{
  "id": "silent-majority.unheard",
  "term": "silent majority",
  "sense": "unheard",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "published",
  "level": 17,
  "domain": "agency",
  "style": "folk",
  "definition": "A collective self that divides into an in-group and an out-group: most members, read as agreeing without saying so, against a few who say otherwise.",
  "folk_gloss": "a large part of the public said to hold views it does not express loudly",
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "collective-self.shared",
      "boundary.limit",
      "in-group.inside",
      "out-group.outside",
      "agreement.social",
      "says.speech",
      "division.process",
      "member.social",
      "read.information",
      "against.opposition"
    ],
    "interaction": "Because the in-group is defined as the members who do not speak, its view cannot be checked, so whoever names it can read the group as agreeing with them.",
    "novel_properties": [
      "an in-group defined by not speaking",
      "a majority whose view is read and not heard"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "In a televised address on 3 November 1969, Richard Nixon asked 'the great silent majority' of Americans to support his Vietnam policy.",
      "domain": "politics"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "ordinary-people.core",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "ordinary people is split off by power; the silent majority by not speaking"
    },
    {
      "id": "groupthink.collective",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "groupthink narrows what can be said; the silent majority reads a view into what is not said"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "silent majority",
    "the silent majority"
  ],
  "closed": true,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "claude-opus-5-5:hand-curated",
    "date": "2026-09-29",
    "confidence": 0.85,
    "sources": [
      "schema/power-agency-phase.md"
    ]
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-silent-majority.unheard"
}