A Sociolinguistic Analysis of the Role of Silence in Communication in Nimo Community

Abstract

This study uses the Nimo speech community to conduct a sociolinguistic analysis of the role of silence. The motivation to conduct this study is born out of the fact that the use of silence has traditionally been ignored for its boundary making function, delimiting the beginning and ending of utterances and is perceived in different ways by different people in Nimo speech community. Silence is not merely the absence of sound but it communicates something different according to when and where it takes place in the speech community. The study of silence has not got much concern in Igbo language in general and Nimo speech community in particular. The goals of this study are to explore the Nimo cultural norms, values and beliefs towards silence during conversation. A major significance of this study is that it is in line with the efforts of other linguists in the area of variables that affect speech and is expected to be used to account adequately for linguistics creativity. Austin (1967) speech act theory serves as the foundation for this research. The population for this study was 80 Nimo speech community residents drawn from the four quarters of the village. The methods used to assess data were questionnaires and focus group conversations. A major significant finding of this study is that silence in conversation performs at both illocutionary and prelocutionary levels as well as both negative and positive connotations depending on the context, situation and participants involved. In Nimo speech community, silence is functional and meaningful and has different interpretations in different contexts depending on the relationship between the interlocutors, the context of the situation and the topics. Furthermore, it was also discovered that some positive or negative reactions to silence in conversation in Nimo speech community is psychological. This study to a large extent has enhanced our understanding of roles of silence among speakers of Nimo speech community. Future research may benefit from using a larger population, and involving speakers of some other Nigerian languages.