Meta-communication is a secondary communication (including indirect cues)

about About may refer to: * About (surname) * About.com, an online source for original information and advice * about.me, a personal web hosting service * ''abOUT'', a Canadian LGBT online magazine * ''About Magazine'', a Texas-based digital platform ...

how a piece of information is meant to be interpreted. It is based on the idea that the same message accompanied by different meta-communication can mean something entirely different, including its opposite, as in

irony Irony (), in its broadest sense, is the juxtaposition of what on the surface appears to be the case and what is actually the case or to be expected; it is an important rhetorical device and literary technique. Irony can be categorized into ...

."Mind, Nature, and Consciousness: Gregory Bateson and the New Paradigm."
Stanislav Grof, M.D. The term was brought to prominence by

Gregory Bateson Gregory Bateson (9 May 1904 – 4 July 1980) was an English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician, and cyberneticist whose work intersected that of many other fields. His writings include '' Steps to an ...

to refer to "communication about communication", which he expanded to: "all exchanged cues and propositions about (a) codification and (b) relationship between the communicators".Communication: The Social Matrix of Psychiatry, Ruesch and Bateson, 1951, p. 209 Meta-communication may or may not be congruent, supportive or contradictory of that verbal communication.The Free Dictionar
Metacommunication
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Origin of the concept

invented the term in 1951. Bateson suggested the significance of metacommunication in 1951, and then elaborated upon one particular variation, the message "this is play," in 1956.Bateson, G. (1956). The message 'this is play.' In B. Schaffner (Ed.), Group processes: Transactions of the second conference (pp. 145-242) New York: Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation. A critical fact for Bateson was that every message could have a metacommunicative element, and typically, each message held metacommunicative information about how to interpret other messages. He saw no distinction in type of message, only a distinction in function. Some metacommunicative signals are nonverbal. The term

kinesics Kinesics is the interpretation of body motion communication such as facial expressions and gestures, nonverbal behavior related to movement of any part of the body or the body as a whole. The equivalent popular culture term is body language, a t ...

, referring to body motion communication and occasionally employed by Bateson, was first used in 1952 by

Ray Birdwhistell Ray L. Birdwhistell (September 29, 1918 – October 19, 1994) was an American anthropologist who founded kinesics as a field of inquiry and research.Danesi, M (2006). Kinesics. ''Encyclopedia of language & linguistics''. 207-213. Birdwhistell co ...

an anthropologist who wished to study how people communicate through posture, gesture, stance, and movement. Part of Birdwhistell's work involved filming people in social situations and analyzing them to show different levels of communication not clearly seen otherwise. Birdwhistell's research was influenced by

Margaret Mead Margaret Mead (December 16, 1901 – November 15, 1978) was an American cultural anthropologist who featured frequently as an author and speaker in the mass media during the 1960s and the 1970s. She earned her bachelor's degree at Barnard Co ...

and

; all three were participants in the Macy Conferences in Group Processes, and both Birdwhistell and Bateson were part of a later multidisciplinary collaboration, ''The Natural History of an Interview''. From 1952–1962, Bateson directed a research project on communication. This paid particular attention to logical paradoxes including

Russell's paradox In mathematical logic, Russell's paradox (also known as Russell's antinomy) is a set-theoretic paradox discovered by the British philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell in 1901. Russell's paradox shows that every set theory that contains a ...

1901 and to

Bertrand Russell Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, ...

's Theory of Types, Russell's solution to it. Bateson and his associates here pioneered the concept of meta-communication - something that means different (often contradictory) things at different levels. Meta-communication is thought to be a characteristic feature of

complex systems A complex system is a system composed of many components which may interact with each other. Examples of complex systems are Earth's global climate, organisms, the human brain, infrastructure such as power grid, transportation or communication s ...

Studies and areas of research

Meta-language and logic

In 1975,

Frits Staal Johan Frederik "Frits" Staal (3 November 1930 – 19 February 2012) was the department founder and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and South/Southeast Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Staal specialized in the study of V ...

related the term to the

metalanguage In logic and linguistics, a metalanguage is a language used to describe another language, often called the ''object language''. Expressions in a metalanguage are often distinguished from those in the object language by the use of italics, quot ...

concept that is found in

logic Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premises ...

both in Western and Indian traditions. Staal considered the term metalanguage, or its German or Polish equivalent, to have been introduced in 1933 by the

logician Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premises ...

Alfred Tarski Alfred Tarski (, born Alfred Teitelbaum;School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St Andrews ''School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St Andrews''. January 14, 1901 – October 26, 1983) was a Polish-American logician a ...

, whom he credits with having made apparent its real significance. Russell's 1902 solution to his

logical paradox A paradox is a logically self-contradictory statement or a statement that runs contrary to one's expectation. It is a statement that, despite apparently valid reasoning from true premises, leads to a seemingly self-contradictory or a logically u ...

comes in large part from the so-called ''

vicious circle principle The vicious circle principle is a principle that was endorsed by many predicativist mathematicians in the early 20th century to prevent contradictions. The principle states that no object or property may be introduced by a definition that depen ...

'', that no propositional function can be defined prior to specifying the function's scope of application. In other words, before a function can be defined, one must first specify exactly those objects to which the function will apply (the function's domain). For example, before defining that the predicate "is a prime number", one first needs to define the collection of objects that might possibly satisfy the predicate, namely the set, N, of natural numbers. It functions as a formal definition of the function of meta-communication in communication.

Ivan Pavlov: Context as meta-signaling about primary signal

Ivan Pavlov Ivan Petrovich Pavlov ( rus, Ива́н Петро́вич Па́влов, , p=ɪˈvan pʲɪˈtrovʲɪtɕ ˈpavləf, a=Ru-Ivan_Petrovich_Pavlov.ogg; 27 February 1936), was a Russian and Soviet experimental neurologist, psychologist and physiol ...

had learned that the ringing of the bell signaled "food is on the way" in his experiment in which dogs were trained to salivate upon hearing a bell ring. This was accomplished by ringing a bell just prior to feeding the dogs. After repeating this procedure for some time it was found that the dogs would salivate after hearing the bell - without the need for food being presented. Something that is not often discussed in context with this experiment is the fact that the dogs would not salivate unless they were wearing a special harness. When exposed to the bell ringing without wearing the harness, the dogs did not salivate. The dogs only salivated upon hearing the bell ''while wearing the harness''. The bell ringing was direct communication of information, but the context of the communication also conveyed information.

Communication Theory

The concept of metacommunication has also been related to Communication Theory. Mateus (2017), influenced by Derrida's Graphematic Structure of Communication, suggested to see metacommunication as a self-differentiating redundancy. The concept here "describes communication as an ad infinitum process in which every communication supposes always more communication. Metacommunication is the answer to the relationship level of communication and that's why we postulate metacommunication as a re-communicating communication" (Mateus, 2017).

Self-referentiality in mass media

In 2001 study, it was used to discuss self-referentiality in mass media covering politics and was explained as a consequence of the political

public relations Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing and disseminating information from an individual or an organization (such as a business, government agency, or a nonprofit organization) to the public in order to influence their perception. P ...

' presence in media themselves. "Spin Doctors in the United States, Great Britain, and Germany Metacommunication about Media Manipulation"
- Frank Esser, Carsten Reinemann, David Fan. In: ''

The International Journal of Press/Politics ''The International Journal of Press/Politics'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering the field of political science and journalism, especially the linkages between the news media and political processes and actors. The editor-in ...

'' January 2001 vol. 6 no. 1, pp.16-45

Metamessage

In Bateson's works, metamessage was defined (1972) as a refinement of his earlier notion of "mood sign ls from his works of the 1950s. Invoking

Theory of Logical Types A theory is a rational type of abstract thinking about a phenomenon, or the results of such thinking. The process of contemplative and rational thinking is often associated with such processes as observational study or research. Theories may be s ...

, Bateson envisaged a potentially infinite hierarchy of messages, metamessages, meta-metamessages and so forth, each metamessage deterministically providing the full context for the interpretation of subordinate messages. Being rather technical, his definition was misunderstood, and ''metamessage'' appropriated with the same meaning as

subtext Subtext is any content of a creative work, which is not announced explicitly (by characters or author), but is implicit, or becomes something understood by the audience. Subtext has been used historically to imply controversial subjects without ...

, especially in the field of

business communication Business communication is communication that is intended to help a business achieve a fundamental goal, through information sharing between employees as well as people outside the company. It includes the process of creating, sharing, listening, ...

. Additionally, Bateson's strictly hierarchical theory was criticized for not reflecting some real-world communication phenomena, where any signal (regardless of level) can be deceitful.