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Book review: Nguyet Nhu Le and Grace Qiao Zhang, Vague Language, Elasticity Theory and the Use of ‘Some‘: A Comparative Study of L1 and L2 Speakers in Educational Settings

In Chapter 15, the editors conclude the volume by proposing a topography of the said and the unsaid, where the individual’s actions are shaped by and shaping the landscape via participant-administered accountability. The collection presents a rich compendium of perspectives, methods and approaches of studying silence. Specially, Chapters 1–4 and 7 offer various signs of silence, which are entry points to linguistic analysis. The book covers analyses of wide-ranging topics in public, and especially in private spaces, including whistleblowers, paid domestic labor, gendered narratives and trauma survivors, which definitely broaden the boundary of research on silence. While quantitative studies on silence struggle for objectiveness (see Schröter and Taylor 2018), most studies in this collection intend to be subjective and reflective, showing the authors’ empathy overtly which greatly reduces the risks of reproducing repression. Instead of going with a rigid presentation format, chapters in this volume are diverse in style and it may take patience when some of them meander. In brief, the volume further increases the momentum of an exciting turn to silence and constitutes a valuable reference for researchers including sociolinguists, (critical) discourse analysts, conversation analysts, ethnographers as well as psychologists.