This article explained the connotation and concepts of "the spiral of silence"theory and also represented the background of the advent of the theory. The application of this theory seems to have a limitation in the modern society. Firstly,the experience  in  the Nazi  Party  in Noelle-Neumann’s  youth  had in?uenced her later theories. Secondly, the environment should be considered as an essential element. As there is an obvious difference of social environment and life styles between modern society and the past, one can’t simply predict people’s changes of opinion  expression, especially when individual social activities had limitations in the past,while the advent of the Internet expands the scope of communication to the whole world. Thirdly, under the consideration of inter-cultural communication, she had ignored the differences between cultures and areas on individual silence  behavior.Fourthly, she had also ignored the differences of the types and characters of social issues and between individuals, which    may in?uence opinion expressions, and had simply divided people's opinion expression behaviors into two categories--opinion expression and silence.