Silence

Keye & Peele - Text Message Confusion

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This comedy skit, called “Text Message Confusion”, shows the potential pitfalls of non-verbal communication. Text communication can lack tone and lead to confusion. This skit showcases two friends texting back and forth about evening plans. Though they are reading the same messages, the context (the person’s overall mood) for each friend is different. One is relaxed and the other is on edge, leading to two very different interpretations of the same written words.

Posted by Samantha Mackey on June 26, 2017

Tags:
American English;
Silence

The Onion & Women's Speech

The Onion takes a shot at joking about some features commonly criticized about women's speech in this piece. Some things that jump out are the descriptors, "high-pitched, kind of childish-sounding voice", "slower-than-average delivery and tendency to trail off at the end of long sentences" and "inflection that makes it hard to tell if she’s making a statement or asking a question". Another part that struck me was the similarity between the end and Mendoza-Denton's point about silence and gender in the Anita Hill proceedings, "When reached for comment, Kushnick told reporters she was considering going back to her old habit of stoically saying nothing throughout the school day when she was simply judged by others to be a stuck-up bitch". [Published on 10-05-2015]

Posted by Jasmine Huang on October 6, 2015

Tags:
Womens Language;
Silence;
Sexism

Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas Hearings

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A clip from the 1991 confirmation hearing of Supreme Court Justic Clarence Thomas, which shows Senator Arlen Specter questioning Anita Hill. I use this with the reading: Mendoza-Denton, Norma. 1995. "Pregnant Pauses: Silence and Authority in the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas Hearings."