Silence as an Argument in the Reasoning of Social Groups

Basing on the interdisciplinary connections between social anthropology, social epistemology, and theory of argumentation authors consider the latter as a modern trend that induces researchers to focus on the comprehension of the logic and strategy of actions of individuals and social groups and describes practical scenarios for the complex contexts in which agents interact with each other to obtain reliable and probable knowledge. Leaning on the ambivalence of silence as an argument, the specificity of its use is demonstrated in the examples of wedding rituals of various traditions, which made it possible to determine its role in the argumentative schemes of reasonings of groups as social units. Authors proposed to distinguish between an argument to silence and an argument from silence that may serve as the basis for determining the role of silence in the process of implementing an argumentative function.