Talk:Silence

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 20 January 2021 and 3 May 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Sayedalirezaahmadi.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 09:21, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Merger discussion directs here
Oppose merger. This page lists various unrelated dictionary definitions of silence and incorporates a couple sentences without citation. Much of it appears to be written off the top of someone's head with their personal pontification on the broad array of topics. For instance, the legal right to remain silent has nothing to do with the use of silence in musical notation. Etc.
 * Did you know that there is a disambiguation page already set up with a vast number of topics, laid out concisely, and linking to the appropriate pages?

To the extent that it is legitimate to theorize about possible underlying metaphysical connections between these different uses of the word silence in the English language, any such demonstrations woudl be if not original research, certainly original synthesis.
 * The whole point of disambiguation pages is to discourage these kinds of concatenation articles attempting to unite disparate meanings of the term, eg. silence. The appropriate place for that kind of listing is on Wiktionary, not Wikipedia. Sorry to be so blunt, but these mergers might make sense from the perspective of wiki administrators, but they make no sense whatever in terms of the area of expertise which the content providers are most familiar. Please allow those who do the work of writing and know the topic areas configure the categorization cascades. Thank you in advance for your thoughtful consideration and deliberation.

Bard गीता 21:32, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

section heading omitted
"Feelings of loneliness with uncomfortable silence is easier in early life, but most people have roughly the same experience throughout their whole life. Most people often have problems finding words to say, but also many people have no problem finding things to say, and might never have this feeling at all."

Who the hell wrote that? LOL

1926 seems a bit late for South Africa to have had its first casualty list. Sure we don't mean 1916?
 * Yes, thanks for spotting the error. Impi 22:43, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Someone please acknowledge the title of this page as moderately amusing. I cannot be the only person who enjoys cheesy humor. 82.92.119.11 22:45, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

9/11 silences
''The victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks were commemorated by two minutes' silence in the UK, three elsewhere. ''

SNIyer12 changed this to:

The victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks were commemorated by three minutes of silence throughout Europe.

Are you sure about his? Do you have a source? My info came from the Guardian G2 of 5.1.05. If yours cannot be reliably sourced it should probably be reverted. Flapdragon 10:57, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Does the history of silence merely consist of the history of "x minutes of silence"?

"interjectional command"
The wor[l]d itself is often used as an interjectional command for someone (or a group of people) to stop talking to cease any noises.

As an interjection, it is an order for someone, usually the reciever in communication, to cease speech or noise, and it is usually spoken by supervillains, megalomaniacs, and people in authority, like kings or queens.

(etc)

This seems to be the fourth time you've added this sentence or some variant thereof, without any justificaton. Strangely you haven't done the same at order, warning, patience, nonsense, nightmare and a hundred other words that can be used as an interjection or a command.

Remember, Wikipedia is not a dictionary. The article is supposed to tell us something about the subject of silence, rather than explain why people might exclaim "silence!" (which anyway you might think was pretty obvious really).

Given that you're so keen on this sentence, I'm surprised you don't have anything to say to defend it; but since you don't, please don't keep reinstating it. I'm sure we both have better things to do...

Best wishes, Flapdragon 23:59, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

Topic outline for future reference
As usual, the topic is treated here with a strong bias towards the discursive and political. Since silence is a fundament of communication, I think it needs more attention, so I'm posting this (admittedly excessive) suggestion of an outline for a truly encyclopedic treatment:

Physical foundations


 * Sound and its absence
 * physics and acoustics
 * hearing and touch
 * ambience and 'quiet' (relative use of the term)


 * Communication
 * binary codes and analog experience
 * context and relevance
 * systems, constraints, orders of complexity
 * metaphors of silence


 * Rhythm
 * difference
 * continuity and punctuation


 * Language
 * linguistic study of silence
 * framing and sequencing
 * non-verbal discursiveness
 * psycholinguistic silences

Cultural foundations


 * Negotiated silences
 * social constraints
 * kinesics
 * roles
 * emotions
 * symbolic uses


 * Institutions
 * silent spaces
 * ritual
 * authority and submission

Political and personal uses of silence 
 * Cultural difference
 * variations in contextual sensitivity
 * cross-cultural encounters
 * silence is both differentiating and unifying


 * Repression
 * censorship
 * taboo


 * Political resistance strategies
 * refusing participation
 * maintaining integrity through secrecy
 * redefining silence at the margins


 * Regeneration
 * personal retreat
 * quiet design
 * mediation and community
 * heightened sensitivity as ecological awareness


 * Religious and existential inquiry
 * meditation
 * mystical silences, contemplation, solitude
 * art

Disagreements and suggestions welcome. This outline is based on information from Acoustic Communication and Handbook for Acoustic Ecology by Barry Truax, and "Silence in the Contemporary Soundscape" by Wreford Miller (myself), and generally based on work done by the World Soundscape Project. I'll contribute more as soon as I have time (and figure out markup and formatting rules).

Wreford 06:34, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Human effects of silence
I think it would be a good idea to include some info on the effects of prolonged silence on a persons state of mind. It is known that some people find silence uncomfortable, and to the extream, unbarable. Think outside the box 15:45, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

"In labs, animals that have been subject to a total lack of noise have shown signs of [...] death." Lit. lol. I'm removing this until someone finds some evidence. Jameshfisher 11:13, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

''In modern society, especially in the western society, when people are meeting and talking to each other, people often start talking nonsense to skip moments of silence. People seem to have the same feeling all over the world, however silence seems to be much more appreciated in the eastern world (China etc.)''

Etc. Can anyone supply anything to make this less vague and anecdotal? If not it would be better pruned right back to something concrete as it's at risk of spoiling the article. It also duplicates what is said elsewhere about the embarrassing effect of silence in social situations in most (not all) cultures. Flapdragon 13:28, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

The whole "Human effects" section has very simplistic language. Also, I'm fairly certain that it isn't most cultures that avoid silence. I always believed the avoidance of silence to be a Western phenomenon, with the constant need for background music, a television, or small talk. I don't know specifically of any research on this, but I'm sure it would not be hard to find.

Proposed Disambiguation page
"Quiet" redirects here without any mention of the Jazz album Quiet by John Scofield. I propose either a disambiguation for the word quiet or a mention on the top of this page of the album.
 * I've changed the Quiet page to a disambiguation for the Jazz album and Silence. Think outside the box 11:22, 15 May 2007 (UTC) 72.95.213.74 22:05, 30 June 2007 (UTC)James

Repaired vandalism
Replaced the section on music that had been vandalized with a short quote from a relevant wiki article.

58.169.205.201 04:02, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Silence in Social Interaction: Functions, Meanings, and Interpretations
"Silence is noticed through the basic human need of social interaction: communication. Categorized into forms and functions, silence can fall into three distinct sections..." -- already this section is looking pretty vague and poorly expressed. Phrases like "the sociocultural framework of silences in which it can be found through the cultural communicative habits, that is, that communication is formed through cultural norms and that it follows the culturally defined patterns of social interaction" and "a Christian Methodist faith organization" are pretty verbose to say the least. The section also sounds as if it might be original research. If not we could use a reference to what it's taken from. At the moment it doesn't really seem to add anything to the entry and should probably be deleted. It should certainly not be the top section. Flapdragon (talk) 18:59, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Complete silence
The article on american composer John Cage also contains some discussion about his experience and thoughts on "complete silence". In particular, see section Black Mountain, 4′33″. --Marozols (talk) 01:22, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Missing mentions of silence
In case someone can think of a way to fit these in: llywrch (talk) 21:21, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Herman Melville, in his Pierre: or, The Ambiguities, suggests that the voice of God is silence. (Sorry, I can't recall either the page where this is stated, nor the expert who states this.)
 * The conclusion of Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: "What we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence." (Pears/Guinness translation)

Qualities of Silence
I have read about different qualities of spiritual silence - ie it is not all the same but can be more or less dense and texture can vary. Oxford73 (talk) 09:41, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

This is really just Original Synthesis or a verbose Disambig page listing unrelated use of the term
Rests in music have nothing to do with the right to remain silent, in law. Etc. This is best a disambiguation page with separate pages for different universes of thought. IMO.Bard गीता 06:14, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Removal of last paragraph in introduction
I removed the last paragraph from the introduction, as it looked unnecessary. It looked like it was trying to make a strenuous connection between sounds and one's "inner voice" (..."silence" refers to a state in which one is unable to take in meanings, which means that for a person to experience silence, they must have no thought...) as well as restate facts already mentioned earlier (...according to physics however, silence is the lack of "sound"...) and stating the obvious (Deaf people function in a completely silent culture). -Anagogist (talk) 16:24, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
 * As someone with tinnitus, I do not find the fact that deaf people function in a completely silent culture obvious. It is difficult or impossible for me to understand (subjectively) what  complete silence is.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.225.33.104 (talk) 01:01, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

quantitation and objectivity
The article need some numbers (how many decibels is quiet? how common or rare is quiet?) and some discussion of why real quiet (near absence of noise) is rare, desirable, and sometimes attainable. Does society value quiet and if so what does it do to achieve it?Paulhummerman (talk) 21:34, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Train
The picture of a train car has what might be an error in its accompanying text. The text read 'No mobile phones are permitted in designated "quiet carriages" such as this one on a train operated by First Great Western in the UK.' Perhaps it should read, 'The use of mobile phones is not permitted ...."  I doubt that the rule is as strict as the original text says, but not having any  experience or first-hand information with the rail company and its rules, I only raise this as a question rather than act boldly.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.225.33.104 (talk) 00:57, 21 June 2014 (UTC)