Finding the “Sense of the Meeting”: Decision Making Through Silence Among Quakers

Abstract

Decision making through silence may seem counterintuitive. However, many unprogrammed Quakers believe that their deliberative process of finding the “sense of the meeting” in monthly administrative meetings is based in silence. Drawing on the ethnography of communication and cultural discourse theory, this article analyzes recordings of naturally occurring interaction during Quaker meetings for business. Building on research on silence as generative, it argues that, in this context, communal silence plays an active role in decision making through a process understood to take precedence over its outcome. This article contributes to an understanding of the functions of silence in different cultural contexts. The analysis suggests that in the context of Quaker meetings for business, silences serve to prepare participants to take part in decision making and also structure the unfolding of the decision-making process, as participants wait and listen for guidance. The article also explores the situated processes of community formation embodied in these meetings.

Keywords:

• Cultural Discourse Theory
• Decision Making
• Ethnography Of Communication
• Quakers
• Silence

Acknowledgments

This paper is based on a chapter of her doctoral dissertation. The author wishes to thank Donal Carbaugh, Benjamin Bailey, Vernon Cronen, and Elizabeth Krause for their help.

Notes

Terms commonly used by members of the Religious Society of Friends have been placed in quotation marks.

In my transcripts, I drew from the notation developed by Jefferson (1984) in conversation analysis. However, I modified standard transcription styles. My focus was on the content of talk and the pausing and silences in talk.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Elizabeth Molina-Markham

Elizabeth Molina-Markham received her PhD from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.