This book fills a significant gap in the field by addressing the topic of absence in discourse. It presents a range of proposals as to how we can identify and analyse what is absent, and promotes the empirical study of absence and silence in discourse. The authors argue that these phenomena should hold a more central position in the field of discourse, and discuss these two topics at length in this innovative edited collection. It will appeal to students and scholars interested in discourse analysis and critical discourse analysis.

Melani Schröter is Associate Professor in German Linguistics at the University of Reading, UK, and the author ofSilence and Concealment in Political Discourse (2013). Her research interests include political discourse analysis, silence and absence in discourse and communication, comparative analyses of European migration discourses, and discourses of resistance.  Charlotte Taylor is Senior Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics at the University of Sussex, UK, and Editor ofCADAADJournal. Her research specialisms include impoliteness implicatures, and discourses of migration, and she has a longstanding interest in methodological issues. 

1 Introduction; Melani Schröter and Charlotte Taylor.- Part I Comparison as Means to Identify Silence and Absence.- 2 Not for Twitter: Migration as a Silenced Topic in the Spanish General Election; Manuel Alcántara-Plá and Ana Ruiz-Sánchez.- 3 Absence in Visual Narratives: The Story of Iran and Pakistan across Time; Sameera Durrani.- 4 Intimations of Spring? What Got Said and What Didnt Get Said about the Start of the Middle Eastern/North African Uprisings: A Corpus-assisted Discourse Study of a Historical Event ; Alan Partington. - 5 Cross-media Studies as a Method to Uncover Patterns of Silence and Linguistic Discrimination of Sexual Minorities in Ugandan Print Media; Cecilia Strand.- 6 Critically Illuminating Relevant Absences in Public Sphere Arguments via Digital Mining of Their Weblinks: A Software-based Pedagogy; Kieran OHalloran.- 7 Silence and Absence in Chinese Smog Discourses; Jiayi Wang and Dániel Z. Kádár.- Part II Exploring Means that Produce Silence and Absence.-8 Theoretical and Methodological Challenges in Identifying Meaningful Absences in Discourse; Patricia von Münchow.- 9 Whats Not in a Frame? Analysis of Media Representations of the Environmental Refugee; Nina Venkataraman.- 10 A Discourse Analysis of Absence in Nigerian News Media; Taiwo Oluwaseun Ehineni. - Part III Analysing Surface Indicators of Silence and Absence. - 11 What the f#@$!: Policing and Performing the Unmentionable in the News; Crispin Thurlow and Jamie Moshin.- 12 The Use of No Comment by Suspects in Police Interviews; Joanna Garbutt.- 13 Conspicuous by Presence: The Empty Signifier Interdisciplinarity and the Representation of Absence; Dorte Madsen