Adaptation of silence and language: Crossing cultural boundaries

This article introduces silence and language adaptation as a novel concept that provides a framework for examining how individuals mediate intercultural dialogue through nonverbal resources. Inspired by Rampton’s (2017) idea of language crossing and Giles’s (2016) communication adaptation theory, this work defines silence adaptation and language adaptation as conscious or unconscious processes that modulate one's rhythm of conversation, silence, and nonverbal responsiveness to attune it to the recipient's culture. Employing a combinatory approach, the novel notion suggested in this study reveals the subversive experience of behavioural adaptation when it undermines national, ethnocultural, or other temporal demarcations. The study demonstrates that both silence and speech can be expressions of empathy, resistance, or imagination; therefore, it critiques the speech paradigm, which elevates speaking to the level of personal creativity and frequently engages in participation with speech. The paper concludes with a pedagogy that respects the vital line between consideration and responsibility in the classroom. In class, one can anticipate encountering diversity and silence. The work further claims that just as materially embodied persons are constantly situated in a sequence of spatial orientations and bodily postural and outfit options, so are human speakers symbolically embodied in a flow of ‘silence as part of speech,’ which is concealment, presence or absence, acknowledgment or denial, reception or assertion.