美国国家公共电台 NPR In 'Unspeakable,' A Journalist Gives Silence An Investigative Treatment

 

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

The journalist Harriet Shawcross is fascinated by silence - why we speak and why we don't. She's traveled the world seeking answers to those questions. And our co-host Ailsa Chang spoke¹ with her about her new book, "Unspeakable."

AILSA CHANG, BYLINE²: Shawcross has spent time with earthquake survivors³ in Nepal, a silent order of nuns⁴ in Paris and Buddhists⁵ at a retreat in Scotland. But it was her own silence that inspired this book. She stopped speaking at school for nearly a year when she was a teenager. She could answer direct questions. She wasn't mute. But she wasn't able to engage in the kind of conversations that she says make us human.

HARRIET SHAWCROSS: There would be days when you'd kind of be standing⁶, you know, near people in a conversation, and you'd think, I haven't said anything for a really long time. And you'd wonder if people that you were talking to were going to notice or say anything. And most of the time they didn't, to be honest.

CHANG: How did that feel to not even have your silence acknowledged?

SHAWCROSS: Yeah, it was a very kind of lonely time, and I think I was very ashamed of the fact that I wasn't talking kind of normally. And you know, as a child, I'd never had any problems like this before. And I mean, looking back, I guess - I say in the book my father was made redundant⁷.

CHANG: He was fired.

SHAWCROSS: Yeah, exactly, he was fired. So my mom was very much, like, don't tell people about what's happening here. This is a kind of shameful⁸ thing that's happened. And I think - in the book, I talk about kind of taking a step back from the world. It was kind of very much like a retreat. Like, if you don't offer anything of yourself, you can't get hurt.

CHANG: Yeah.

SHAWCROSS: But I mean, in the book, I go into - so one of the things I look at is kind of selective mutism, which is when - I don't think I had selective mutism, but...

CHANG: Yeah, you spent a lot of time in this book talking about selective mutism. Can you just take a moment? Explain what exactly is that.

SHAWCROSS: In its simplest form, the way it's understood is as, like, a phobia of speaking - so the same way that, you know, an arachnophobe would be if they were presented with a spider.

CHANG: Yeah.

SHAWCROSS: And in the past, it's kind of been misunderstood, and people think that either they're being difficult or that it's shyness. Selective mutism is very different to shyness because whereas a shy child might warm up the more they get to know people, with a child with selective mutism, often, the more they get to know people, the less likely they are to be able to...

CHANG: Oh.

SHAWCROSS: ...Speak. Like, the silence gets more and more...

CHANG: Yeah.

SHAWCROSS: ...Kind of entrenched⁹.

CHANG: It is a phobia, but it's a phobia with incredibly brutal¹⁰ consequences. I mean, you talk about this one girl who has scarring on her bladder because she's so afraid even to ask to go to the bathroom.

SHAWCROSS: Yeah, exactly. So I think when I first started looking into this, I don't think I'd understood how - kind of how deeply ingrained silence can get. That thing of not being able to kind of put your hand up and say, I need to go, is very common.

CHANG: Now, you visited a summer camp for these kids, right?

SHAWCROSS: Yeah.

CHANG: It was, like, an intensive therapy camp.

SHAWCROSS: Yeah.

CHANG: What did you see there?

SHAWCROSS: So selective mutism is quite common in younger children, but it's more unusual for it to persist into the kind of teenage years. And most of the parents at this camp were, you know, really quite desperate by this point because there aren't a lot of treatment options. And their children at this stage are - many of them were just - were not speaking at school, you know, didn't have any friends. That was the kind of thing that came up a lot with the parents - was, you know, we just want our child to have the chance to have a normal life.

CHANG: Yeah. There was this one scene that just jumped out at me where these two girls were practicing...

SHAWCROSS: Yeah.

CHANG: ...Just the very basics of making conversation. And it made me think to myself, you know, what is a conversation in the first place anyway - because there are some people I know who talk so much who are terrible conversationalists. To teach what a conversation is is actually very complex.

SHAWCROSS: Right, yeah. You know, someone will ask a question, and how can you respond to that? You can respond with a question or a comment. And then what will you do? And it was this kind of breaking conversation down into its component¹¹ parts. And then what they were doing was so far from what a conversation should be...

CHANG: Right.

SHAWCROSS: ...Right?

CHANG: It was so stilted¹². It was so forced.

SHAWCROSS: Oh, gosh.

CHANG: It was formal.

SHAWCROSS: It was just, you know...

CHANG: But it was an opening. It was a beginning.

SHAWCROSS: Right. And for them, that's absolutely massive 'cause it's the first time maybe in years that they've actually been able to just talk to a peer that they don't know, that isn't one of their family members.

CHANG: Well, now that you're a journalist, you're a writer, you observe people for a living. And in a way, you can revert¹³ back to fading into the background but in a useful way.

SHAWCROSS: Yeah, exactly. You know, many times I've said, you know, just pretend I'm not here; you know, talk to the camera; don't look at me. And you know, you'll know yourself. The art of an interview is in disappearing a little bit and knowing when not to speak and knowing how to use silence and that it's often in silence that people, you know, reveal themselves.

CHANG: Yes. Isn't it so interesting that this relatively¹⁴ unhappy period in your life has given you the skills to navigate¹⁵ this profession that now means so much to you?

SHAWCROSS: Yeah, I guess so.

(LAUGHTER)

SHAWCROSS: No, I know - just been lucky. But personally I very much held onto that as a kind of survival strategy for a long time and, in terms of particularly, you know, romantic relationships with someone, found it really hard to say what I felt or what I wanted. And in a way, that's one of the things that prompted me to write the book - was that I was getting married.

CHANG: Right.

SHAWCROSS: And it was causing problems in our relationship. And my future wife was kind of like, you know, you need to get to the bottom of this. Like, why do you find it so difficult to, like, really say what it is that you want or you need?

CHANG: Yeah.

SHAWCROSS: That's what started the journey of the book and brought me back to that time when I was not expressing or saying what I needed to say at school.

CHANG: Harriet Shawcross is the author of the new book "Unspeakable: The Things We Cannot Say." Thank you very much for joining us. I really enjoyed this conversation.

SHAWCROSS: Absolutely.

1 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 survivors   

幸存者，残存者，生还者( survivor的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The survivors were adrift in a lifeboat for six days. 幸存者在救生艇上漂流了六天。
• survivors clinging to a raft 紧紧抓住救生筏的幸存者

4 nuns   

n.（通常指基督教的）修女， （佛教的）尼姑( nun的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Ah Q had always had the greatest contempt for such people as little nuns. 小尼姑之流是阿Q本来视如草芥的。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• Nuns are under vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. 修女须立誓保持清贫、贞洁、顺从。 来自辞典例句

5 Buddhists   

n.佛教徒( Buddhist的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The Jesuits in a phase of ascendancy, persecuted and insulted the Buddhists with great acrimony. 处于地位上升阶段的耶稣会修士迫害佛教徒，用尖刻的语言辱骂他们。 来自英汉非文学 - 历史
• The return of Saivite rule to central Java had brought no antagonism between Buddhists and Hindus. 湿婆教在中爪哇恢复统治后，并没有导致佛教徒与印度教徒之间的对立。 来自辞典例句

6 standing   

n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的

参考例句：

• After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
• They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。

7 redundant   

adj.多余的，过剩的；(食物)丰富的；被解雇的

参考例句：

• There are too many redundant words in this book.这本书里多余的词太多。
• Nearly all the redundant worker have been absorbed into other departments.几乎所有冗员，都已调往其他部门任职。

8 shameful   

adj.可耻的，不道德的

参考例句：

• It is very shameful of him to show off.他向人炫耀自己，真不害臊。
• We must expose this shameful activity to the newspapers.我们一定要向报社揭露这一无耻行径。

9 entrenched   

adj.确立的，不容易改的(风俗习惯)

参考例句：

• Television seems to be firmly entrenched as the number one medium for national advertising.电视看来要在全国广告媒介中牢固地占据头等位置。
• If the enemy dares to attack us in these entrenched positions,we will make short work of them.如果敌人胆敢进攻我们固守的阵地，我们就消灭他们。

10 brutal   

adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的

参考例句：

• She has to face the brutal reality.她不得不去面对冷酷的现实。
• They're brutal people behind their civilised veneer.他们表面上温文有礼，骨子里却是野蛮残忍。

11 component   

n.组成部分，成分，元件；adj.组成的，合成的

参考例句：

• Each component is carefully checked before assembly.每个零件在装配前都经过仔细检查。
• Blade and handle are the component parts of a knife.刀身和刀柄是一把刀的组成部分。

12 stilted   

adj.虚饰的；夸张的

参考例句：

• All too soon the stilted conversation ran out.很快这种做作的交谈就结束了。
• His delivery was stilted and occasionally stumbling.他的发言很生硬，有时还打结巴。

13 revert   

v.恢复，复归，回到

参考例句：

• Let us revert to the earlier part of the chapter.让我们回到本章的前面部分。
• Shall we revert to the matter we talked about yesterday?我们接着昨天谈过的问题谈，好吗？

14 relatively   

adv.比较...地，相对地

参考例句：

• The rabbit is a relatively recent introduction in Australia.兔子是相对较新引入澳大利亚的物种。
• The operation was relatively painless.手术相对来说不痛。

15 navigate   

v.航行，飞行；导航，领航

参考例句：

• He was the first man to navigate the Atlantic by air.他是第一个飞越大西洋的人。
• Such boats can navigate on the Nile.这种船可以在尼罗河上航行。