The Play of Silence and Talk in Difficult Conversations about Literary Texts
Date
2021-08-20
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
This inquiry into the visible invisibility of language experience considers how silence may be understood as a generative aspect of difficult conversations about literary texts. Being in silence, being with others in a class discussion setting disrupts the expectation that deep enriching discussions about literature will occur. Hermeneutics begins in disruptions to expectations and familiar understanding so for this inquiry, interpretations of experience are framed by hermeneutic methodological principles. For instructors and students silence disrupts the play of the expected literary studies discourse. Or does it? Can it create the advent of the interrogative, interpretive process of understanding? Can it be eventful? I consulted theoretical perspectives on dialogic pedagogy and spoke with instructors and students about their experiences of silence in literary studies class discussions in higher education. Scholars have noted that literary studies ought to be marked by opportunities for students to engage with difficult topics, in conversation, for students to become competent in literary analysis. That is the curricular context of this inquiry. To interpret what silence means, for instructors and students, is to understand what occurs in understanding and its event. To understand requires positioning and orientation. I can be thrown into silence or choose it. I can be in a shared silence with others or within my solitary meaning of silence. Using the conversation principle of hermeneutic inquiry and the conversation motif of the literary salon, to be in conversation with scholarship, participants, and readers, accompanied by my pauses, interludes, and fermata, I present an understanding of silence’s intentionality to speak of silence’s orientation.
Description
Keywords
Literary studies, dialogic pedagogy, class discussions, silence pedagogy, silence experience, curriculum studies, hermeneutics, interpretive inquiry, higher education, teaching and learning, student experience, instructor experience
Citation
Blackman, G. S. T. (2021). The Play of Silence and Talk in Difficult Conversations about Literary Texts (Doctoral thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca .