Tacit tango: The social framework of screen-focused silence in institutional telephone calls

This study examines the social framework of screen-focused silence in institutional calls. Calls to insurance companies, social care centres and other institutions which keep computerised documentation are likely to entail moments when the call-taker has to focus on the screen at the expense of interacting with the caller. This study examines how the transitions are organised between human human screen interaction and human screen interaction. The analysis shows that both call-taker and caller indicate clear agreement on the period when the call-taker will be temporarily out of contact, and that the latter delivers contextualisation cues at the beginning and end of the period of this screen-focused silence which contribute to a new set of expectations. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.