Communicative Functions of Silence in Hausa Interpersonal Discourse

This study investigates the communicative functions of silence in Hausa interpersonal discourse, with data drawn from conversational interactions among Hausa speakers in Katsina State, North West Nigeria. Silence as a linguistic and communicative resource has received growing attention in cross-cultural pragmatics, yet its functions in Hausa discourse have not been studied systematically. The research is grounded in the theory of communicative silence developed by Jaworski and informed by Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson's Conversation Analysis framework. Data were collected through audio and video recording of 25 naturally occurring conversational interactions in domestic, social, and professional settings, involving 60 participants selected through snowball sampling. The recordings were transcribed using Conversation Analysis conventions and analysed for pause length, placement, interactional context, and subsequent interaction outcomes. Findings identify four primary communicative functions of silence in Hausa discourse: face-saving withdrawal from face-threatening contexts, deferential acknowledgement of social hierarchy, non-verbal agreement, and deliberate withholding as a refusal strategy. The study further notes that silence use is strongly gendered, with female participants employing silence more frequently in mixed-gender interactions. The research contributes to the pragmatic study of Hausa and recommends further investigation of silence across Nigerian language communities to develop culturally grounded models of communicative competence. Keywords: communicative silence, Hausa discourse, conversation analysis, Katsina, pragmatics.