Abstract
'The Semiotics of Silence in Business Communication' investigates the significance of silence through an interdisciplinary approach. This work is based on philosophical views of silence further extended into the contemporary business environment.
Silence in business communication is analysed as a phenomenon of conversational analysis, social psychology and general sociolinguistics both from philosophical and semiotic perspectives. This work presents an in-depth analysis of how silence is used and applied in the day-to-day work of employees in a large multinational company.
Findings enable us to understand the patterns of silence usage and interpret them in a cross-functional model. The model is based on variables such as the duration, frequency, usage of silence in the discourse and speakers' background.
This allows for a wider range of results taking intercultural differences, conversational routines, immediate communication and facilitative usage of silence into account.