Schweigephasen in institutioneller Kommunikation: exemplarische Betrachtungen

Abstract This article examines pauses as forms of planned silence in institutional communication. Excerpts from a court hearing and a dispute reported in the media are examined. A reconstructive analysis is used to determine how the pauses are brought about and what communicative significance they have in the interaction. The approach is based on the types of silence phases developed by Bergmann (1982) and pursues the question of the extent to which silence phases prove to be constitutive components of complex forms of action.