CULTURALLY PATTERNED INTERPRETATION OF SILENCE

The paper puts forward the hypothesis that the decisive role in interpreting silence as a form of communicative behavior is played not by the specific culture the interlocutor belongs to, but by the more general cultural pattern. The typology the research is based on differentiates between collectivist and individualist cultures. Marked distinctions in the communicative styles of representatives of these cultures are accounted for by substantial differences in cognitive metaphors existing in the ir conceptual systems.