Chapter 5

THE MET ACOMMUNICATIVE POINTS IN SESSION I

In the case of explaining, the language content referred to events at a distance — things that had happened in the V family. And Whitaker's explanation referred to events that were planned. But only Mrs. V consistently used language this way in Session I.

Marge's language behavior referred to what her mother was saying. Statements made by Malone or Whitaker tended to be confrontations and instructions. Thus language behavior was used to comment on and regulate other behavior. Often, for instance, Mrs. V would tell of an incident, Marge would comment on it, and then Malone would act in reference to Marge's behavior.

Bateson (1955) has used the term, ‘metacommunication,’ for behavior which seems analogous to this. He derived the idea from a question about animal play. Dogs, he observed, may rush at each other and then either romp off together playfully or fight to the finish. He suggested there was a signal, unrecognized by man, by which the dogs communicated to each other for either fight or play. Subsequently, such signals have been discovered for several species (Kaufman and Rosenblum 1966; Altman 1966).

The simplest kind of metasignals appear to specify a type of meaning or qualify the literality of an act. Smiling, for instance, may metacommunicate that a certain aggressive act is to be taken as friendly and competitive rather than attacking behavior. Certain metabehaviors appear with quasi-courting which indicates that seduction is not intended (Scheflen 196 5).

In such instances, self-referenced metabehaviors qualify and specify alternatives, and thereby help to reduce ambiguity in a performance. But is is also evident that one can ‘metabehave’ to someone else's behavior and thereby alter or influence it. Furthermore it seems that behavioral units at all levels of integration may be metacommunicative. Here in Chapter 5, I will describe some behaviors of this type which occurred at the level of the point.

METACOMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE POINTS IN SESSION I

The metacommunicative point contains language and/or gestures and it may contain representational behavior, so there is nothing structurally distinctive about the subunit form. What distinguished the metacommunicative unit is its contextual location, its form of address, and certain qualities of its performance. I will abstract some of these features after I have described the metacommunicative language points in Session I.

Mrs. V's Metacommunicative Point Usage

I have already described Mrs. V's initial point units in Session I. The reader will remember that she intercalated the comment about Marge's behavior as she described Marge's requests to be helped upstairs. Mrs. V paused in her utterance, cocked her head slightly, lowered her eyes, and used paralanguage which indicated incredulity and disapproval. Then she said: ‘A young girl like her.’ Then she straightened her head, looked back at Malone, and continued her narrative.

In Period 2s when Mrs. V's account was called to question she used metacommunicative points about her own behavior. These sometimes were conciliatory toward Marge or they offered a concession. Sometimes these point units rationalized her own behavior. At 5 minutes: 05 seconds for instance, Mrs. V said ‘Well, I am, I call myself mental.’ (Marge had just accused her of being mentally ill. ) In saying this, she looked down at the floor, put her finger tips on her chest, and used an overhigh paralanguage with laughter — a configuration we interpret as embarrassment (point 12, Addendum to this section).

Some Metacommunicative Language Points Used by Marge

Self-references

Virtually none of Marge's utterances were narrative. Many were performative statements about her own state of mind. The later type of statement is illustrated in the diagram of point 8, lamenting, which is reproduced in the Addendum to this section. At 11 minutes: 25 seconds she said plaintively, ‘Remember it was hard for me ... to breast feed me?’ This point is diagrammed at point 14, Addendum to Section B. I wish to mention these points but it is not clear that they were metacommunicative. It would be my guess that they were — that they were references to Mrs. V's mothering, but I do want to press the issue. There are more obvious examples of her disparaging metabehavior. In either case, Marge's self-references were metacommunicative. They described either her own state or repeated her mother's past comments.

The Disparaging Comments in Passive Protesting

Nearly all of Marge's language points in her initial position of passive protesting were disparaging or insinuating. As I described above many of these were not verbalized. Some were muttered as can be seen on the multimodality transcript.

At 10 seconds Marge mocked her mother's behavior in a nonvocal point. At 18 seconds she whispered in a stage whisper with mocking paralanguage: ‘You said I ought to have a good sleep and eat.’ At 24 seconds she said sarcastically: ‘Gonna go to hell.’ At 31 seconds she used baby talk in a mocking way. At 49 seconds she insinuated: ‘You know who, Mother, you know who.’ This statement too was said with a mocking smile.

At 8 minutes: 20 seconds Marge performed a more spectacular form of indirect disparagement. She sat upright and said ‘fungoo la madre’ making the classical obscene southern Italian gesture of raising her right fist and grasping her right elbow with her left hand. She accompanied this point with a look of exaggerated shock, which presumably mimicked her mother’s expected response.

Marge would make such disparaging metacommunicative points when her mother denied or rationalized a challenge or accusation (point 13, Addendum to this section).

Repelling

At 1:50 Marge performed a point that was at least partly metacommunicative. This point can be seen in context on the multimodality transcript. She crossed her legs improperly and said: ‘Sexy, you mean, oh boy.’ This remark was addressed in a mode Birdwhistell calls ‘extrapersonal’ — it was addressed over the heads of the others to the world at large.¹

The referent was a remark that Whitaker had just made. At that point in the session all of the participants seemed to be making metacommunicative remarks about each other's performance:

‘Shocking’ Point

When Marge performed her position of interfering (see Chapter 1) she would say something shocking in an apparent effort to shock her mother and disturb the mother's conversation with the men. But she herself would use a shocked, outraged facial expression that I presume was a mocking imitation of her mother's past behavior. I postulate, then, that Marge's shocking behavior was a kind of dramatized commentary on behaviors that occurred in her home and hence a behavior intermediate between direct commentary and narration.

Whitaker's Metacommunicative Behavior

Sometimes Whitaker asked simple questions, but ordinärily his comments and questions were loaded with innuendo or then amounted to confrontations. This kind of metacommunicative behavior, typical of psychotherapy, will be described in Chapter 11, where the tactics of psychotherapy are discussed.

Malone's Use of Ironic Supporting

Innuendo was used by both Malone and Marge. Both had a way of varying stress and adding vocal qualities that loaded syntactic sentences with innuendo. They also tended to use a syntactic variant that is formally known as a question but in fact is a command that implies an accusation. Note the following exampies.

But Malone used a distinctive variety of metabehavior. He would make a statement that lexically was a simple affirmation or support of Mrs. V's story, but he employed paralanguage that suggested something quite different (see Chapter 11).

STRUCTURAL FEATURES OF THE METACOMMUNICATIVE POINT

Types of Metacommunicative Address

In simple narrative and questioning, the address is direct, eye to face, or intrapersonal in Birdwhistell’s terms (see footnote 1, this chapter). In metacommunicative behavior the address is directed almost anywhere else.

Intrapersonal Address

The address may be directed to oneself. The metacommunicative speaker looks down at his own hands or body or legs. This is especially likely when he is commenting on his own behavior. We often see this arrangement in confessions of shame or guilt.

Extrapersonal Address

The metacommunicative address may be directed to the ceiling or to the world at large. In this case a subtle reference to someone present may be inferred, and if the shoe fits the referent can put it on.

The extrapersonal address may also be aimed at a vacant chair or a space which is not occupied. In such cases we can often infer that some absent member is being addressed, or else some figure of the past — an introject in psychoanalytic terms (Freud 1949; Abraham 1949).

Marge used this form of address a great deal. I think it is quite characteristic for schizophrenic patients to do so. Such patients will often ‘detach’ a bodily part, functionally speaking, and hold it out of participation. This body part will move at different rhythms from those of the rest of the body and from the movements of the other participants. It is writhed and moved or held dead, as if it lacked relation to the present. Instead, the movement seemed related to some other transaction. Marge performed a variant of this behavior at times in Session I (see Chapter 8). She also addressed remarks ‘meta to’ her mother's behavior in the intrapersonal mode, as one would ordinarily do in making a self-reference.

The ‘Eyeball-to-Eyeball’ Address

In direct command, challenge, and confrontation, the usual address is direct eye-to-eye confrontation. Malone, Whitaker, and Mrs. V used this mode with Marge.

Other Features of the Metacommunicative Point

The metacommunicative point, then, is often addressed at the behavior it refers to, or in the direct form, to the maker of that behavior. But it is also temporarily located in the context of that behavior referred to. It is performed just after the behavior it modifies or is intercalated in the unit itself.

The metacommunicative unit also makes use of some particular paralinguistic or parakinesic quality. These qualities are abstracted as affects in psychiatry and generally interpreted as shame, guilt, anger, ridicule, and so on. In semantics we would view them as innuendos or connotations.

But an operational point must be made here — a metacommunicative point about metacommunicative points, so to speak. A unit of behavior is not clearly metacommunicative or clearly not metacommunicative. Any utterance, for example, occurs in a tone of voice which is metacommunicative and each gesture and facial expression is also metacommunicative (see the discussion of the gesture, below). So all units have metacommunicative features. When a point is obviously directed at an ongoing behavior or is heavily loaded with metacommunicative elements I have classed it as metacommunicative. But more accurately we have to generalize as follows: Any unit of behavior contains subunits or elements which are metacommunicative to the larger unit. So the metacommunicative point unit is the subunit in some larger position or period to which it supplies a metabehavioral function.

GESTURES: COMMENT BY GESTURE

We speak of the noun or verb as a symbolic behavior, by which we mean that it has a conventional referent conjured in our cognition by the appearance of that word. Thus some morphemes stand for things in remote contexts, but they do not look like the things they stand for. In contrast are other behaviors which do look like the referents they represent: diagrams, photographs, sketches, and the demonstratives I mentioned in the last chapter, i. e. , shapes drawn in the air to represent abstract concepts that the speaker is trying to explain. Such replicative behavior is often called ‘iconic.’

There is a class of communicative body movements of which some members are vaguely iconic, but most are symbolic. Maybe these forms are transitory forms in cultural evolution. These behaviors are of about the same complexity as morphemes or simple syntactic sentences and they almost invariably accompany these speech units. Although they have conventional meanings, these acts are often not conscious in common culture. They are formed by the hands, the face, and sometimes by the feet or the body as a whole. I will use Birdwhistell's nomenclature and call these acts gestures. Notice, however, the term applies to these particular acts and not to the microbehaviors of body movement in general, as is the case in some usages.

The Gestural Points in Session I

The gesture is a small point unit. A bodily region is positioned and addressed, the face or hands are then moved to the customary configuration of that gesture, held for a second or so, then altered or discontinued. And these point units are metacommunicative. Either they occur with a language point, qualifying the speech content, or else they occur without lexication but are referenced to the speech (or sometimes to the other behavior) of some other participant.

Mrs. V's Gestures

Mrs. V used the gesture as a metacommunicative qualifier of her statements. When her story was challenged she would reaffirm her veracity. While doing so she would place her right palm over her heart. This gesture is used typically in such contexts and is generally recognized, even when it occurs without comment, as an indicator of sincerity.

She also used a common gesture which I call nose-wiping. This gesture served as a monitor to Marge's behavior (Scheflen 1969).

Nose-wiping. The back of the index finger is brought laterally across the nostrils and upper lip. This behavior characteristically appears when a speaker lies or exaggerates or when some deviance in nonlexical behavior occurs such as sitting too close, exposing the legs, or being too informal.

Marge's Gestures

Marge once sat bolt upright, raised her left arm, flexed it at the elbow, and struck her antecubital space with her right hand. She muttered ‘fungoo ala madre’ with this gesture, then sat back. We recognize this gesture as a costumary Italian obscenity and Marge verbalized the usual phrase which accompanies it. But later she made the gesture in less spectacular form without verbalization. She enacted this point not in reference to her own statements, for she had not been speaking. It related instead to an assertion her mother made.

Similarly, Marge would address the camera or one of the men and make a facial grimace. These facial configurations can also be considered gestures. They often represent the expressions of ridicule, mock incredulity, anger, love, mock terror, and so forth. Presumably the facial appearance in affective states is known in common culture and can be replicated as a deliberate commentary on what is happening.

A good many of Marge's gestures were characteristically Catholic. She sometimes made the sign of the cross and another gesture of stabbing herself (reminiscent of supplicant gestures in religious ceremonies). Once she shook her hand from side to side, as if shaking off a contaminant. Marge also used the palm on chest gesture and two others that commonly appear in conversation.

1. Mouth covering. The participant may place his hand over his mouth. This gesture can occur when a speaker has been told to be quiet or when he has just uttered a prohibited or embarrasing comment.

2. Hands outstretched, palms up. The participant extends his lower arms and turns his palms upward. (In Eastern European Jewish culture shoulder shrugging is often added.) This gesture occurred with Marge's statement of helplessness or resignation.

Gestures of the Men

As I said in Chapter 2, Mrs. V used nose-wiping whenever Marge acted sexy and allied with Whitaker. Whitaker would regularly light his pipe before supporting Marge, and after a few repetitions of this sequencing Mrs. V began to wipe her nose whenever Whitaker started to light his pipe. After the first few minutes Malone, too, wiped his nose when Marge acted sexy. On a half-dozen occasions, then, Malone and Mrs. V performed the nose-wiping point at exactly the same time.

Three of the participants make the bowl-point at 18 minutes; Marge in Session I, Whitaker in Session III, and Malone in Session IX.

The bowl. Both hands are brought together in the lap and cupped so that the hands form the configuration of a bowl. This gesture ordinarily appears when a speaker is relating a dream or phantasy (English et al. 1965).

The men used four other gestures which are characteristics of psychotherapists.

1. Eye-covering. A hand is placed, palm inward, over oneeye. This microbehavior tends to appear in two related contexts:(1) men tend to cover their eyes when a woman exhibitsher legs and (2) someone will cover his eyes when trying to comprehendan elusive idea or insight.

2. Eye-pointing. A participant will point to his own eyewith his index finger or place the finger on the eye. This act oftenaccompanies demands to pay attention or recognize an idea.

3. Lint-picking. The men occasionally looked down attheir clothing and picked up a fragment of lint with their thumband index finger, then reached over and shook it off on the floor.Lint-picking often occurs when a patient has said something thatnormally would elicit censure, but the therapist, trained not tocriticize, seems to pick lint instead. Whitaker did this after helit his pipe, presumably to rid his hand of tobacco fragments,but he did this so ostentatiously that I often thought it was an unconscioussignal of some kind. At 18 minutes he picked up aninvisible object from the floor and played with it for about sixminutes before he offered it to Marge to smell. I will describethis kind of behavior in Chapter 8.

4. Looking up. Many therapists show a characteristic nonlexical point just before they make an interpretation to a patient (Whitaker and Malone did this). They look up to the ceiling, then down at the patient, and begin their utterance.

COMMANDS, DIRECTIVES, AND CONFRONTATIONS

Some point-unit commentaries were direct orders and instructions. The characteristics of such points usually are: (1) the use of direct eye-to-eye address, while leaning toward the addressee; (2) emphasis on the terminal juncture, e.g., bringing the head down sharply or bringing the hand down forcibly, (3) the syntactic form of the declarative on many morphemes with the use of primary stresses, loudness, and head nods.

Malone's Confrontations

In Session I Malone's units were mainly of this type. In fact his position, interfering, (position 4, Appendix A, and Chapter 1) consisted of rocking forward and performing three successive directive points. He performed this position ten times — each time that Marge contended. From his initial position of listening and questioning Malone would rock forward and confront Marge with an eye-to-eye address:

He would address Marge and scold her for confronting (point 9, Appendix A).

Then he would address Mrs. V, and direct her to continue her narrative (restarting, point 5, Appendix to Section B).

And sometimes he would make a statement in apparent support of Mrs. V (ironic supporting, point 15).

In the two minutes reproduced on the multimodality transcript (Section B), Malone had not yet performed these behaviors in full development, so they are not well portrayed here. But notice that Malone began to make remarks which insinuated and indicated irony at about 3 minutes. Then at 3:35 he rocked forward, and coughed but did not yet speak. At 4:10 he wiped his index finger under his nostrils, a gesture of censure or disapproval.

Marge's Confrontations

On occasion Marge also made direct confrontations. The first was directed to the men (it appears on page two of the multimodality transcript at 1:24). With mixed vocal qualifiers of anger and lament, she said, ‘Me? You're watching me get angry at my mother. ‘This metacommunicative unit is at once lament, accusation, and comment on the men’s behavior. Transitional metacommunicative units like this confirm our hunch that such diverse acts as insinuation and command can be classed together.

On occasion Marge also directly confronted her mother (point 11, Appendix to Section B).

COMMENT: BEHAVIOR AND CONCEPTIONS ABOUT BEHAVIOR

The Coding of Behavior

It is often said that human behavior is communicative because it is coded. This is a useful idea that summarizes much of what has been said about behavioral units and patternment. Now that we have added the idea of metabehavior, we can say how behavior can be described as being coded (Sebeok 1963).

A code must have the following characteristics:

1.A set of distinctive elements, each differentiable from the others.

2.An order to their occurrence, or combinations such that certain configurations or patterns occur (usually in the same contexts or specific environments).

3.Conventional meta-elements — signals of instruction like stop, repeat, cancel, and so forth.

Imagine how these features might be built in to a contrived code. Types of items would have to be designated as the elements of the code: colored pennants, marks on paper, electronic signals of varying duration or pitch, hand signals, etc.² Exact shapes and color intensities for each item would have to be selected to make them contrast obviously. There would have to be an agreement about what each item represented. There would also have to be metacommunicational elements or instructional signals equivalent to stop, repeat, end of message, cancel last element, and so on. To give the code a meaning there would have to be a syntax.

The structure of human behavior has these very characteristics. The units of behavior serve as the elements, and the hierarchical structuring provides the syntax.³ Of course, these characteristics of coding do not have to be contrived. In the case of humans they have evolved (Sebeok 1965; McBride 1968).

Contrary to myth, these behaviors are not coded genetically. They are not species specific behavior for man, but are instead culturally relative. If one is French, he not only speaks French, but uses French kinesics, French systems of address, and so forth. Thus the forms of address and the gestures I have described in Session I are in some cases southern Italian and in other American, but they are not universal. In Black American lower class subjects, the address forms described here are not usually seen. In fact eye-to-eye behavior is rare and is distinguished in Negro culture by a special phrase which I borrowed above, ‘eyeball to eyeball.’ So these behaviors are culturally transmitted. In psychoiogical language, they are learned.

Cognition and Metabehavior

By the same token we must assume that metacommunicative behavior is learned and represented cognitively.

The simplest metabehavior s have been out of awareness in common culture; many were not known until Birdwhistell and others began to research kinesic behavior in the 1950s. Consequently a participant cannot tell us about them.

For example, the nose-wiping is a common metasignal of monitoring. It appeared twenty-eight times in Session I. Each time Marge exhibited herself, for instance, her mother performed this signal, Malone often did so as well, and sometimes Whitaker did. This metasignal can be seen in any transaction when someone behaves deviantly — when a woman's dress rides up, when someone is approached too closely, when someone lies or exaggerates, or passes flatus. Often the person who commits the deviance nose-wipes himself (Scheflen 1963).

But this behavior is performed unconsciously and its significance is not known in common culture (Freud 19 59). If you interview subjects about its meaning they are surprised. They did not know they performed the act, though they may be aware that they felt disapproval. They hasten to explain the monitor by saying that their nose must have itched. In other cases, however, the behavior is known, but there is a myth about its meaning. In rural New Jersey, for example, the occurrence of nose-itching and nose-wiping means ‘company is coming.’

We must assume, then, that people learn the basic formats of both behaving and metabehaving by some unconscious process of identification. They visualize and metacommunicate about others enacting these parts, and they replicate these behaviors by imitation.⁴

Conceptions About Behavioral Forms

People also learn about their behaviors. In many cases the formats of a traditional performance have already been abstracted and these are explicitly taught and written about.

Traditional Conceptions of Behavioral Formats

The recipe of a national dish calls for certain ingredients to be added in a certain order. The liturgy of church services calls for precisely performed acts. The rules of the game prescribe the periods, plays, formations, and so forth. The score of the symphony and the script of the play prescribe the order of passages and scenes. In America there are a great many how-to-do-it books for the various tasks of the culture.

In the case of other traditional behaviors little is known about the formats. This lack of knowledge may not be a simple consequence of nonattention, but a conformity to a deeply entrenched Western ideal of spontaneous and individualistic performance. It would be vigorously denied that customary or prescribed steps occur in such behavior.⁵ Only in the last decade have we examined behaviors like this with filmed recording and systematic observational techniques.

In activities like baby care, courtship, and holding a party, the participants would not realize and might deny emphatically that they were following a format. But each performance of these activities is so alike (in single tradition) that one has to conclude that some common traditional agenda or format must be in use.

As a consequence, we have little information but a plethora of myths about such activities. But whatever ideas, knowledge, or myth, which have developed about the formats of human behavior, these, too, have been learned by the members of common culture. These ideas about behavior also, must be cognitively represented. Thus when we ask a participant about his behavior he will produce for us a culturally traditional myth about the behavior, which is not ordinarily corrected by any systematic observations on his own part. And correspondingly he may enact this myth in language or iconic representation when he explains what he is doing, teaches it, or speaks about behaving while he is behaving.

Complex conceptions have evolved in any culture about the value, propriety, morality, and significance of any behavior we can think of. These metacommunicative systems about behavior are also learned and handed down as part of the cultural heritage. The metabehavior of a transaction has reference to these metaconceptual systems, which we must view as an infrasystem of thought, interrelated to but not identical with the cognitive infrasystems for performing the behavior.

Thus when we take part in a transaction, we perform in two infrasystems. We enact the behaviors elicited in that context, and we say, think, and feel that we have learned we are supposed to say, think, and feel about a performance.⁶ We would be naive to think that the metaconceptual behavior simply describes what is otherwise in progress when it is likely to make the behavior of transaction palatable and seemingly rational. It is likely to dramatize, idealize, or even conceal the other behaviors in progress.

The Disparity Between Behavior and Metaconceptions

So the child or novitiate in a social organization must learn not only how to behave but also how to think and talk about behaving. And there can be considerable disparity between the informational context of these two infrasystems. For example, a child learns to speak the language of his cultural grouping in early childhood. He learns a limited vocabulary, syntax and the markers, transfixes, and junctures of his social group. He also learns the posturology, representational behavior, styles and demeanors, of his dialectic group. Then years later he goes to school and learns grammar, that is, he learns how he ought to speak (by Edwardian standards) and how language is supposed to be structured (by Latin standards). He can produce either of those behavioral variants on demand. He can even pass a test on Latin grammar using an American dialect. (He can, that is, if he is properly middle-class.)

As a consequence a participant can enact a format according to the customary structure and separately metacommunicate about the process.

1.He may, for instance, perform as culturally prescribed while he verbalizes or thinks about the usual metaconceptions about behavior.

2.Or he can exercise a kind of metacommunicative option. He can speak about his or someone’s performance instead of behaving it. And he can, of course, also think or feel about it.

And some participants become accomplished in manipulating these relations to conceal or exploit the performances in a transaction. We might guess that whatever a participant performs visibly in a given context, that he cannot not perform. He can only suppress the majority of the visible performance features.

The Methodological Significance of the Discrepancy

If a person has private myths about his own behavior we can speak of mechanisms of defense, as is the practice in psychoanalysis (A. Freud 1946). But in the case of a conception shared by all members of an institution or culture, a discrepancy is not seen and the members of that group speak of truth and see the metacommunicative system as identical with the behavior performed.

But in both of these cases we cannot assume that the disparity between behavior and language about behavior is simply a matter of ignorance. Individuals and organizations of individuals have an entrenched stake in their metaconceptions. Their repetition of metaconceptions may make anything possible from drumming up the sun to being able to enact the roles of everyday life without loss of self-esteem, loss of job, or loss of interest. We must agree that the natural function of language is not to analyze behavior either for science, insight, or the writing of how-to-do-it books. This is a special use of metacommunication which we have recently made language serve.

A traditional psychological myth therefore comes under scrutiny. In the classical Platonic mode we regard feeling as the cause of behavior. It would be as correct to say that motor behavior causes thoughts and feelings. At best we can hold that behavior is sometimes planned and in such cases thoughts or feelings may be a cause of a performance. So we need to avoid chicken or egg positions. We would rather say that a given context triggers a specific format enactment. This enactment ineludes both visible (and audible) behavior and invisible cognitive behavior.

I think the disparity between metabehavior and less conscious other behavior is what the psychoanalysts have abstracted as ‘the unconscious’ (Freud 1953) and constructs like ‘id,’unconscious motivation and the like appear to refer to behavior not countenanced in traditional explicit metasystems.

The considerations redefine fields like semantics (Korzybski 1948; Hayakawa 1941), classical semiotics (Carnap 1947), and pragmatics (Watzlawick, Beavin, and Jackson 1967).

Since subjects cannot tell us their meaning, modern semiotic studies have turned to a behavioral systems orientation (Sebeok, Hayes, and M. C. Bateson 1964). In such a view all modalities of behavior are examined in the study of communications and the significance of any given unit is analyzed by observing multiple occurrences in context (Bateson 1962, 1969; Scheflen 1966). Whenever a given unit regularly is followed by a given change in context, i. e. , whenever it regularly elicits a given corresponding behavior in other people, we can assume that communication has occurred — even when the participants are not aware of the fact and cannot tell us about the processes (see Section C).

Distrust of subjectivism seems to be a factor in the present tendency to rely on direct observation in the study of behavior. But because metabehavior is also behavior, we will need to study both the observable behavior and the beliefs about this behavior.

ADDENDUM TO SECTION B:
REVIEW OF THE POINT UNITS

In this addendum each type of point for Session I is illustrated with a specific example.

In each illustration the point junctures are described at the right and left upper corners of the picture. On top of the picture (which shows the transfix of that point) is the mode. Below the picture is the lexical content of that point and the time from the beginning of the Session at which this illustrative point occurred (see transcript, Appendix B). Next appear any metacommunicational behaviors of that point. Finally the context in which this type of point occurred is characterized.

Note that the figure of the person carrying out the point in question is drawn in a heavy line, while the others are in dottedline only.