Keying and Role Play in Business Encounters. Spatial, Temporal, Behavior and Language Cues

This study proposes an approach business communication based on Erving Goffman’s theory of the relational dimension of meaning, according to which meaning is not attached to the communication process, but generated within the context (frame) of each specific interaction. This automatically involves a complex process of keying, which basically refers to a series of paradigm shifts that individualize each instance of communication. Therefore, the present study aims at tracing the way in which the process of keying operates in business communication where the overlapping frames of everyday informal interactions and of formal, standardized communication generate, under the pressure of culturally inherited patterns, specific sets of spatial, temporal, behavior and language cues that assign well defined roles to the participants.