feel that they may embarrass the kids. If the kids don't volunteer, they are afraid to call on the kids' 'cause it will be embarrassing.
Anne: I think the first time they may feel embarrassed, and the second, third, fourth, and the fifth, they'll get used to it.
[Interview, May 27 1998]
Victor's understanding of the use of English among Cantonese-speaking peers as "showing off' was associated with Cheung's attentive as well as inhibitive silence. As theorized by Cheung, attentive silence is characterized by acute listening and empathy for others. In that such silence supports important social relationships between Cantonese speakers that can be linked to both academic and social success at school, the practice of choosing silence over English in the classroom can be seen as empowering and enabling as well as inhibitive. Imagining pedagogy that can assist students in negotiating attentive silence is difficult. The practice of attentive silence is rooted in issues of identity, the pursuit of friendship and academic success, and resistance to the linguistic colonialism of English in both Hong Kong and the North American diaspora. Perhaps the most helpful way forward is working toward alleviating the racial tensions that emerge from the practice of attentive silence.
1 See Lippi-Green (1997).
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