Speaking silence: The social construction of silencein autobiographical and cultural narratives

Robyn Fivush

Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA

Voice and silence are socially constructed in conversational interactions between speakers and listenersthat are influenced by canonical cultural narratives which define lives and selves. Arguing from feministand sociocultural theories, I make a distinction between being silenced and being silent; when beingsilenced is contrasted with voice, it is conceptualised as imposed, and it signifies a loss of power and self.But silence can also be conceptualised as being silent, a shared understanding that need not be voiced.More specifically, culturally dominant narratives provide for shared understandings that can remainsilent; deviations from the norm call for voice, and thus in this case silence is power and voice expressesloss of power. At both the cultural and the individual level, there are tensions between culturallydominant and prescriptive narratives and narratives of resistance and deviation, leading to an ongoingdialectic between voice and silence. I end with a discussion of why, ultimately, it matters what is voicedand what is silenced for memory, identity and well-being.

Keywords: Memory; Autobiography; Voice and Silence.

To a large extent, we are the stories we tell aboutourselves (Bruner, 1990; McAdams, 2001). As wenarrate experienced events to ourselves and toothers, we simultaneously create structure andmeaning in our lives (Fivush, 2008; McLean,Pasupathi, & Pals, 2007). Through autobiographi-cal narratives rich with explanatory and evalua-tive frameworks that weave together people,places, and events imbued with psychologicalstates, intentions, and motivations, we createstories that define who we are in time and placeand in relation to others. But what about what isnot said? Narrating our experiences by verydefinition implies a process of editing and select-ing, voicing some aspects of what occurred and

therefore silencing other aspects. How does voiceinform silence and, just as important, how doessilence inform voice? As Jean Braham (1995,p. 45) states, We see the past . . . in something ofthe same way we see a Henry Moore sculpture.The holes define the shape. What is leftrepressed, or what cannot be uttered, is often assignificant to the whole shape of the life as what issaid.

In this paper I provide a framework for a morenuanced understanding of voice and silence.More specifically, I make a distinction betweenbeing silenced and being silent; when beingsilenced is contrasted with voice, it is conceptua-lised as imposed, and it signifies a loss of power

# 2009 Psychology Press, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business

Address correspondence to: Robyn Fivush, Department of Psychology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA. E-mail:

psyrf@emory.edu

Parts of this paper were presented at the biennial meetings of the Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition in July

2007, and many people have helped me think through the ideas expressed here, including David Pillemer, William Hirst, Monisha

Pasupathi, Kate McLean, Tillman Habermas, and the members of my ongoing research reading group, especially Regina Pyke,

Widaad Zaman, Theo Waters, Joanne Deocampo, and Marina Larkina*although, of course, any errors or inconsistencies areentirely my own. This paper was written in part as a contribution to an interdisciplinary project on The Pursuit of Happiness

established by the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University and supported by a grant from the John Templeton

Foundation.

MEMORY, 2010, 18 (2), 8898

http://www.psypress.com/memory DOI:10.1080/09658210903029404

and self. But silence can also be conceptualisedas being silent, a shared understanding that neednot be voiced, and in this sense silence can be aform of power, and the need to speak, to voice,represents a loss of power.

In developing these arguments I posit thatboth voice and silence are socially constructed inconversational interactions between speakers andlisteners, in which voice and silence are nego-tiated, imposed, contested, and provided. Further,these local conversational interactions must beunderstood within cultural frameworks that de-fine the shape of a life. Cultures provide canonicalnarratives that are both normative and prescrip-tive about lives and about selves, and the ways inwhich specific experiences conform or deviatefrom these narratives create spaces for voice andsilence. As we talk about our past in everydayinteractions, what is said and what remains unsaidbetween speakers and listeners helps us form andre-form our personal memories that are the baseof our individual identity.

To place these arguments in context, I firstdescribe autobiographical memory and auto-biographical narratives, and the role that lang-uage plays in intertwining the two. I then turn tofeminist conceptions of power, voice, and silence,and discuss ways in which conceptualisations ofvoice as power and silence as oppression may notbe adequate. In particular, I argue that silence canlead to power through providing the space for thecreation of narratives of resistance and healing.The concept of resistance narratives calls for amore detailed discussion of culturally canonicalnarratives, which I turn to in the third section.I argue that shared narratives provide for sharedunderstanding, which does not necessarily have tobe voiced; rather deviations from the norm call forvoice, and thus, in this case, silence is power andvoice is loss of power. Finally, in the concludingsection I address why, ultimately, voice and silencematter: for memory, for individual identity, and fora sense of well-being in the world.

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NARRATIVES

Obviously, autobiographical memory and autobio-graphical narratives are not the same; memoriesare multi-modal, and include information encodedand stored at multiple levels (e.g., implicit andexplicit, episodic and semantic); recent models ofautobiographical memories suggest that autobio-graphical memories are highly dynamic; each time

a memory is brought to mind, it is reconstructed inthe moment to serve the goals of the currentsituation (see, e.g., Conway & Pleydell-Pearce,2000; Rubin, 2006). Importantly, these reconstruc-tions are based on bits and pieces of accuratelyrecalled information (see Rubin, 1996, for anoverview), but these bits and pieces must beintegrated into a meaningful whole to form anautobiographical memory (as opposed to a frag-ment or an image), and this meaningful wholemost often takes the form of a narrative (Nelson &Fivush, 2004).

Narratives are culturally canonical linguisticforms that modulate the organisation of experi-enced events. Narratives provide a sequentialorganisation that specifies the unfolding of anevent along temporal lines, but even more so,narratives provide an explanatory and evaluativeframework for understanding how and why eventsunfold as they do (Bruner, 1990; Fivush & Haden,1997; Fivush & Nelson, 2006; Labov & Waletzky,1967; Peterson & McCabe, 1994). Narratives movebeyond a simple script or chronology to imbue asequence of actions with causal links that explainwhy one action follows another, and, critically,does so within a folk psychology that interweavesactions in the world with human thoughts, moti-vations, and emotions. Thus a narrative providesan account of what happened that is dense withinterpersonal meaning and evaluation.

Clearly, language is a critical tool for organisingand expressing the past through narratives. Fol-lowing from a sociocultural perspective (Nelson,1996; Vygotsky, 1978), language allows both forsocial transmission of culturally constructed ideasand ideals, and for providing new ways of organis-ing and representing personal experience (Fivush& Nelson, 2004; Nelson & Fivush, 2004). It isthrough language that we share our past, andit is through language that we construct sociallymediated interpretations and evaluations of thepast (Fivush, 2001; Fivush & Nelson, 2006). It is aswe share the past with others through languagethat events of the past take on different meaningsand different evaluations. Thus there is a dialec-tical relation between memory and narrative, inthat the ways in which the past is shared in socialinteraction will change the way in which the past issubsequently understood and remembered by theindividual. Although memories are not simplylinguistically represented, linguistically based nar-ratives become a critical filter through which ourmemories evolve.

SPEAKING SILENCE 89

VOICE AND SILENCE

The role of language as a tool in the formation ofboth autobiographical narratives and evolvingautobiographical memories suggests that howand what is narrated about the past is pivotal forwhat is remembered. Narratives emerge in socialinteractions, in which certain events, and espe-cially certain interpretations and evaluations ofevents, will be validated. Through multiple tell-ings, narratives become accepted (or contested, asI argue in more detail below) evaluative versionsof the past. In this way, narratives take on a moralperspective, explicating not just what happenedand what it means, but what it should mean,essentially getting to the truth of the matter(Freeman, 2007; Sclater, 2003). Thus the questionbecomes: Who has the right to say what reallyhappened?

Feminist theorists of autobiography strugglewith the question of who has the authority toauthor the autobiography by placing argumentsabout voice and silence within concepts of placeand power (Braham, 1995; Fivush, 2000, 2004;Rosser & Miller, 2000; Yoder & Kahn, 1992).Each individual is situated in a particular placein cultural and historical time, in which specificenduring aspects of the individual are valued inparticular ways, e.g., race, gender, class. Being anindividual of a particular race, gender, and classprovides and denies access to particular aspectsof experience (Alcoff & Potter, 1993; Harding,1993). For example, a female in modern indus-trialised society has access to very differentexperiences from a female in a traditional culture200 years ago. Ones place in the world partlydetermines the types of experiences one mighthave and how one might be allowed to commu-nicate these experiences to others (Fivush &Marin, 2007). Thus power emerges from place,and voice emerges from power. Societal roles thatare imbued with power have the opportunityto shape the culturally shared narrative that isboth normative and prescriptive. Culturally cano-nical, or dominant, narratives provide a culturallyshared understanding of the shape of a life andhow a life is to be understood, and in this waycultural narratives provide authority to define aculturally appropriate narrative of a life, and thepower to validate certain narratives over others.From this perspective, power gives voice.

However, power is a relational construct (Yoder& Kahn, 1992); who has power in any given

situation and culture is always in process; poweris negotiated, imposed, taken, and given, andspeakers and listeners navigate voice and silencein an ongoing dialectic in everyday interactions, asI discuss in more detail below. Thus there aremultiple levels of accepted and contested narra-tives that co-exist and mutually influence eachother at all points. The culturally dominant narra-tives provide the most powerful narrative forthe group and this is the narrative that must beconstantly negotiated. Marginalised groups thatmay be silenced at one level by the dominantcultural narrative may develop narratives withinthe group, often called resistance narratives, thatchallenges the explanations and moral imperativesimposed by the dominant narrative, as discussed inmore detail below. Importantly, it may be wholeevents that are contested, or parts of events, orspecific interpretations (Fivush, 2004). Thus voiceand silence must always be conceptualised withinevolving power structures at multiple levels ofsocial organisation, creating multiple narrativesthat may be in tension with each other.

THE MULTIPLE MEANINGS OFSILENCE

In feminist conceptualisations of voice and si-lence, silence is seen as an absence or a gap(Belenky, Clinchey, Goldberg, & Tarule, 1986;Gilligan, 1982; for a review, see Simpson & Lewis,2005; see Fivush, 2004, for a model of voice andsilence as it pertains specifically to autobiographi-cal memory). In the words of E. Annie Proulx,It didnt seem like the kind of story that wouldgather with time, but instead would retract,condense, and turn into one of those things thatnobody talked about, and in a year or so it wouldall be forgotten (1992, p. 21). At its most simple,what is given voice will be recalled and what issilenced will be forgotten. Marginalised experi-ences or oppressed groups are not given cred-ibility and therefore their voices are silenced.

But this is only one, albeit critical, conceptua-lisation of silence, that of being silenced. Silencecan also be conceptualised as quiet, restful,reflective, that of being silent. Silence can be aform of intimacy, being silent together, or a formof privacy, being silent alone. Silence can be aform of respect. One can even be silent in themidst of speaking; by voicing some aspects ofexperience, one may be silencing other aspects ofexperience; talk does not always imply voice.

90 FIVUSH

Moreover, silence can be intentional or uninten-tional, momentary or enduring (for various defi-nitions and typologies of silence, see Elson, 2001;Kurzon, 2007; Scott, 1993). More to the point ofmy arguments here, being silent can also be aform of power; by not speaking one is claimingthat one need not explain or justify. Further,by being silent, one can impose silence on others.Clearly, the construct of silence, and there-fore voice, is multidimensional and needs to beexplicated if it is to serve as an explanatory con-struct in psychological research. Here, I focus ontwo theoretically critical aspects of silence: silenceas imposed, i.e., being silenced, and silence asshared, i.e., the background of shared knowledgeand understanding that need not be voiced.

Silence as imposed: Being silenced

Being silenced is almost always conceptualised asnegative. Examples of this type of silencinginclude the silencing of trauma in general andviolent trauma in particular. For instance, survi-vors of sexual violence are implicitly or explicitlytold not to talk about their experiences, and whenthey do, they are either not believed or belittled,or blamed for what happened1 (Enns, McNeilly,Corkery, & Gilbert, 1995). Similarly, survivors ofhorrific war trauma come home to families thatdo not want to hear their experiences, tell them toforget them, that it would be better not toremember (Shay, 1996). The dominant culturalnarrative cannot absorb these stories; we cannotlive in a world where women are brutalised andbrave soldiers commit atrocities to ensure oursafety. Trauma survivors describe a conspiracy ofsilence where they feel a need to testify to theirexperiences, to make them real and to makethemselves whole again, but society will not letthem speak, leading to a fragmented or shattered

sense of self (Janoff-Bulmen, 1992). As SusanBrison (2002, p. 16) writes of her experiencescoping with a violent rape, . . . its essential totalk about it again and again. Its a way ofremastering the trauma, although it can beretraumatizing when people refuse to listen. Inmy case, each time someone failed to respond Ifelt as if I were alone again in the ravine, dying,screaming. And still no one could hear me. Or,worse, they heard me, but refused to help. Thisconcept of silence is essentially a loss of voice anda loss of power, and can lead to loss of a coherentidentity (Brison, 2002; Janoff-Bulman, 1992).

Silencing occurs at the cultural level forexperiences that do not fit the culturally domi-nant narrative, and it also occurs at the conversa-tional level with specific others who cannot hearwhat the speaker is trying to say. This can take theform of actually silencing, as in not allowing thespeaker to talk, or it can be silencing throughrefusing to believe (Butler, 1999), deliberatelymisunderstanding or re-interpreting the event inways that do not validate the speakers experi-ences (Brison, 2002; Janoff-Bulman, 1992), orsimply by being distracted and inattentive(e.g., Pasupathi, 2001; Pasupathi, Stallworth &Murdoch, 1998). Importantly, when speakers andlisteners accept one version of the story, byfocusing on one set of facts and not speaking ofor listening to another set of facts, the ignoredaspects of the story are subsequently moredifficult to retrieve from memory (Echterhoff,Higgins, & Levine, in press; Cue, Koppel, &Hirst, 2007); thus in the very act of voicingsome aspects of an event and silencing otheraspects, individuals create narratives in whichwhat is voiced becomes privileged in memoryand what is silenced becomes more and moredifficult to recall.

It is also possible for speakers to deliberatelysilence themselves. Sometimes this may be simpleimpression management (Snell, Belk, Flowers,& Warren, 1988). But sometimes this can be adeliberate decision not to share certain experi-ences with others because the speaker thinks thelistener will not understand or care, or becausethe speaker believes the experience is simply toohard to hear. In my own interviews with womenwho had been severely sexually abused by familymembers as children (Fivush & Edwards, 2004),many women began the conversation asking me ifI was sure I wanted to hear their stories, that thestories were hard to hear and there were thingsI may not want to know. These kinds of concerns

1 As discussed in Enns et al. (1995), there is some

controversy over whether sexual violence is still being

silenced in this culture and even some discussion over

whether narratives of sexual abuse are being encouraged in

therapeutic situations and in the media. This obviously relates

to the controversy over recovered and implanted memories,

which is well beyond the scope of this paper. However,

interviews with adult women who were sexually abused as

children by family members continue to indicate that the

majority of these women believe that their experiences are

being silenced within their own families and communities, and

that, if anything, the cultural changes in narratives of sexual

abuse have distorted their personal experiences through

biased characterisations of both victims and perpetrators.

SPEAKING SILENCE 91

indicate the extent to which these women under-stand both that they are being silenced by otherswho cannot bear to hear their stories, as well assilencing themselves in order to maintain socialcontact with others.

Finally, self-silencing can also occur defen-sively, when individuals cannot even tell thesestories to themselves (Elson, 2001). Individualsmay engage in active forgetting of experiencesthat are too painful or disturbing to remember(Brewin, 2003; Freyd, 1996), leading to aninability to voice these experiences even if asympathetic listener was available.2 In the wordsof a survivor of childhood sexual abuse (Fivush &Edwards, 2004, p. 11), Its still hard for me toaccept . . . there are occasions, even, I guess itscalled denial, even knowing all of it. Once in awhile, I mean, it goes through my head, like, oh,you know I must be nuts or Im making all this up.I mean fathers, how could they do this? In thesecases, silencing leads to an inability or unwilling-ness to remember, creating a gap in ones under-standing of the world and of ones self (Janoff-Bulman, 1992).

When silence is imposed, by self or by others, itcan lead to a loss of memory and a loss of part ofthe self. Silence as loss of voice and loss of poweris virtually always seen as negative. In fact, thiskind of silencing can lead to both psychologicaland physical problems. The ability to speak and tobe heard, on the other hand, is associated withpsychological and physical well-being (for reviewssee Frattaroli, 2006; Pennebaker, 1997). Butsilence need not always be imposed; silence canbe shared, and in sharing silence a very differentconceptualisation of silence emerges.

Silence as shared: Being silent

In contrast to being silenced, being silent can havepositive benefits. Here I focus on being silentwith others, where silence is shared*althoughobviously being silent alone can also have positivebenefits, as in meditation or quiet reflection.In social interactions a listener can silence thespeaker through distraction and inattention,

and in this sense, silence can be punitive andjudgemental (Kurzon, 2007). But an attentivealbeit silent listener may be an invitation to speak,and to be heard (Alerby & Elidottir, 2003; Scott,1993). Similarly, when a speaker and listenerare silent together it may signal a breakdownof communication, but it may also be a silentattunement, a sense of simply being together inthe moment, that may actually promote healing(Elson, 2001).

We also see this at the cultural level inmoments of silence to commemorate greatlosses, and the use of sacred spaces to createquiet reflection; these moments bring peopletogether and help create a shared history and anemotional bond (Kurzon, 2007). In these situa-tions, where being silent together creates a sharedspace where the speaker and listener are emo-tionally attuned, silence may promote a sense ofbelonging. Whereas high levels of emotionaldistress may lead to feelings of separation andalienation from others, a sense of difference orotherness (Brison, 2002; Harding. 1993), creat-ing shared silence may promote a sense of pullingtogether, of sharing great emotions, and thus mayfacilitate identification and affiliation with others.

TRANSFORMING SILENCE: CREATINGNARRATIVES OF RESISTANCE

Moments of shared silence can also provide thespace for the creation of a new narrative, anarrative of resistance. When dominant groupsimpose silence on marginalised groups, theseindividuals experience a loss of voice and a lossof power within the dominant culture. But whenmarginalised groups come together, the narra-tives they tell among themselves may beginto take shape. Resistance narratives use thedominant narrative as a starting point, agreeingon many of the main facts, but the subjectiveperspective changes, and the moral stance slipsfrom the dominant to the marginalised narrativeperspective. Recent US resistance narratives thathave over time been able to modulate theculturally dominant narrative include narrativesof the civil rights movement and the second waveof the womens movement. Critically, it is byclaiming the moral truth that resistance narrativesgain their power. Through claiming the authorityto author the narrative, and especially the eva-luative moral stance conveyed in the narrative,resistance narratives can create chinks in the

2 It should be noted that some recent research on

repressive coping styles, in which individuals direct attention

away from highly negative experiences, may actually promote

resilience in the face of adversity (Coifman, Bonnano, Ray, &

Gross, 2007). Thus self-silencing in this sense may provide

some positive benefits.

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dominant narrative and begin to allow for theconstruction of new, more nuanced cultural nar-ratives to emerge.

Marginalised groups that are able to create andmaintain narratives of resistance that providethem with a sense of shared history may be ableto maintain better psychological and physicalhealth than marginalised groups who are unableto create and maintain a resistance narrative. Forexample, Chandler and Proulx (2008) have exam-ined cultural narratives among native tribes innorthwest Canada, and find that adolescents livingin tribes without a shared narrative of their ownhistory have substantially higher suicide rates thanadolescents living in tribes that have maintainedtheir own history in resistance to the culturallydominant narrative. Thus, speaking through si-lence by creating narratives of resistance that areshared among members of a marginalised groupquestions the moral authority of the culturallydominant narrative, and in this way can behealing.

SILENCE AS POWER: LIFE SCRIPTSAND MASTER NARRATIVES

Thus far I have mentioned the idea of culturallydominant narratives but have not yet discussedthem in detail. Cultures provide a shared under-standing of what a life looks like, the types ofexperiences to be expected and the ages at whichthey are most likely to happen. For example,Meyer (1988) argues that modern Western cul-tures divide a life into stages based on educationand work life, with the end of childhood andbeginning of adulthood coinciding with schoolgraduation and the beginning of old age coincid-ing with retirement. Although life stages may beheavily based on biological factors (e.g., puberty,childbearing), cultures modulate these biologicalconsiderations in forming social expectations. Forexample, with the advent of the second wave ofthe womens movement, age of childbirth is now amuch wider culturally acceptable window thanpreviously (Rindfuss, Morgan, & Offatt, 1996).Similarly, with modern life requiring more andmore education in order to become a productivemember of society, adolescence has stretchedout to include ages that were previously consid-ered young adults (18 to 21 years old), and wenow have a category of emerging adulthood todescribe people in their early 20s. All of this is tomake the point that cultures define ages and

stages of a life that impact on how individualsconstruct their own life trajectory.

Within psychology, there is growing evidencethat individuals, at least in modern Westerncultures, share a script or canonical culturalbiography of what a typical life looks like(Berntsen & Rubin, 2004; Berntsen & Bohn, inpress; Habermas & Bluck, 2000). For example,Berntsen and her colleagues have demonstratedthat when asked to list the most important eventsthat any given individual in the culture willexperience and the age at which they will experi-ence that event, there is high agreement acrossresearch participants of different ages, and differ-ent industrialised cultures in identifying the coreevents that define a typical life. Thus the life scriptis a schematised framework shared among mem-bers of a culture for representing a typical lifecommon across individuals.

Moreover, individuals seem to define their ownlife narrative in relation to the cultural life script(Berntsen & Bohn, in press). In constructing asense of ones own life, individuals reference thelife script and compare similarities and differ-ences. Thus the life narrative is the story of theindividual life as it is placed within the cultural lifescript. Further, individual identity is at least partlydefined by the life narrative. Who we are is linkedto the story we tell about ourselves (McAdams,2001). Thus identity is guided by the life narrativeand the life narrative is guided by the life script.As each individual constructs a narrative identitythat defines an individual life story of the self, theyseem to do so in relation to cultural expectationsof what a typical life looks like.

Although life scripts have been postulated tobe normative, describing typical events and ages,they also serve a prescriptive function. It is notsimply that one typically graduates high school atage 18, but that one should graduate high schoolat age 18. It is not simply that one typically getsmarried and begins a career path in ones 20s butthat one should get married and begin a careerpath in ones 20s. Indeed, if one deviates fromthe life script there is a sense in which anexplanation is needed, and this explanation takesthe form of a narrative. Critically, although onemay have narratives of culturally important tran-sitions, such as high school graduation and thebirth of a first child, these narratives arenot explanatory (e.g., Pasupathi, Mansour, &Brubaker, 2007); individuals do not need toengage the listener in constructing a coherentexplanation of why this event occurred. In fact,

SPEAKING SILENCE 93

unless something interesting or surprisinghappened during this event (e.g., tripping andfalling on the way to the graduation podium;spilling the wedding punch on your new in-laws),these stories tend to be flat descriptions, with littlenarrative tension. When the individual violatesexpectations and/or deviates from the life script,an explanatory narrative is necessary, and thisnarrative changes the course of the life from theculturally assumed life script. Thus one need notvoice the canonical but must voice the deviationfrom the canonical. Individuals that conform tothe life script may remain silent, but those thatdeviate must speak.

As argued by Simpson and Lewis (2005), incontrast to liberal feminist theories that positvoice as power, post-structuralist theories positsilence as power; essentially the canonical is theunmarked and therefore does not need to bevoiced. If the canonical is expected, there is noneed to voice it; it is the given, the invisiblebackground of shared understanding. This con-ception of silence is the freedom not to speak, tobe silent, the freedom to assume shared knowl-edge that comes from a position of power. Theneed to speak, to give voice to experience, comesfrom a need to explain, justify, rationalise, con-vince, both others and oneself. From this perspec-tive, when power gives voice, silence is oppressive,but when power gives silence, voice is justification.

Master narratives

Whereas life scripts provide a series of normativeand prescriptive events, master narratives provideculturally shared evaluative frameworks (Thorne& McLean, 2003). Narratives are empowering, inthat narratives move beyond description to pro-vide an evaluative framework that carries moraljustification. Master narratives are essentiallycultural myths and motifs that provide a moral,ethical, and affective framework for understand-ing events. A classic master narrative in Americanculture is the Horatio Alger story of a youngpoor immigrant boy who worked his way fromrags to riches. This story is a morality tale aboutovercoming adversity, pulling oneself up by thebootstraps, working hard and ultimately achievingmaterial success. It is the American Dream.

McAdams (2006) has identified a master nar-rative that is pervasive in American culture, theredemption narrative. In this narrative the indivi-dual, often from an early place of privilege, faces

some significant adversity, and by facing andovercoming this adversity becomes a betterperson. It is a survivor narrative. Master narrativesmay also be gendered. Thorne and McLean (2003)found that males were more likely to tell JohnWayne narratives, in which the narrator over-comes adversity through individual strengths,whereas females are more likely to tell FlorenceNightingale narratives, where the narrator suc-ceeds through helping others. These narrativemotifs provide templates for the explanatorynarratives that are necessary when individualsdeviate from the life script.

Critically, master narratives provide more thanexplanations; they provide the moral and ethicalguidelines of how a life should be lived (Freeman,2007). In addition to the prescriptive events of alife script, which can be said to define a goodlife, master narratives provide the frameworkfor defining a moral life. A redemptive narra-tive goes beyond describing how adversity led tosuccess by describing how the individual hasbecome a better person, more prosocial, moremoral, more ethical, more appreciative of life,through the very act of facing and conqueringadversity, which is itself a moral imperative: Wemust be strong and overcome.

In summary, life scripts provide the form ofa typical and prescribed life. This is shared cult-ural knowledge and therefore may remain silent.However, when individuals deviate from thisscript, they must provide an explanatory narrative,and this narrative will be influenced by the typesof cultural master narratives available that pro-vide a moral and evaluative explanation of devia-tion. Thus a life narrative must explain why onedid not complete an education, why one did notmarry and have children, why one did not pursue aproductive career path; one does not have to havea story of why one did complete school, marry andhave children, work productively. The deviation isgiven voice, but the typical life script is silent. Notethat life scripts are not silenced; any individualmember of a given culture can provide the script.Rather it is that the life script is the assumed,silent canonical background, the shared culturalknowledge, against which the narrative is told. Asassumed shared knowledge it is simply not voiced.Deviations from the canonical require explana-tory narratives, which themselves can becomemorality tales and templates for others. Thuswhat must be voiced and what must be silencedare in constant tension, as normative, descriptive,and moral cultural narratives evolve.

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Scripts within scripts; narratives withinnarratives

Following from these arguments, life scripts be-come layered; there is the overarching cultural lifescript, e.g., the American life script, but embeddedwithin this are scripts for sub-groups, includingracial groups (the African-American life script isdifferent from the Euro-American life script),gender, ethnic minorities, immigrant groups, chil-dren of the 60s, and on and on. Each of thesegroups develops its own life scripts in relation tosimilarities and deviations from the overarchingcultural scripts. The points of similarity define usall as Americans and the points of deviationdefine the identity of the specific group. Withinthese cultural groups are families, who also havetheir canonical life scripts, and that are commu-nicated through the generations through mythictales of family members (Fivush, Bohanek, &Duke, 2008). Individuals are simultaneously mem-bers of multiple groups (and families as we movein and out of marital relations). Thus, in any givenconversational context, different aspects of the lifenarrative will need to be voiced or may remainsilent, depending on the shared understanding ofthe speaker and listener.

The argument is not that an individuals mem-ories are completely constructed in the socialinteraction (e.g., Gergen, 1994), but rather thatthe conversational context backgrounds certainevents and foregrounds others (Fivush & Buckner,2003). For example, a female business executivewill share certain aspects of the life script with hermale colleagues that will lead to the voicing andsilencing of particular life stories, and this will bedifferent from the aspects of the life script sharedwith her working mothers group. The particularautobiographical narratives that will be told inthese two contexts will depend on different sharedrepresentations of the world that will backgroundcertain stories as shared understandings that donot need to be voiced, different discrepant storiesthat may need to be explained, and differentdiscrepant stories that will be silenced and nottold at all. However, it is also the case that ifcertain stories are told certain ways multipletimes, the story becomes more entrenched. Cueet al. (2007) have demonstrated that when certainaspects of the story are repeatedly recalled, theseaspects become easier to recall subsequently.More important, aspects of the story that are notrecalled by the speaker and not heard by the

listener become more and more difficult for bothspeaker and listener to recall over time. Thusin privileging certain aspects or evaluations of thenarratives, other aspects or evaluations becomemore and more difficult to recall over time, andthus become more and more likely to remainsilenced.

Thus the argument is that individual lifenarratives are fluid, dynamic constructions.

Depending on the cultural and conversationalcontext, particular canonical narratives will beforegrounded that will help guide the retrieval ofparticular memories. Most important, the canoni-cal narratives will also guide the interpretation ofthose memories; conformity does not need to beexplained or evaluated, and therefore these mem-ories may remain unvoiced, but deviations mustbe understood, and there are templates for thesekinds of narrative explanations. At the individuallevel, over time, certain narratives and certaininterpretations may become more and morestable, leading to a more stable life narrativeacross contexts, and these may, in fact, becomethe self-defining memories of the individual. Inthis way, canonical narratives and life narrativesare in constant dialectical relation. At a culturallevel, multiple narratives are in tension, with theculturally dominant narrative being challenged bynarratives of resistance, and as these narratives aretold and re-told, they may be integrated into thedominant narrative, thus leading to evolvingcultural understandings of identity.

Truth and morality

As I have argued throughout this paper, narrativesprovide a moral stance. People may agree on thefacts of what happened (i.e., accuracy) but if theydisagree about what those facts mean, the memoryis not perceived to be truthful in that the narrativedoes not make sense (Bruner, 1990; Freeman,2007). Truth emerges from the construction ofshared meaning, and shared meaning emergesfrom the construction of shared narratives. Whenthe narrative is contested, there is a perceptionthat one narrative cannot be right whereasthe other narrative is, and, critically, the rightnarrative carries the moral imperative (Freeman,2007; Sclater, 2003). This is how resistance narra-tives can create change: through claiming themoral imperative, resistance narratives challengethe truth, not the accuracy, of culturally dominant

SPEAKING SILENCE 95

narratives. If truth were not contested, resistancenarratives would have no power.

SPEAKING THROUGH SILENCE:IMPLICATIONS FOR MEMORY,IDENTITY, AND WELL-BEING

This analysis of voice and silence points to thecomplex intertwining of remembering, speaking,and silencing. Within culturally dominant narra-tives, where there are shared assumptions aboutthe events of a life, events that conform to thescript do not have to be told, yet these events arerecalled, as the skeletal backbone of the life story.As do other types of generalised events represen-tations, or scripts, life scripts provide schematisedversions of events, spare in detail, that provide theshared cultural representations that need onlybe referred to in passing (Nelson, 1986). Thus,while individuals recall these events they do notprovide a rich narrative tapestry that is wovenwith personal meaning. Rather it is those narra-tives that do not conform to the life script thatdefine individual identity, stories that differentiateus from the norm, events that must be voiced; theymust be explained, justified, understood, and thisleads to narrative plot and tension. As Bruner(1990) argues, narratives involve troubling aproblem that must be solved. Thus power derivedfrom conformity leads to being silent, a life lived inharmony with the shared cultural script that doesnot require rich compelling stories. In contrast,deviation often leads to being silenced and theneed to gain back power through voice, to justifyand explain ones life.

A critical dimension is whether the deviationfrom the culturally dominant narrative can beheard when it is voiced. Some deviations may beso threatening to the dominant narrative that theysimply cannot be heard and so continue to besilenced. At the cultural level this may be histori-cally modulated, as in the changing cultural under-standings of violence against women, and thekinds of stories of violence and abuse that can betold and heard now that were silenced just a fewdecades ago (Enns et al., 1995). When and whycertain groups are able to create these kinds ofresistance narratives that confer power and voiceis well beyond the scope of this paper, but withinthe social science literature much has been writtenabout social justice movements, and how certainstories begin to be heard (Kleinman & Fitz-Henry,2007).

At the individual level, the life script providesthe expected background against which the lifenarrative is created. Narrative identity is not justwhat we remember but how we remember. AsPasupathi et al. (2007) have argued, we can usenarratives to reveal who we are, to dismiss certainevents as not self-defining, to create causal chainsand explanations for how and why things occurredas they did, and how and why one has becomethe person one is. The master narratives andmotifs available in the culture guide these kindsof individual narratives. Individual narratives ofdeviation can be dismissed or explanations cantake the form of a narrative of victimisation. Incontrast, deviations may become resistance narra-tives, narratives that reveal and explain somethingabout the self that leads to gaining voice andpower; these are redemption narratives.

Not surprisingly, it matters what kinds ofnarratives individuals tell. Narratives that are notcoherent, that cannot be linked to meaningfulexplanations, can lead to identity confusion andfragmentation; this is often what happens follow-ing traumatic experiences that are silenced, bothby the culture and by the individual, and cannot beintegrated into a coherent sense of narrative andidentity (Brewin, 2003; Janoff-Bulman, 1991). Theindividual must have a community of listeners ableand willing to hear and validate their experiencesin order to create more coherent narratives, andwhen they do, the evolving narrative coherenceis linked to higher levels of both physicaland psychological well-being (Frattaroli, 2006;Pennebaker, 1997). Thus narrative and identityare dialectically related, such that coherent narra-tives help create a coherent sense of self, and acoherent sense of self helps create and maintaincoherent narratives (McLean et al., 2007).

But even if a coherent narrative can be formed,it still matters what shape that narrative takes.Individuals who create redemption narrativesfrom their discrepant experiences show high levelsof generativity, a commitment to the next genera-tion and to the community, and they show highlevels of well-being (McAdams, 2006). Thus thekinds of resistance narratives that individualscreate have far-reaching implications for boththeir developing understanding of who they areand for their sense of well-being in the world.Ultimately the stories we tell matter. In the wordsof Susan Brison (2002, p. 51), who lived to tellthe story of her violent rape, In order to constructself-narratives we need not only the words withwhich to tell our stories, but also an audience

96 FIVUSH

able and willing to hear us and to understand ourwords as we intend them.

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