Voice (mostly: radio) communication protocols have a number of terms for metacommunication, e.g. ‘out’ for end of conversation, ‘over’ for end of turn, ‘say again’ to indicate the last turn has not been understood etc.
What I notice in ordinary conversation is that we expect consecutive statements in a turn to be somehow related, and are confused when they are just intended to be consecutive “I got a decent pay rise today. We are low on toilet paper and I will go to the supermarket after dinner.”
Is there any word/phrase used in an established protocol to indicate “the preceding and the following statement are not related”?
So ‚break break‘ means „The following addresses a different aircraft“ while ‚break‘ means „I am still talking to you, but the following is about an unrelated subject“?
I’ll admit I haven’t exercised the privileges of my pilot’s license for a few years. But in my experience, ATC just says “break.” And it always means they’re about to talk to another aircraft.
I’m fairly current (30 hours so far this year on my PPL).
“Break” would be used to address a different aircraft. As far as I know there’s no specific terminology for a change of subject to the same aircraft, other than “then” or “and”.
E.g. “Golf India Echo, proceed taxiway bravo then hold at Charlie”. Or “Squawk 1234 and report downwind”.