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Can you communicate without using words? It may sound complicated.
Communication is often imagined as something that depends mainly on how well we speak and explain ourselves. Yet in everyday life, understanding another person rarely derives only from their words. Human communication relies on many different tools, and silence is one of them. We notice small pauses, a look, body movements, or a moment of silence and trust these nonverbal cues to make sense of what another person is really experiencing. In this sense, silence becomes part of how emotional meaning is shared between people.
How Meaning Is Shared Without Words
People do not always express themselves through words. Instead, emotional meaning is often conveyed through nonverbal cues such as facial expressions, eye contact, posture, and gestures. In both everyday interactions and therapeutic settings, nonverbal cues are essential for understanding what a person may not be able or willing to say directly. In therapeutic settings, therapists often rely on these cues to gain a deeper understanding of the patient’s emotional state and unspoken experiences, especially when verbal expression is limited or sometimes avoided. Beyond providing information about the patient’s emotional state, nonverbal cues also play a crucial role in shaping the relational space of therapy by allowing emotions that cannot yet be put into words to be shared and emotionally regulated within the therapeutic relationship. In this way, meaning is not only communicated through what is said, but also through how a person looks, moves, pauses, and responds within the therapeutic environment. The same processes can be observed in everyday interactions, such as when you approach someone and ask, “Is everything okay? You don’t seem all right,” even if they have not said a word. Often, understanding comes through their expressions, a brief pause, or emotional withdrawal. In these moments, silence or a pause becomes part of the communication itself and, even when it appears subtle, it can strongly shape how an experience is emotionally felt. This becomes especially evident in moments of emotional closeness, when a single look shared with your closest friend can say far more than words ever could.
The Emotional Meanings of Silence Across Life
Silence carries emotional meaning that is shaped within relationships. From a developmental standpoint and in line with Winnicott’s theory of emotional holding and relational presence, the meaning of silence emerges through emotional engagement between individuals. In some contexts, it can indicate emotional closeness and psychological safety; whereas in others it may evoke discomfort or distress, especially when it appears suddenly and disrupts the natural flow of interaction, making the situation feel emotionally unclear. This suggests that silence can signal connection, tension, or emotional distance depending on the situation. This can be clearly seen in early childhood, when emotional responsiveness is critical for development. In an experiment conducted by Edward Tronick, a caregiver suddenly stops responding to an infant and remains emotionally still for a short period of time. Although nothing threatening occurs and no words are exchanged, infants quickly become distressed and attempt to re-engage with the caregiver. What is noticeable is that this distress is caused by the sudden absence of an emotional response rather than by negative behavior. Taken together, these observations show that human communication is fundamentally grounded in emotional responsiveness rather than in words alone themselves.
Silence as a Psychological Space: Winnicott’s Perspective
From Donald Winnicott’s perspective, silence can be understood as a meaningful psychological space rather than a failure to communicate. He emphasised that people have a right not to communicate, and that silence does not necessarily reflect an inability to express oneself. Instead, it may represent a protected inner space that preserves the core of the self. Sometimes remaining silent can reflect a need to stay connected to one’s inner experience rather than an attempt to distance oneself from others. Winnicott described this as ‘’Silent Communication’’, highlighting that meaningful psychological processes continue even in the absence of spoken words. Through this idea, he distinguished between verbal communication, which relies on shared and structured language, and inner communication, which is more personal, subjective, and fluid. Silence often belongs to this inner level of experience. He illustrated his view through the metaphor of hide and seek. According to Winnicott, human experience contains a paradox: the self seeks safety through hiding, yet at the same time carries a wish to be found without being forced. In everyday life, this can be seen when an emotion feels too personal or too difficult to put into words. A person may remain silent, while still hoping that someone will notice their presence and sense that something meaningful is being experienced.
Conclusion
To conclude, silence is not empty, it is filled with emotional and relational meaning. As Edward Tronick and Donald Winnicott suggest in different ways, what shapes human connection is not only what is said, but also what is not said: what is felt and shared between words. This reflects how powerful of a role silence plays in communication. It appears in everyday life in different forms, whether in an awkward pause or in a moment of quiet support and shared presence. Regardless of the context, communication is therefore not only about linguistic structure or verbal expression, but especially about how experience is emotionally received and represented between people. In the end, the loudest message is the one that is heard without a single word.
Selin Palti
Bibliography
Nonverbal communication and social cognition. (n.d.). EBSCO Research Starters. https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/health-and-medicine/nonverbal-communication-and-social-cognition
Tronick, E., Als, H., Adamson, L., Wise, S., & Brazelton, T. B. (2010). The infant’s response to entrapment between contradictory messages in face-to-face interaction: Still-face paradigm revisited. Frontiers in Psychology, 15(9), 1220. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3289403/
Zengin, İ. H., & et al. (2025). Silence, communication and psychological processes: A conceptual review. Behavioral Sciences, 15(9), 1220. https://www.mdpi.com/2076-328X/15/9/1220
Winnicott, D. W. (n.d.). Communicating and Not Communicating. Retrieved from https://web.english.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Winnicott_Communicating_and_Not_Communicating.pdf
A.P.E. 
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