Silence is Golden: A Pragmatic Analysis of Silence Instances in Bayo Adebowale’s Out of His Mind

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This study considers a pragmatic analysis of silence in Bayo Adebowale’s Out of His Mind with a view to examining their functions and emphasising the fact that silence in conversations, particularly among the Yoruba, is not just used but performs significant functions. The novel was purposively chosen because it has abundant number of silence instances. Speech act theory connected with Johannesen’s (1974) was used for the analysis. Ephratt’s (2008) silence types, namely psychological, interactional and socio-political types are used for the categorization. Twelve of the twenty-three silent instances were randomly selected for analysis. The findings revealed that the psychological type embraces Johannesen’s (1974) functions 1 and 6 that are coded JOH1 which functions to hide thoughts and emotions and JOH6 which is used to think over or process what one has to say so as to avoid using words that will escalate crisis. The findings in the interactional type disagree with Johannesen’ (1974) functions. While that of Johannesen (1974) are used to indicate agreement and approval, their functions here indicate disagreement and disapproval. Our findings in socio-political type agree with Johannese (1974)’s JOH2, 3 and 5. While JOH 2 is used to prevent disclosure or withhold information, JOH3 is used to punish or sanction while JOH5 is used to communicate respect/reverence.