Dialogue: Giving Advice

Mariona: Hi Cludia, You look worried. What's the matter? Cludia: Er.. it's nothing. Mariona: Is it the exam tomorrow? You shouldn't worry. You'll pass easily. Cludia: I know. Mariona: Come on, tell me. What are you worried about? Cludia: OK... it's Mark. I think he has started smoking. I was talking to him yesterday about this topic and he says me that isn't smoking. Mariona: That's serious. What are you going to do? Cludia: I'm not sure. I should tell someone. What do you think I should do? Mariona: If I were you, I'd speak to his older sister. She's really friendly. Cludia: I've never met her. Can you com with me? Mariona: Yes, of course. Let's go and find her.

Jana

: The coffee was nice. Thank you.

Guna : Mow about a game of chess? Jana : No, not today, Guna. I'm in a hurry. I have to catch the 6 o'clock train. Guna : Do you? I'm sorry you have to leave so early. I enjoyed talking to you. Jana : Well, it was an enjoyable chat. But now I must really be going. Ciuna : When do we meet again? Jana : I'll see you again soon. Bye for now!

Guna : Bye, Jana!

Gasking for and giving information A conversation on environmental issues. Rose : I read an article, that all least 21 beaches in the islands of the Great Nicobart in the southernmost part of India, have vanished. Lily : Whats the reason? Rose : Sand mining. His is an unregulated industry in India. If one has a permit to lift a truck load of

sand from a particular plot, five or even ten truck loads are lifted. Lily : How does this lead to the disappearance of the beaches? Rose : Sand dunes arc the earths stock of sand and they prevent the erosion of the coast. Lily : What happens if the beaches vanish? Rose : The villages on the exist lose their line of defence against the force of the sea. They break down tidal winds and safeguard crops and property that lie behind it.Moreover, these are turtlenesting beaches. Where will the turtles go to nest, if the beaches disappear? They too are vanishing. In a move to prevent this, the turtle conservation team comprising the Forest Department Staff and Andaman and Nicobar Environment team guard the turtles when they are nesting. Lily : Something must be done then. Maybe reducing sand and cement based construction. Alternatives like timber, cane and bamboo could be used. We must do something to conserve the beaches which are crucial to an island ecosystem.

Making Complaints
AT THE POLICE STATION Mrs. Gayathri : Good morning Inspector! Id like to report a missing handbag. Inspector : Good morning madam. Sit down and give me the details as to where you lost the handbag, when you came to know it was lost and how it can be identified. Mrs. Gayathri : Sir, I was in the Route 23A bus this morning. As it was the peak hour, the bus was packed. When the bus reached my stop at Egmore I had to get down jostling through the standees with the handbag on my shoulder and a few files in my arms. I was pushed along till I reached the footboard and managed to get down just as the driver drove off. It was only then I real sed that my handbag was missing. Inspector : Please describe your handbag, maam? Mrs. Gayathri : It is a black rectangular leather bag with a long tabular strap of the same material. It is of patent leather with a glossy finish. The bag is about 18" x 12" in size with three compartments. The centre compartment has a zip while each of the outer ones is closed with flaps and brass clasps. In the centre of the clasps are five red stones in a ring. In the right hand corner of one side is stuck a tiny cluster of yellow plastic flowers with green velvety felt leaves. The

compartment on this side contains my phone-book, diary, several old bills and receipts. The compartment on the other side contains a Revlon Burgundy red lipstick, a beige face compact, a small square pocket mirror, a packet of Premier paper handkerchiefs and a pair of round sunglasses in its case. In the centre compartment are my HSBC credit card, ICICI ATM Card and an SBI Debit-cum- ATM Card. My office ID card and a copy of my salary slip are in a zipped pouch along with Rs. 1500/- in cash of hundred rupees denomination. There may be other items like a Cello gripper blue ball-point pen, some hairclips. toothpicks Im not too sure! Inspector : OK Maam. You have given us a fairly good description. Well do our best to help you. Just hand in a formal complaint to the constable who is seated in the next room and get a copy of the First Information Report. Mrs. Gayathri : Thank you. Sir! Inspector : And dont forget to leave your phone number and address for contact. Mrs. Gayathri : Of course! 1 shant forget! Thank you once again

A telephone talk between a VIP and the Principal of a college. The VIP will be the chief guest for a function in the college. VIP : Hello, Good morning, Im Chandrasekar speaking from Bangalore. Principal : Hello, Good morning, Sir. Im the Principal of CAT College at Chennai. This is about your stay. The choice is yours, Sir. Our guest house or a suite in a hotel. VIP : I generally find a suite in a hotel more satisfactory. Principal : Well book a suite in the Hotel Alankar. VIP : Thats very kind of you. Ill be there on Wednesday morning by nine. Principal : Were looking forward to your visit, Sir. VIP : Thank you, see you bye. Principal : Good-bye, Sir.

Making Suggestions Thea: Now would be a good time to tell me about suggestion, if youre in the mood to talk. I know thats a pet idea of yours. Guy: Im almost always ready to talk, as you know. And youre right that suggestion is one of my pet ideas. I like it a lot.

Thea: Well, lets start with the transaction that just occurred: I made a suggestion to talk about something. You accepted my suggestion. Now Im making another suggestion about where to start. How does your notion of suggestion fit with the ordinary meaning of this word? Guy: Its the same, really but generalized to cover all communication of whatever kind. Its a convenient way to discuss the transfer of meaning, as distinct from all material transfers of matter, energy or force.

Thea: But not all communications are suggestions surely. Guy: They are, you know, if you think of a communication in semantic terms, with regard to the meanings it conveys. Any message worthy of the name can be thought of as suggesting not necessarily causing some pattern in the system that receives it. The suggestion you just made to discuss the concept of suggestion raised it as a pattern first in my mind, and then in the conversation between us. Any sign or diagram or word performs a similar function. For example, just by saying the word kangaroo, I am suggesting that you think of a blue kangaroo, drawing upon whatever patterns now represent those animals in your mind and brain. There. It worked, didnt it? You wouldnt have thought about blue kangaroos just now, if I hadnt mentioned them. We use structured strings of words, to suggest patterns of thought to each others minds. You are suggesting that there is some important distinction between suggestions and other types of communication. My counter-suggestion is that individual minds, inter-personal relationships, and society as a whole can be conceived as self-organizing systems of suggestion as cognitive ecologies of suggestion, in fact. By stretching this notion a little, and taking it as the primitive of all communication, Gregory Batesons great concept of an ecology of mind can be unpacked and realized. Minds, cultures even whole societies can be conceived and studied as ecologies of suggestion.

the power of suggestion Thea: But why suggestion, rather than message, sign or information? Why bring this new term into it? Whats wrong with the words we use today? Guy: Those words have their uses, but as primitive terms for a theory of communication, they misplace the emphasis: The word message stresses the physical entity and process of communication. Well and good; but a given message can be understood differently by different people or by the same person at different times. Information can be true or false, and is supposed to tell us what is the case. In the ordinary sense, information is pure description, without causal power or influence. Confusingly, the same word has a different, technical meaning as an engineers term for the quantity of data stored in a

file or sent through a channel as a radio signal, for example. In this sense, information is meaning-less per se, until the correct interpretive key is supplied. Its just a measure of the amount of uncertainty that was present before the message was received as compared with the amount that remains afterward. Its a statistical concept, closely related to that of entropy in statistical mechanics. Thea: But information is also used for control purposes. Its a cybernetic concept as well: a difference that makes a difference as your hero Bateson put it. Guy: Bateson had the correct insight, but was not as careful as he needed to be about the meaning of his key term. The difference that makes a difference is not a piece of information. Its neither a pure description nor a quantity of data. To be precise, Batesons difference that makes a difference is a suggestion. The suggestion is just precisely the difference that is made. Besides, though suggestions may be carried by news of difference, they may be carried by sameness as well. Persistent cold carries the evolutionary suggestion that bodies should insulate better or burn their calories faster. Persistent dryness carries the suggestion to take up and use water more efficiently. Sameness often carries a suggestion to seek interesting novelty. Thats what boredom means. Another point is that the difference that makes a difference is stubborn and durable in a way that information in itself is not. Information can easily be negated. In transmitting a message, you can change a 1 to a 0 (or vice versa), or you can stick the words no or not into a description to reverse its meaning. But suggestions can only be deterred or discouraged in some fashion or opposed by alternative, competing suggestions. I can tell you that something is not the case; but a suggestion that you not think about something draws it all the more strongly to your attention. Dont think about blue kangaroos now! I forbid you to do so!

Thea: The forbidden fruit effect. Telling Eve not to eat the apple almost guaranteed that she would eat it. Guy: Precisely. That story attests not to Mans sinful nature, but to our sensitivity to suggestions: the more sternly something is forbidden, the more vivid it becomes and the more desirable it must be. You never forbid children to do what they are not inclined to do what would never spontaneously occur to them.

Thea: As the Chinese said, when people lost sight of the Tao, codes of morality and justice were created. What about signs? They behave more like suggestions in this respect, dont they? Guy: Yes. A sign, like a suggestion, directs attention to what it signifies, and does so even when it tries to do the opposite. But the concept of sign is too narrow: While all signs are suggestions, not all suggestions are signs. The firing of one nerve cell suggests the firing of another to which it connects without being a sign of that next firing. Imitative learning works by taking the actions of a role model as important suggestions, though they are not signs of anything but themselves. Also, while we can usually observe what a given message suggests to a living creature (or to a robot for that matter), we can only guess at what it signifies.

Thea: If I understand you, the word suggestion focuses on the pragmatic content of a message, as those other words do not. A suggestion means what it tells its recipient to do. Guy: Right provided you recognize that thinking or imagining is also a kind of internal doing, so that a suggestion to imagine having a beer is as pragmatic (in this sense) as the suggestion to actually have one. The distinction is a crucial aspect of education, however: art and literature suggest that we imagine many things that they may or may not suggest we actually do. They may

suggest that we imagine something, precisely to suggest we not do it although that does not usually work well, as we just saw with apples. By contrast, words like message, information and sign step around the question of semantic content the meaning of a communication to the person who receives it. This is unfortunate, because meaning is the central dimension of communication. In psychology and the social sciences, its what we really want to talk about, and we need a word that gets at it directly.