Metacommunication as Second Order Communication

Abstract

By giving full emphasis to the impossibility of not to communicate, the first axiom of communication stresses how communication is an event not subject to cessation. It is this never-ending characteristic that impels us to the need to ponder on metacommunication as "communication about communication". By taking a philosophically informed and pragmatic stance, this paper deals with the concept of "metacommunication" and tries to incorporate it in the theory of communication. New York: E. P. Dutton, p.56 IntroductionOne of the everlasting questions that Communication Theory answers is: what is "communication"? Despite the theoretical differences and scientific ambitions between them, several authors, from Dewey (1927) to Shannon & Weaver (1949) Metacommunication as Second Order CommunicationMateus, S. 81 of meaning? Does the notion of "communication" contain clearly transmissible content? Can it be envisaged as sheer content and form?In a speech entitled "Signature, Event, Context", Derrida asked: "Is it certain that to the word communication corresponds a concept that is unique, univocal, rigorously controllable, and transmittable: in a word, communicable? In accordance with a strange figure of discourse, one must, first of all, ask oneself whether or not the word "communication" communicates a determinate content, an identifiable meaning, or a describable value" (Derrida, 1988: 1).Derrida is, of course, playing with common assumptions in order to deconstruct the concept itself and by doing so, it seems he is alluding to the common notion that to communicate is to "get someone to understand your thoughts or feelings or to give information about (something) to someone" (Merriam-Webster Dictionary Online). He is primarily trying to push the boundaries of what one can comprehend by communication 1 . Of course, there is a representational, directive, clearly transmissible content. It is communication's referential duty: to portrait something about the world. Derrida is also interested in theorizing the displacement of writing by reflecting upon the impossibility to fully saturate the context.The reading of Derrida's oeuvre suggests a critical aspect to communication: the endless allocation of meaning, as if meaning entered a perpetual cycle. In other words, he posits an enlarged and general idea of communication. It is as if communication were a symbolic process that is always escaping us, always in self-reconfiguration. A process with no commencement and no dissolution (cf. Dance, 1967), in constant happening. More importantly, we can read Derrida's insights as a total possibility of meaning: one meaning does not impose itself to another.This assumption on the total deference of meaning, it seems to us, is of vital importance to communication studies since we cannot ponder only the referential duty of communication. One should also consider its relationship aspect (Watzlawick et ali., 1967: 50). This means communicators entail a dynamic process where, along with representation, we need to consider expres...

Metacommunication in the Context of Speech Influence Optimisation

“…In fact, the interdisciplinary idea of every message having a metacommunicative component with metacommunicative functional information concerning how to interpret other messages roots back to 1951, when G. Bateson invented the term within the framework of his research project on communication, placing special emphasis on logical paradoxes (Ruesch & Bateson, 1951;Chan, Foy, & Magliano, 2018). Although the phenomenon of metacommunication has been the subject matter of many sciences, it is in linguistic studies (for instance, influenced by J. Derrida Communication Theory (Mateus, 2017) or theories of selfreferentiality in mass media (Esser, Reinemann & Fan, 2001)) that its nature has been revealed more than once, primarily in its 'technical' function as means of ensuring the free flow of speech interaction (Misnevs & Demiray, 2017). However, the impacting potential of metacommunicative units hasn't been the key focus of scientists' attention yet.…”

Sending all the right signals

“…As covered extensively in Chapter 1, the key promise of customer involvement is that it improves innovation performance by advancing the firm's knowledge on customers' needs for which to develop tailored solutions. The most recent taxonomy depicts three types of customer involvement: as an information source (CIS), as co-developers (CIC), as innovators (CIN) (Cui & Wu, 2015, 2017. Each of the three entails a distinct strategy of managing customer knowledge.…”

“…The fundamental study of decoding how a message is conveyed is also known as metacommunication or "communication about communication" (Mateus, 2017;Ruesch, Bateson, Pinsker, & Combs, 2017). Some scholars consider this parallel communication channel consists of paralanguage (i.e., pitch, volume, pauses, and pace) and nonverbal communication (i.e., proxemics and kinesics -including gestures and facial expressions) (Mateus, 2017). Other scholars classify paralanguage under the umbrella-concept of nonverbal communication (Bernieri & Rosenthal, 1991).…”

“…Beyond absolute sound metrics of prosodic features, paralanguage includes the evaluation of speeches' interruptions (Mateus, 2017;Trager, 1961). Most languages studied are predominantly composed of small units of speech occurring in swift exchanges.…”

“…Some scholars classify them across two dimensions: customer participation as an information resource (CPI) and customer participation as a co-developer (CPC) (Fang, 2008). More recent research depicts three categories of customer participation: as an information source (CIS), as co-developers (CIC), as innovators (CIN) (Cui & Wu, 2015, 2017. Additionally, previous cross-sectional research based on primary data from multiple industries showed that it is difficult to translate customer participation into innovation success (Cui & Wu, 2015).…”