Silence in Qutadgu Bilig: An Ontological Structure, a Powerful Tool and the Silent Construction of Meaning

Abstract

In Qutadgu Bilig, silence transcends its role as a narrative element confined to lack of communication or personal muteness; it emerges as a multilayered interdisciplinary intellectual structure. Within the text, silence acquires a dynamic dimension, appearing on the one hand at the boundary of language and meaning, and on the other hand transforming into the foundational ground of political authority, ethical discipline, and metaphysical intuition. This study analyzes how the concept of silence functions in Qutadgu Bilig and how these functions intersect with character typologies, thematic layers, and ideological structures. Silence takes shape in multiple registers: sometimes as an instrument of governance in the ruler’s strategic quietude, sometimes as linguistic restraint in the vizier’s measured speech, sometimes as semantic deepening in the sage’s elliptical expression, and sometimes as the nonlinguistic experience of truth in the ascetic’s silence. Ontologically, silence reveals unspoken dimensions of truth; epistemologically, it structures knowledge transmission through omission and ellipsis. On the social and political level, it reflects the production of consent and the embodiment of habitus. Theoretical grounding is provided through Heidegger, Derrida, Foucault, Bourdieu, and Deleuze. Character-based textual analysis is linked to these frameworks to propose a multilayered reading. The findings demonstrate that silence functions not merely as a stylistic device but as a foundational modality structuring the text’s ontology and regimes of meaning.