Page 307 - Handbooks of Applied Linguistics Communication Competence Language and Communication Problems Practical Solutions

Understanding Aboriginal silence in legal contexts 285

14. Understanding Aboriginal silence in
legal contexts 1

Diana Eades

1. Introduction

Speakers may have similar life styles, speak closely related dialects of the same lan-
guage, and yet regularly fail to communicate.
Gumperz and Cook-Gumperz 1982: 13

It is now more than 20 years since Gumperz and Cook-Gumperz drew attention
to the subtle power of dialectal differences in intercultural misunderstandings.
But there is still widespread misrecognition of communication differences be-
tween speakers who have quite similar dialects, but different worldviews, and
different ways of using the same language. This misrecognition can have seri-
ous consequences for participants in intercultural interactions. In this paper we
will consider this issue for Aboriginal English speakers in the Australian crimi-
nal justice system, particularly in lawyer–client interviews and courtroom
examination and cross-examination.
When people speak closely related dialects of the same language, there is
often a tendency to assume that utterances that sound the same must have the
same meaning. But an understanding of the role of cultural context in interpre-
tation, as well as the subtleties of pragmatic meaning, can shed light on how
very similar, and at times identical, forms in related dialects do not necessarily
ˇ
have the same meaning (cf. Zegarac in this volume). A good example involves
the use of silence. Silence sounds the same in any dialect (or language), but it
does not always carry the same meaning.
Ethnographic research with Aboriginal English speakers has found that si-
lence is often a positive and productive feature of many interactions (Eades
1988, 1991; Ngarritjin-Kessaris 1997). People often like to sit in silence with
relatives, friends or acquaintances. This was explained to me many years ago
as ‘one way of getting to know people better’. It can also signal that people
want to take time to think about an important issue. And when people are en-
gaged in information seeking (not necessarily through direct questions, see
Eades 1991), there are often considerable pauses before requested information
is provided. While this research and the focus of the current paper is on
Aboriginal people who speak varieties of English, similar ways of using si-
lence are also reported among Aboriginal speakers of traditional languages
(Walsh 1994).