One of the pieces that has had a strong influence on my own research\u00a0thus far has been Bauman\u2019s (1983) Let Your Words Be Few, Symbolism of\u00a0speaking and silence among seventeenth-century Quakers<\/i>. \u00a0I first\u00a0learned of this work during my first semester as a graduate student at\u00a0the University of Massachusetts Amherst, while serving as a TA for\u00a0Professor Donal Carbaugh. \u00a0During one class early in the semester,\u00a0Professor Carbaugh introduced communication studies of silence to the\u00a0undergraduates, citing the research of Basso and Braithwaite and\u00a0mentioning research on the silent worship of Quakers. \u00a0Having gone to\u00a0an undergraduate school founded by the Religious Society of Friends,\u00a0or Quakers, (Haverford College) I was immediately intrigued. \u00a0Later,\u00a0reading Bauman\u2019s analysis of the communicative practices of early\u00a0Friends from the perspective of the ethnography of communication\u00a0inspired my own dissertation work, an ethnography of the communication\u00a0of a present-day Quaker meeting. \u00a0In the process of writing my\u00a0dissertation, I went back to this text many times, each time impressed\u00a0by the subtlety of Bauman’\u0092s analysis of the symbolic vocabulary and\u00a0cultural communicative forms of Friends, which I came to appreciate\u00a0more and more as my own involvement in the community deepened.\u00a0Although many differences exist between the practices of the speech\u00a0communities of early and modern Friends, there are still numerous\u00a0connections and Bauman\u2019s work is an invaluable comparative resource.<\/p>\n

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• What question you are currently trying to explore? How?<\/i><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

  I am still expanding upon my work among Quakers, posing questions\u00a0about the role of silence in decision making and also about processes\u00a0of identity construction and group formation. \u00a0For example, I ask,\u00a0through what communicative processes is community among Friends\u00a0created and reinforced? In particular, I am interested recently in\u00a0narrative practices and in the connection between the cultural\u00a0assumptions underlying the silent listening practiced during meeting\u00a0for worship and the telling of \u201cspiritual journeys\u201d by meeting members\u00a0in other contexts. \u00a0In analyzing recordings of the telling of\u00a0\u201cspiritual journeys,\u201d I pose questions regarding the culturally shaped\u00a0meaningfulness of this sharing for community members in terms of what\u00a0it means to practice Quakerism and be a Quaker.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  What one piece of writing was most inspirational to you as an LSI researcher? One of the pieces that has had a strong influence on my own research\u00a0thus far has been Bauman\u2019s (1983) Let Your Words Be Few, Symbolism of\u00a0speaking and silence among seventeenth-century Quakers. \u00a0I first\u00a0learned of this work during my first semester as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":275,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spotlight"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ncalsi.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ncalsi.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ncalsi.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ncalsi.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ncalsi.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ncalsi.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":695,"href":"https:\/\/www.ncalsi.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506\/revisions\/695"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ncalsi.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ncalsi.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ncalsi.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ncalsi.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}