speechlessness

A case of involuntary or unintentional silence may be speechlessness caused by emotional stress, for instance when a person is so shocked in a situation that words fail him/her.

[Reznikoff] fashions speechlessness and the absence of Jewish ritual into signs of intimacy." (4) The "prayers and words and lights" (5) of traditional Jewish mourning and remembrance practices become recognizable and perceptible as "trifles" (to use the poem's word) only within a secular regime of perception, but to interpret the absence of such trifles as "signs of intimacy," as Fredman does, is to appeal to a sensibility that amounts to more than a simple act of negation.

In their first public expression of grief for their son, they told of their "year of horror and fear, without rest, of speechlessness and despair and unexpressed mourning".

If foreign political observers ever looked into this phenomenon they would be left speechless by the speechlessness of many of our representatives.

She still remembers being overwhelmed to the point of speechlessness the first time she saw the auroras dancing in September 2001.

not to put at risk the unity between employees and management by continuing a policy of speechlessness."

This image of speechlessness and helplessness (32) is constructed also through the use of a passive voice in describing the situation of institutionalized people.

We have the tradition passed along, we have the wrestling with the questions, but there are some creative things that will move us into speechlessness, into tears, into heartbreak, into all of the kinds of overflowing that we might experience.

Manmohan Singh's ten years of speechlessness made Modi sound like Mark Anthony at Caesar's funeral.

He is no longer able to whimper a sentence, not even a word and not because of speechlessness but because "he is now in a big trauma," said Bahaa Yahiya, an orthopedic surgeon at Razi hospital in Jenin, where Shaer was brought for medical treatment.