[silence] Silenceme in Linguistics

[Debaprasad Bandyopadhyay]

  If Linguistics is stipulated, for the time being, as an epistemological discipline for the deployment of algocentric (a discourse that is motivated by metamathematical formalism or computational algorithmic simulation and which ignores the non-algorithmic constitutive “rules”) meta-symbolic order on the symbolic order, one may find a marginal other in Linguistics—an order of non-signs.  For these non-signs, let me introduce a term: “silenceme”, which is at a time a non-sign and a sign and does not have a fixed componential meaning and thus it violates the law of excluded middle. 

A blank parchment with the supposed seal of Caesar, when “read” by  Antony, swayed the commoners (Julius Caesar, 3.2). In Tagore’s play, Post-office, a conspirator, out of fun, sent a blank letter to an “illiterate” boy, who was expecting king’s letter, when he was waiting for death. However, another character altogether differently interpreted that blank letter. This blankness of the white letter, then, was not interpreted as a poisonous fun, but as a “real” remedy for that boy. 

When you were asking me, “What’re you doing?” I said, “Nothing.” This single word, ”nothing” , a supposed minimal “free” (Where lies the essential freedom of word? ) form, is not free at all—“nothing” ’s freedom was pervaded by “other” non-signs, nothingness, the unspoken or something unspeakable, the non-discursive sonority or unintended sounds (as in John Cage’s musical compositions or in Rauschenberg and Robert Ryman’s Minimalist paintings with almost white surfaces.) 

There may be a strategic taxonomy of silenceme: cognitive silenceme, transcendental silenceme (as in case of seeking absolute silence and that is impossible!); Pathological silenceme (as in case of Foreclosure or Psychosis, the symbolic order is totally or partially rejected [instead of being repressed]; one’s Language Acquisition Device is not working  due to the outside threat and violence); Creative silenceme ( as practiced by some Buddhists by non-internalizing the outside threat and violence.); Silenceme of conspiracy (the phrase “conspiracy of silence” was often used by Marx and Engels)  etc.   Thus, spoke Sartre: being silent does not entail that I am refusing to speak but it is a mode  of keeping  on speaking (What is Literature). 

What will we, the linguist community,  do with such so-called ambiguous category?  In Linguistics, what will be our agenda now? May we take Wittgenstein or John Cage seriously? Alternatively, we may ignore the silent marginal “other” space in Linguistics: the silenceme!  
 
DEBAPRASAD BANDYOPADHYAY
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://list.mail.virginia.edu/pipermail/silence/attachments/20060725/063c2764/attachment.html