Inhabited Silences: In Pursuit of a Muffled Subtext

Abstract

In the conversations in which qualitative researchers engage, silences often occur, particularly when researchers pursue issues of race and culture in education. The author proposes that qualitative researchers not dismiss silence as an omission or absence of empirical materials but rather engage the silences as meaningful and purposeful. To do so, the author attempts to call attention to what has been absent in an analysis of conversations with research participants—namely, silence. Specifically, this text presents a poetic understanding of silence out of which researchers may explore the significance of silences present in the conversations of discourse-based research.