Proceedings of the 8th World Conference on Qualitative Research

Introduction: Silence can be both uncomfortable and powerful in the context of the qualitative interview. Silence can just as soon be an indication of awkwardness or uncertainty as it can the inherent power dynamic that exists between researcher and participant, or perhaps both simultaneously. Drawing upon recent philosophical and social science discourses on the role of silence, this theoretical paper explores the role of silence in the qualitative interview as a dynamic phenomenon whose understanding is critical to effective qualitative analysis.

Goals and Methods: The author used interview data collected during a recent study, as well as the author’s concurrent reflective notes, to reconstruct the interviews as plays. The author used a poststructural approach (Vannini, 2013), namely the use of dramaturgical structure as a creative analytical and meaning-making practice (Saldaña, 2003). There is an aesthetic interplay between the transcriptions, the author’s reflections, and the implied discourse between the silence and the author’s internal processing which illuminates silence as a dynamic and integral phenomenon in the discourse. Silences are portrayed as stage directions, objects, and dialogue. Through this representation, the author explores how silence emerged in the interviews and troubles the nature of silence as a dialogical construct.

Findings: The author identifies various types of silence which emerged (such as verbal, nonverbal, anticipatory, dramatic, self-expressive, and contemplative) as epistemological and dialogical constructs. Further, the author explores the role dynamics of power incumbent in the action of silence by the researcher or the participant, such as how the researcher’s contemplative silence may be taken as discomfort by the research participant.

Conclusions: Properly notating and analyzing silence are integral to the practice of qualitative data analysis. Researchers should critically reflect upon the central role that silence plays in the data collection process as part of their interpretive process.