Dr Ruth Wajnryb is an applied linguist, researcher and writer. She has nearly thirty years professional experience as a teacher and lecturer, her primary interests being in language and education. Her research interests explore the role of language in social life and the often fragile contexts in which language is compelled to achieve competing goals. In The Silence, she has blended her professional training and orientation with her personal interests, as the child of survivor parents, to investigate the communication patterns that characterise Holocaust spoken narrative between first and second generations.