Silence as relational adaptation: Strategic communicative practices of Chinese partners in Sino-Western intercultural marriages

Silence is a pervasive yet understudied communicative practice in intercultural intimate relationships. Existing research has primarily examined silence in public and institutional contexts, while limited attention has been paid to how silence functions within intercultural marriages as a relational and adaptive practice. This study explores how Chinese partners in Sino-Western intercultural marriages experience, enact, and negotiate silence during everyday interactions.

Employing a proceduralized grounded theory approach, this study integrates qualitative data from semi-structured interviews, video observations, and textual materials. Through iterative open, axial, and selective coding procedures, a processual model was developed to explain the emergence, transformation, and consequences of Chinese partners' silence in intercultural marital contexts.

The findings reveal that Chinese partners' silence operates as a dynamic communicative adaptation mechanism rather than a passive withdrawal from interaction. Silence evolves through a processual trajectory of antecedents, manifestations, adjustments, and consequences. Triggered by cross-cultural divergences, situational norm conflicts, and L2 pragmatic constraints, silence manifests in distinct intimacy-maintaining, boundary-preserving, and mutuality-enhancing orientations. Furthermore, two adjustment pathways-proactive individual adjustment and collaborative dyadic adjustment-enable partners to transform silence from a potential source of misunderstanding into a constructive relational resource. These adaptive processes contribute to the regulation of marital interactions, renegotiation of relational power dynamics, and enhancement of intercultural understanding.

This study reconceptualizes silence as an agentive interpersonal strategy through which Chinese partners actively manage cultural differences, emotional expression, and relational boundaries in intercultural marriages. By highlighting the adaptive and relational functions of silence, this study extends psychological understandings of intercultural communication and intimate relationship adjustment, demonstrating how nonverbal practices contribute to the maintenance and development of intercultural marital relationships.