2 - The Presence of Silence in Second Language Acquisition

Summary

The chapter highlights that the relationship between silence and output remains insignificant in SLA discourse. That is, little is known about how pre-verbal messages are processed in the mind. Pre-verbal messages are part of the conceptualisation stage of language processing, which precedes the formulation and articulation of speech production. The author argues that although SLA researchers have looked extensively into the quality of speech and are highly competent in identifying the complexity of both meaningful and meaningless verbal output, when it comes to silence, our sophisticated expertise is confronted by new challenges. The discussion identifies the presence of silence in second language acquisition by looking beyond the initial silent period to examine various scholarly attitudes towards the role of silence in SLA works and to point out the gap in SLA research on silence. After explaining the reason why the discourse on SLA does not share views on silence, the chapter argues that not all types of silence benefit L2 development and that some kinds of silence facilitate SLA while others may not.