When Silence “Speaks” 

In this paper I aim to give an account of the contribution silence can make  in a conversation, focusing exclusively on the case of silence in the face of an observed assertion.  My aim is to establish that there are conditions under which silence can entitle audience members to treat the silent participant as having accepted the assertion.  I aim to do so by appeal to Grice’s Cooperative Principle, together with the claim that silent rejection is uncooperative.  I distinguish my account from one on which silence conversationally implicates acceptance.  After doing so, I offer an account of the defeasibility of the entitlement in question.  Given that the entitlement (to regard another’s silence as indicating acceptance) is generated by the CP, this entitlement is defeated whenever either (i) there are grounds for thinking that the exchange is not cooperative or (ii) there are reasons for audience silence that are stronger than those generated by the CP.  I use this account of defeat to discuss a range of cases (catcalling; pedagogical contexts; power differentials; risks of speaking out; etc.) in which there would be no entitlement to take an audience’s silence as indicating their acceptance.