·

·

Welcome 2014

#metablog

Posts Are Not Articles. Most academic bloggers write fewer than 1000 words per post. I like my students to begin exploring an idea in a post that may grow into a formal piece of writing. This means a less formal but still appropriate tone, a laying out of concepts, perhaps one post at a time as writers do research or think through a problem. Blogs can make excellent logs of research projects, in fact, so faculty can assess student performance and students can review records of what they found, and did not, during the process.
[Source: Writer's Web: Effective Academic Blogging]
My posts are definitely longer than 1000 words, but then again I mostly (or even only) quote. I do explore ideas in my posts that "may grow into a formal piece of writing". To this end, today I'm going to reflect on some ideas that I wish to approach, maybe even form into formal writings, in the coming year (2014). In that sense this blog is an "excellent log of research projects". The ideas below have appeared in more or less explicit form as scatterings among various posts. There is no-one to assess my performance, as such, but presumably I will be able to assess myself in the future.

On that note I'd like to make a few #metablog remarks about the future-orientedness of semiosis that I've come to embrace this year. Namely I've taken a liking to Peirce's contention that thinking consists in engaging at an earlier time in cognition that one will understand at a later time. I understood this intuitively when I started blogging in 2007 - whatever I write right now will become significant in the future when I'm more knowledgeable and able to as-if "see through myself". The logic behind this is simple: whatever ideas or theories I am grappling at the moment, I will continue to grapple with them for some time, at least until I've figured them out and can leave them behind. Fortunately or unfortunately most ideas and theories are not simple matters, at least not in semiotics.

One part of this is that I am aware that when I write long or complicated texts, there is no-one better suited to read and understand them than myself in the future. In 2008 I started blogging with exactly this aim in sight - writing walls of texts "uninviting" enough to take away any urge to actually read them. The idea was that one does not have to use esoteric language or codes to "hide one's meaning" but it is enough to spread the meaning out as a long text. This worked great - I didn't have almost any readers.

Another part of it is mnemonic. I am also aware that my memory is less than perfect and if I want to truly remember something, I'll have to write it down. This contention has served current blog well, as I've managed to accumulate a wealth of knowledge that is ultimately stored in a single 1000+ page PDF file. Recollecting an obscure idea or notion is merely a Ctrl+F away.

But enough of this sentimentalism. At one point I'll revisit all of the #metablog-related quotes and write a post explicitly discussing blogging.

Personal jargon


Over the past few years, reading and studying semiotics, I've concocted some esoteric terms of my own. I'm sure there's a component of vanity in all of this, but right now these terms serve as shorthands for some ideas that I'd like to write about some day. Labeling certain quotes with these terms, I can later find them when necessary. At the moment I consider these terms to be half-baked or "in development", which is why I'm not going to quote anyone but try to formulate their significance and signification from the top of my head.

nonverbalism
This term originates from Allan Pease, whom I otherwise detest. I've taken up this term because it seems to fit my conception of someone who studies nonverbal behaviour and communication. I don't think there are a lot of nonverbalists, strictly speaking, because most researchers who approach nonverbal phenomena do it from one discipline or perspective or another. A true nonverbalist, which I don't think even I quality to be called, studies nonverbal communication only or focally. In the loose sense of the term, most anyone can be or become a nonverbalist when watching people and observing their behaviour. I'm still in the process of elucidating the different varieties of nonverbalism.

semiophrenia
An utterly worthless term, but one I enjoy because of its simplicity. It may sound like schizophrenia, but that's not it at all. I would translate it (intralingually) as sign-mindedness or (interlingually) märgimeelsus. The Estonian translation better captures the essence of this term, as phrenos is not only mind but "diaphragm, heart, mind"; that is, meel captures not only mind but also sense perception as well as memory, mood, etc. In the full sense of the term as I imagine it, semiphrenia is the belief that signs do operate the mind, sense, memory, mood, and other stuff. I'd add that one does not absolutely have to be a semiophrenic to be a semiotician, but it certainly helps. Its relation to pansemiotics is as of yet still open.

concourse
RA Scion begins his track "Ex Oriente Lux" with: "Primordial confluence, matchless induction, concourse incomparable, full-phenomenal function, fortune foreordained, close-spill radiate, shine star elucidate, show 'em how to move through time and space!" So it might seem like just another more obscurer than thou word that almost no-one ever uses intelligibliy. I got it from Nauta (1972: 201) in the sense that information in concursive "when behavior is mediated by representation". I intentionally left out the rest of the quote to suit my limited needs: that of representing behaviour via various sign systems and modalities. Very simplistically, concourse concerns verbal representation of nonverbal behaviour.

somatoception
I made up this term by obviously dicking around with the title of the movie Inception that was about "dreams within dreams". Somatoception is about "bodies and behaviours within dreams". It sounds "very scientific", like proprioception, but signifies an easily explainable phenomenon that can also be called simply "body imaginations" or even "bodily imagery". Just like concourse, this term carves out a slice of life that would otherwise go either unnoticed or get lost in the wealth of ways to describe or label it. For me it's just another neat little shorthand for collecting quotes and discussing it without using too many words.

Achievements?


"Reembodying Semiotics of Culture"
Read it online. In May this year I had my first formal publication. The paper set out to reembody semiotics of culture - the aim was to "reintroduce" nonverbal communication to our local brand of textualist semiotics. In the paper I put forth the notion of concourse. I wrote it last December.

"Semiootilised lähenemised autokommunikatsioonile"
I finished this paper five days ago. It's my first academic writing in estonian. I tried to give an overview of notions and theories similar to autocommunication (or self-communication) in various writers (Peirce, Mead, Morris, Ruesch, Jakobson and finally Lotman). I've been interested in autocommunication for a while now but in this paper I didn't manage to put forth "nonverbal self-communication" which is my true aim, a theory of the nonverbal self, so to say. If all goes well, though, it will appear in Acta Semiotica Estica in spring 2014.

"Somatoception" / "Kehakujutlused"
I had the idea to pull a prank this summer. The idea was to write a very serious-looking paper about body imaginations with references that are completely made-up bunk. Then Kiwa approached me with an option to write an "experimental literature" piece, e.g. a fake scientific paper. I finished the English text in the beginning of December and the estonian translation today. It will appear in Olematute Raamatute Antoloogia ("An Anthology of Non-Existent Books") in spring 2014.

Now I'd like to ponder some pieces that may or may not become formal publications in 2014.

The Regulative Function of Nonverbal Communication

Taking a course or Roman Jakobson this semester I've come to compare his communication model to that of Jurgen Ruesch. Perhaps the significant difference is that the latter has seven elements instead of six. Jakobson dispensed with the back-and-forth nature of communication as well as the thing that makes back-and-forth transmission possible, the seventh element, effect. Then I discovered, while reading random zoosemiotics, that Ekman and Friesen's category of regulators, which the abandoned soon after inventing it, might originate from the study of primates. My "original" idea is to put effect back into the communication model and associate it with the "regulative function". That is, every act of communication is ideally also an act of regulation. Communicators mutually regulate each others behaviour. If done well I can use this notion to appreach the relation of power and nonverbal communication, especially in dystopian fiction where the impersonal totalitarian regime makes regulation omnipresent. This may or may not become by BA thesis.

Intersemiotic Translation and Concourse

Another outcome of reading Roman Jakobson is the exact definition of intersemiotic translation. Namely, the process is unidirectional - from verbal to nonverbal, not vice versa as it is sometimes imagined. That is, my long-held doubt that "intersemiotic translation" doesn't really capture concourse (which "translates" nonverbal behaviour into verbal symbols). The idea is to compare these notions as well as some others with some thoroughness and see if intersemiotic translation or transmutation or even Langer's symbolic transformations can elaborate types of concourse or concursivity in general. It would be nice to publish it in the journal of intersemiotic translation.

Dreams and Bodies

Since writing "Somatoception" was so fun, I'm thinking about giving it another shot, writing under a pseudonym again and taking another "pranky" approach. That is, I may use actual sources this time, but I would make it an "artistic text" by writing it in an archaic manner imitating the earliest papers I've read (from the 1940s-1960s) and instead of actually publishing it make a fake JSTOR-paper out of it. It'd be fun to try to make it look as if it was actually published in the early 70s and downloaded from JSTOR's database. I would probably just upload it to academia.edu

And that's it. That's basically all the development I can recount this year. It has certainly been a productive year, but I haven't advanced academically and if I do finish BA then it will probably occur in 2015, because I'm taking another academic vocation to fix my health.

Lingvistiline Mets (netis)

Lingvistiline Mets (netis)

Metsarahvaste traditsioonis ei pruugi inimtegevus loodusega vastuoksa kasvada, metsiku lingvistika vaatenurgast vaadates kerkib esile hoopis loovuse transtsendentne iseloom, piiridest üle ja välja pääsemise tung.
[Source: Karina Talts, Peeter Laurits: loovus ja kultuuripoliitika]
Mis asi on metsik lingvistika? Lingvistiline antropoloogia? Kas loovusel on transendentne [spirituaalne või mittefüüsiline] iseloom? Kõhutunne ütleb, et see on vihje Valdur Mikita hilisele raamatule Lingvistiline Mets. Joonas loeb seda, Kunnus andis Goodreads'is maksimumpunktid ja kõik tunduvad olevat sillas sellest raamatust. Kohe nii väga, et "metsikust lingvistikast" on saanud käibeväljend? Mis mul üle jääb kui võtta sõbra soovitust arvesse ja lugeda ka. Lugemisest hoidumiseks on muidugi rohkem põhjuseid - mul on parasjagu hoopis kirjutada vaja, ma loen viimasel ajal hoopis vanu (eelmise sajandi keskpaiga) artikleid (eriti mimeograafitud artikleid mis on juba oma väljanägemise poolest nauditavad) ja nüüd võtsin ootamatult käsile Husserli (mistõttu olen "transendentaalsuse" suhtes negatiivselt meelestatud). Ja kas maailmas pole juba piisavalt logotsentrismi? On's vaja hakata lingvistika kaudu ka loodusega metafooriliselt mängima? Lugema lükkab aga kihk olla korrakski vaimselt "siin ja praegu", ronida lainele millel nii paljud tunduvad olevat. Kuna Lingvistiline Mets on kõikjal peale Viljandi Kultuuriakadeemia täielikult välja laenutatud, pean esialgu piirduma netis leiduvate tsitaatidega. Võib-olla saan piisavalt täieliku ülevaate, et raamatut ennast ei hakkagi lugema. It is also out of a deep distrust of popular- or pseudoscience that I must innoculate myself against this discourse.
Lingvistiline mets on sülem inspireerivaid ja ebaharilikke mõtteid eesti keelest, loodusest ja kultuurist. See on kosutav lugemine kõigile, kes otsivad vastust küsimusele, miks on Eesti maagiline paik. Raamatus on juttu seentest, putukatest, soome-ugrist, suitsusaunast, metsast, kultuuriteooriast, jalgrattasõidust ning päratust kosmiliste mõõtmetega kartulikonksust, mida veel ükski eestlane pole suutnud Munamäe küljest lahti kiskuda.
[Source: Lingvistiline mets - Apollo]
Seega aimekirjandus või isegi kunstitekst. Eesti maagilisuse jälitamine kõlab nagu eestlastele seljale patsutamine, oleme küll erilised, oleme küll. Mind huvitab see kultuuriteooria osa, aga kõhutunne ütleb, et see on Cassirer-Lotmanlik kultuurifilosoofia mis ei tee keelel ja kultuuril erilist vahet. Eeldan ka, et mind huvitavast aspektist - eestlaste käitumisest - öeldakse parimal juhul midagi "moka otsast" (vähe).
Semiootik, esseist ja raamatu "Metsik lingvistika" autor Valdur Mikita kaitses 2000. aastal doktorikraadi semiootikas. Doktoritöö teemaks oli "Kreatiivsuskäsitluste võrdlus semiootikas ja psühholoogias" - ehk teisisõnu loovusega seotud küsimused. Doktoritööga kaasas oli väike luuleraamatuke "Äpardumise rõõm", täis pigem loovuse- kui äpardumisrõõmsat keelemängu. Hiljem on tema sulest ilmunud veel luulekogu "Rännak impampluule riiki" (määratlus: impampluule on semiootiline masin, mis valmistab keelt juhuslikust materjalist), Pärnu Turunduskonverentsi üllitatuna raamatuke "Kirsiõieturundus" ning keele ja kirja üle mõtisklev "Metsik lingvistika".
[Source: Lingvistiline mets by Valdur Mikita — Reviews, Discussion, Bookclubs, Lists]
Nüüd tulid otsad kokku kust Mikita nimi tuttav on. Olen korduvalt silmanud kuidas tema doktoritöö istub utlibi psühholoogiariiulil väga üksikuna. Ühtlasi selgitab see miks ta käis semiootika sügiskoolis esinemas; "Apardumise rõõm" võib-olla isegi seda miks üks teine esineja pidas ettekande nurjumise teemal. Keelele ja kirjale keskendumine näib kinnitavat, et eestlaste arusaam kultuurist on (tänu Lotmanile) põhiliselt tekstualistlik. Kultuur on nii lai mõiste, et selle domeeni kuulub "kogu eluviis" (a total way of life), aga eestlase jaoks samastub see just keele ja kirjaga. Tähendab, me ei ole tegelikult lahti öelnud kõrgkultuuri kontseptsioonist, ükstapuha kui paljud ka üldisema kontseptsiooni poole ei rabeleks (Talts ja Laurits teevad oma arvamusartiklis sama).
Lugemisnaudingule vaatamata on mul Mikitat lugedes aeg-ajalt siiski vastupandamatu tahtmine jälgida kõrvalt autori nägu ja kehakeelt ajal, mil ta ise loeks valjult (mitte vaid pelgalt sisekõneliselt) ette Niklas Luhmanni lausutud järgmisi sõnu: «Ühelt poolt on mul vajadus igasse raamatusse sisse sokutada vähemalt üks mõttetus. /.../ Minu stiil on irooniline, kui seda täpselt markeerida. Tahan sellega öelda, et ärgem võtkem mind liiga tõsiselt ja ärgem mõistkem mind liiga kiiresti.»
[Source: Kakskaru jahimeestega lingvistilises metsas - AK - Arvamus]
Tehniliselt on kõik korrektne: nägu ei kuulu kehakeelde rohkem kui käežestid. Originaaltähenduses on see siiski kogu-keha-keel (full-body language; Latif 1934). Mõttetuste kirjutamist ei oska kommenteeridagi. Sellest saan aru, et lugeja seisukohalt võib igas teoses olla suurem osa tekstist üdini mõttetu; tahtlik mõttetus on sellest seisukohast tähendusetu, sest lugeja ei pruugi seda märgata või võib mõttetusest luua midagi vägagi mõttekat.
«Lingvistiline mets» annab õppejõule suurepärase võimaluse ärgitada diskussiooni näiteks selle üle, mis võiks olla meie rahvusliku identiteedi eripära, kuivõrd muutuv tohiks see ajas olla ja mida ilmtingimata oleks muul maailmal põhjust meilt õppida.
Justkui kultuuri saaks keelata, juhtida, suunata. Mulle tundub pigem, et kultuur on "autopoieetiline" või iseennast-reguleeriv süsteem mis ei allu selle kandjate suvale väga kergesti. Aga eks siin ole tegu administratiivinimese seisukohaga ja toimib samasugune naaivne usk juhitavusse nagu on iseäralik haridusinimestele kes räägivad suure suuga õpilaste käitumise muutmisest. Teine tülinoritav aspekt on jällegi eestlusele seljale patsutamine: teistel on meilt midagi õppida. Aga kas me ise õpime oma naabritelt? Õpime me midagi Uruguailt?
Milliseid lauseid siis konkreetsemalt võib kõnealusest raamatust leida? No näiteks selliseid. «Usutavasti teevad meie lapselapsed kõrvitsaga rääkimises juba märkimisväärseid edusamme.» (33) «Teatud mõttes on mets ainus tõeline Eesti Rahva Muuseum – püha kiri, milles on kõik sees.» (35) «Iga korraliku eestlase sauna taga seisab väike ajamasin, millega ta nädalalõpul paleoliitikumis väikese tiiru sooritab.» (48) «Jalgratas pole mitte niivõrd liikumisvahend, kuivõrd tunnetuslik riistapuu. Minu arvates on paljud eestlased sündinud n-ö Ereljukase-ajuga.» (50)
Mul oli ka väiksena Ereljukase jalgratas, aga "tunnetuslik riistapuu" on juba liiga palju. Need laused näivad nonsenssina. Tahtmine raamatut lugeda on juba pühitud, aga otsus pole veel kindel.
Mikita näib arvavat, et edasi tuleks liikuda siiski seni veel olemas olevate kultuuri- või keelesaarte ning metsiku looduse roheliste täppide (taas)avastamise poole. Nüüd tuleb vältimatult tsiteerida. «Eestisse on koondunud hämmastav kogus kõikvõimalikku perifeeriat. Eesti on omamoodi väikeste nähtamatute asjade kultuur. Just väikesed asjad loovad peamise osa maailma tõelisest variatiivsusest. Enamik väikevorme on maailmast viimase sajandiga kadunud. Kaovad varjud, hingused, sosinad, kaovad pooltoonid. Kultuurist ja mõtlemisest kipuvad kaduma aimdused ja salapära.» (8) Kenasti öeldud ju.
Ei nõustu üldse. Nende "väikevormide" hulk ei ole vähenenud, vaid minu arvates vastupidi mitmekordistunud. Mikita on vananedes võib-olla kaotanud võime neid näha, aga nad on olemas - kolinud internetti, instant chat vestlustesse, lõpututesse tulevatesse ja minevatesse veebikeskkondadesse (last.fm-ist ask.fm-ini). Väikevormid ei ole ära kadunud vaid muutunud ja kel pole silmi millega seda näha, jääbki sellest ilma. See on võib-olla kole mõte, et väikeseid iseärasusi ei näe enam nii palju palja silmaga kuiet ekraani pealt, aga eriti parata sellesse ei ole.
Eestlased olla Mikita sõnutsi ühed vähestest rahvastest, kel on veel arvestataval kujul säilinud oma metsamälu. Meil olla märkimisväärne hulk inimesi, kes langevad metsas ekstaatiliste elamuste rüppe, ilma et nad sellest erilist numbrit teeksid. «See on omamoodi fenomen – meil on igas suguvõsas ikka mõni veidi metsa poole,» kirjutab Mikita. (18)
No vot, ongi lõhe olemus avastatud. Kuulun nende noorte hulka kes on metsamälu ära kaotanud; võõrandunud maateadvusest või "maast välja kasvanud" nagu Aldo Leopold ütleks.
Õnneks ei piirdu metsiku teadvuse hõlvamise (ja teadvuse sellele valdkonnale tugineva toimimise) metodoloogiline arsenal Mikita jaoks siiski pelgalt vaid mitmiktajulise lähenemisega. Selle kõrval peab Mikita ülimalt oluliseks ja tähenduslikuks ka nn kolmanda kirjaoskuse ehk sisekõne (või autokommunikatsiooni) arendamist.
Kolmas kirjaoskus? Wat. Ilmselt järjekordne tekstualistlik vimka, et autokommunikatsiooni seostatakse kirjutamisega, mitte nt mõtlemisega (Peirce), tegutsemisega (Mead), käitumisega (Morris), tajumisega (Ruesch), kõnelemisega (Jakobson) jne.
Ma armastan metsa ja ma usun, et saan temast siiani aru. Seega, ma tahan uskuda kõike, mis selles raamatus kirjas. Ja ma usun, et ma ka mõistan seda. Või vähemalt teoreetiliselt peaksin mõistma.
[Source: Indigoaalane: Valdur Mikita Lingvistiline mets]
Nii vähe kui ma olen tsitaate kohanud tundub mulle, et Mikita mõistmine on kui mitte võimatu siis vähemasti ääretult raske.
Nagu autor ise ütleb- meie teadvus on märgistatud. Me oleme õpetatud õigesti või "õigesti" mõtlema.
Mõttekuriteo troop! Kaldub juba ideoloogiateooriasse. Isiklikult usun, et ma olen õppinud mõtlema, mitte, et mind on õpetatud mõtlema. Aga nüüd olen ma juba justkui uhke, et ma õpetajate sõna ei kuula ja asju isemoodi teen.
Ning teine, väga oluline põhjus. Need raamatud kasvatavad uhkust Eesti üle. Annavad sulle teadmise, et Eesti maa ja rahvas ja keel ja kultuur ja ajalugu.. see on midagi ääretult ägedat, salapärast... Kui meie lastel oleks tugevam identiteet ja uhkus oma rahvuse ja rahva üle, ehk jääks nad siia?
Sest kui eestlane olla on uhke ja hää siis elan õnnelikult ka peost suhu, vaesunud ja väljavaadeteta, täites kõhtu kultuurikuuluvusega?
Valdur Mikita “Lingvistiline mets” on erakordselt võluv — lausa sulavõi ja kärjemesi! — mütopoeetiline esseistika, mis, väikse kavala tulukesega silmanurgas, üritab tänapäeva eestlast ühendada meie ülikauge mineviku (Baltika ürgmanner kuussada miljonit aastat tagasi) ja sama kauge tulevikuga ning teadvuse ja olemise erinevate tasanditega.
Siin rõhutatakse müstika ja kehalisuse tähtsust. Inimene on eeskätt tegija, mitte mõtleja. Et suuta olla, vajame puhkust semiootilisest lärmist, vahendatud kultuurist — tähenduse vaigistamist. Et anda inimesele tagasi tema sisekõne maagiline jõud, on vaja selleks sobivat keelt. Arhailise inimese jaoks oli selleks loits, laul ja tants. Tänapäeva inimese jaoks on arendamata ressursiks sünesteesia ehk mitmiktaju.
[Source: “Lingvistiline mets” | tavainimene]
Tsitaatide järgi tundub see "mütopoeetiline esseistika" pigem nagu pilves semiootiku umbluu. Mind huvitab kehalisuse tähtsus, aga müstika? 21. sajandil? "Semiootiline lärm" kõlab huvitavalt, aga semantic noise on kurikuulsalt kehvasti mõistetud kontsept ja nagunii mõtleb Mikita selle all "informatsiooni üleküllust" vms. On ka neid kellele semiootiline lärm, semantiline müra, süntaktiline keerukus ja pragmaatiline tühjus meeldib. Pean ennast selliseks, aga "sisekõne maagiline jõud" kõlab minu jaoks nagu nonsenss. Sisekõnes ei ole midagi maagilist (üleloomulikku) ja selleks sobib igasugune keel. Ma kahtlustan, et loits, laul ja tants tuuakse siin mängu ainult selle pärast, et Lotman räägib rütmi süntaktilisest organisatsioonist seoses autokommunikatsiooniga. Mina kaldun sellesse laagrisse, kus Mina-Mina suhtlemine on veel harilikum kui Mina-Tema suhtlemine. Isegi käesoleva tekstiga suhtlen ma peamiselt iseendaga, mitte Mikita või nende arvustajatega.
Eestlane võiks mõelda metsakeeles. Mets võimendab ajutegevust, kontaktis “suure tundmatuga” töötab teadvus kõige vägevamalt...
"Aju aktiveerumise" BS. Ma arvan, et see on igaühe jaoks individuaalne mis tema ajutegevust võimendab, mõttelendu ergutab ja suurte ideedeni viib. Kellele mets, kellele linn, kellele tuba, kellele arvutiekraan.
Lõpetuseks sellest vaimustavast raamatust veel üks tsitaat, mis tasuks lausa korraliku käekirjaga salmikusse üles kirjutada ja maalitud sirelioksakesega kaunistada: “Kui rumalal on vaja õnne tohututes kogustes, et ennast õnnelikuna tunda, siis targa õnnelikkuse lävi on nii madal, et kõik asjad tekitavad temas õnnetunde.”
Kõlab nagu vanasõna, pealekauba selline mis põhineb ümberpööramisel. Tähendab, tegelikkuses on lood vastupidised - kõige õnnelikumad on hariduseta India inimesed ja kõige õnnetumad on kõrgharidusega inimesed (vähemalt suurem alkoholi tarbimine ja tõenäolisem depressioon vihjavad selle poole).
Olin Eestist ära kaks aastat, kuskil kukla taga tiksus kogu aeg, et Eestis on midagi üpris erilist, mida mujal ei ole. Midagi, mis mind, siin sündinud ja kasvanut teisal ei kõneta, toeta ega viljasta. Igatsesin veel enamgi kui oma keele- ja mõtteruumi Eesti metsa. Ühegi teise koha loodus mind nii ligi ei lasknud või ei tahtnud ma endast midagi avada.
[Source: Mikita trikitab ja kipitab | Kultuur | ERR]
Vt: Abram, David 2006. The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World; lätlane, kes noorena Ameerikasse kolides jäi igatsema liivimaa metsa.
Veel lööklauseid: mõtlemine on sündinud Eestis ning siin on ühtlasi parim paik mõtlemiseks; Eesti on paik, kus elu rändas maapeale jne. Mikita pakub välja ka ligi leheküljepikkuse „Eesti retsepti“, milles teiste seas ka kõrvuti piimapukk, digiallkiri, ussisõnad, Hunt Kriimsilm, eneseiroonia, heinalakk, Priit Pärn ja kartulisalat.
Seljale patsutamine.
Väga kosutavalt mõjus Mikita mõte, et tegelikult pole meil vaja kõigega kogu aeg kursis olla, nii palju raamatuid lugeda, filme vaadata ja muusikat kuulata, seisukohti võtta, otsuseid langetada ning arvamusi avaldada. Üha hinnalisemaks muutub linnast põgenemine, üksiolek, vaikus. Sellest institutsionaliseeritud kultuurist väljalülitumine ning omakultuuri sisenemine seal metsas, oma teadvuse piirimail...
Keegi ei sunnigi raamatuid lugema, filme vaatama ja muusikat kuulama. Need on meeldivad tegevused; ajaviide mitte kohustus. Tänuväärne on siin vaid "omakultuuri" mõiste, kuigi on vähetõenäoline, et seda on mõeldud sarnaselt Powyse self-culture'iga.
Otsus: nõup. Kunagi loen ma selle raamatu vb läbi, aga mitte praegu. Pole tuju umbluu jaoks.

The Branches

Long Arm 2011. The Branches feat. Teknical Development (of Obba Supa). On: The Branches. Berlin: Project Mooncircle.

Far away, it's trans-mystic.
Cold air brushes souls, situate as the canvas dance cannabis.
(Long Arm ft. Teknical Development 2011: 10)
A few months ago I tried "concursive" listening of Whiskey Blanket's Credible Forces. Soon after that I began another project of concursive listening (on Horrorshow's The Grey Space), but just like my reading of my own early writing "Kuulinn", it is still unfinished. I decided to take up The Branches because lately I've been doing small art projects inspired by the fact that Whiskey Blanket and Long Arm have suspiciously similar album art designs (see my own attempt at imitating their album art below).
The Branches happens to be one of my all-time favourite instrumental hip-hop albums (it is one of the few releases that even come close to Whiskey Blanket). It is also the album that formed the backbone of one of my most illuminating psychedelic experience. The title track, "The Branches", is the only track on the album that features lyrics. These are written and performed by Teknical Development (of Obba Supa) and enticingly psychedelic in themselves. For context, I'll note that the most celebrated hip-hop album of 2011, when The Branches was released, was Jay-Z and Kanye West's collaboration album Watch The Throne that featured such insightful lyrics as "No disrespect, I'm not tryna belittle / But my dick worth money, I put moanie in the middle". Underground hip-hop listeners generally agree that The Branches was the hip-hop album of 2011.
Moving on from my obvious bias... Today I'm going to get into Teknical's amazing lyrics. I'm generally not a fan of poetry, but Teknical blew me away. As exhibited by vdiskdaddy who doesn't really listen to hip-hop but enjoyed WB's From the Dead of Dark immensely, this kind of music not only is exceptional but is prone to create exceptions. I'll also note that you can support Long Arm and buy The Branches here. For current purposes you can listen to the title track "The Branches" here:
Yellow strokes, crimson skies, hypnotic views will keep you still forever.
Conversation with the clouds of guidance.
(Long Arm ft. Teknical Development 2011: 10)
It is already apparent that even poetic speech that manipulate with the ordinary structures of utterances include implicit references to bodily behaviour. Even more, due to its poetic nature, it can address feelings, sensations and impressions that are otherwise quite difficult to discuss. The experience of standing still while beholding something beatiful must be (or at least should be) familiar to most if not all people. Hypnotic views are even present in the album art (original paintings by Bioniq and design by Gordon), that mesmerizing tree-man reaching for the heavens.
This forest of wonder it whispers with the voice with no face.
No true nature, no direction to this place of extreme beauties.
River flows to the rhythm of your every step,
reflects the strength as the metal creates the ripples.
(Long Arm ft. Teknical Development 2011: 10)
Some reviewer stated that this whole album is "a reflection of a world where human feelings and natural powers are bound together". This indeed seems to be the case and this passage is a vivid illustration: the forest has no face but it has a voice; there are no explicit directions but every step has a significance, the river flows to the rhythm of your every step.
Hugged by the branches; expression: love. The sky cries at random moments.
Winged creature with warm colours they form umbrella structures.
Neon lights that spark in the darkness - transparent souls.
Marvel at the grounded crystals - the floors of healing.
(Long Arm ft. Teknical Development 2011: 10)
Teknical's intense delivery makes it difficult to transcribe the lyrics. I've had to make numerous edits to the lyrics given on Indie Rabbit Hole's blog. His fast-paced delivery makes it even difficult to get a grip of the word order. Eventually it seems that the syntax of these utterances are not as important as the picture they paint, a picture of a magical forest full of deep feelings (branches that hug you out of love, a sky that cries at random moments), mystical creatures (fireflies that manifest themselves as "transparent souls") and fantastical milieus (the ground is made of healing crystals). Everything is being, or as one reviewer puts it: "There is no alive-dead distinction."
The grounds of life, pure in the clearest of visions, a domain where life exist as wild with you.
Conversating with the branch climbers, leaf eaters, underground travellers
walk on waters where the curtains flow, the reflection in the mirror it shows nothing.
This is the place of no judgment.
Death even walks the same path in this zone, but it's only smiles.

(Long Arm ft. Teknical Development 2011: 10)
This passage demonstrates the deeply psychedelic nature of these lyrics. The wilderness coexists with you and as before you were having a conversation with "the clouds of guidance", now you are conversating with the creatures that climb The Branches and dwell beneath the ground. I cannot say what is meant by walking on waters "where the curtains flow" (waterfalls maybe?) but there is no reflection in the mirror and there is no judgment. It even seems that you are not judging yourself, because you yourself have become a "transparent soul". It takes on an eschatological character - by dwelling in this zone you are on the same path as death, but instead of something to be feared it manifests itself as, perhaps, reuniting with ancestors (the smiling faces). There are endless possibilities to interpret these words and perhaps they shouldn't be, as poetry is untranslatable, but at the same time it feels good to explicate my impressions.
No fears but the one to exit this place.
I return to realities of mixed expressions.
Seated but now we're floating, pure energy, feeling new vibrations.
Higher times where no smoke it lingers.
(Long Arm ft. Teknical Development 2011: 10)
This passage is backed by one of Long Arm's most beautiful sounds - a piano sequence swinging like a pendulum, accompanied by a woman's voice. Teknical's lyrics continue the description of "the place of no judgment" which is also the place of no fears. I especially like his implication that real life is filled with mixed expressions. In an altered state of mind there are fewer mixed expressions, as the mind is more apt to aliven or vivify even passing sensations as expressions. Langer (1948: 202) describes this as the spontaneous generation of Gestalten. You look at your wallpaper patterns and see movement, human forms and faces; similarly, the protagonist in Teknical's lyrics is seated, but nevertheless feels as if he's floating. I've found that in a psychedelic state it is a good idea to lay down and relinquish all resistance. Or as John Cowper Powys puts it: "it is through withdrawing ourselves rather than asserting ourselves, through retreating rather than advancing, through yielding rather than pursuing, through inaction rather than through action, through becoming quiet rather than through making a stir, that we attain wisdom and spiritual power." (Powys 1933: 11)
We're slowly spinning, rotational movement [is] creating patterns of self.
Different colours and symbols, signals from the canvas of thoughts.
Environment breaths life in every moment.
Pick the seedling, watch it grow from the palms of your hands, your tears dwell.
(Long Arm ft. Teknical Development 2011: 10)
The poetry is becoming more and more esoteric. He is conveying an experience that is "slippery", translucent and immeasurable in its nature. It is the experience of everything-being-aliveness that one can attain by opening one's mind up to the chaos of existence. You become one with the planet, and it is no longer the planet that rotates, but you whose life-history now appears intimately tied to the passage of seasons and the passing of days to nights and days again. You experience yourself as an infinitesimal part of everything. The world has not changed but the canvas of your thoughts has; in Peirce's metaphor, you are diving and drowning in your lake of consciousness, or in Rimbaud's metaphor, you are caught in the whirlwind of your sea of consciousness. The latter part of the quote embodies the contention that many psychonauts have - the advice to go to the forest and feel the life around you. The environment does breathe life in every moment. It is an emotional experience - you semble (or "feel empathy") with nature and your tears may indeed dwell. In the end this is the reason why psychedelics aren't "recreational" in the common sense but transformative in the sense that they re-create your "patterns of self".
No desires to leave this place, brought back to the souls earth bound, looking for the exit.
The heart sinks for the purpose of my new steps. What was this now disappears?
Waves from circles of life you soon meet again.
Your arms raise, gesture with a smile of many questions.
Back to this place - boring - before you walk the path of new scenes.
Glass is now filled again, flick the light up, now we back-tracking it. Now begins...
(Long Arm ft. Teknical Development 2011: 10)
What begins after this passage is the break-down (more colloquially: Long Arm dropped the bass). Teknical's lyrics have here remarked upon the othes side of the mind-body dualism. It is not only the canvas of thoughts that has become terrain but one's whole body has come to resonate with the environment. This is the proprioceptive hyper-awareness familiar to psychonauts: one can feel changes in circulation and respiration very vividly ("heart sinks"). The "circles of life" are neatly demonstrated by Long Arm, whose haly-minute instrumental part following these words move in a roundabout manner, as if a disk were rotating back and forth and beating the drums to a musical heart-beat. Raising hands and gesturing "with a smile of many questions" is the most concursive passage yet. It sounds like a description of the tree-man on the album cover, but he does not appear to be smiling, but has more of an awe expression. He is raising his hands and reaching towards "the clouds of guidance" though. Other reviewers have written that the improssion is that of "trying to touch the sun rays and pass heaven sent light through fingers". This is surely more entertaining than the boring real life of mixed expressions.
Burning insides, earth poisons, rest the glass that's hidden.
Two windows smashed with the impact of deep waters.
Drowning so it seems, I calm down and realize I'm still breathing.
From where I left I now swim aquatic.
Swimming to the scale of friendly ocean dwellers.
Sentient life of another, but this occasion felt like nothing carries me.
Try'na find the surface, now just another jewel walking the golden sands of pleasures.
(Long Arm ft. Teknical Development 2011: 10)
The well-timed tension-building and release offered by loud drum beats are perfectly complementary to the lyrics - the melodic turmoil does feel like windows are smashed by waters and you are immersed in deep waters alonside the narrator, flowing along to the musical scale. On my trip accompanied by this album I imagined piano chords connecting two bridges of Emajõgi and myself diving from those strings into the water. On this note it seems appropriate to remark upon the poetic use of parallelisms/articifice or Jakobsons "imputed similarity". Although both iconicity and artifice share "similarity", it is the case that icons are factually similar to their referents but in the case of artifice the similarity is imputed (attributed). Thus we have the complex metaphors of: clouds of guidance, a forest of wonder, the crystal floors of healing and life, a place of no judgment or fear, realities of mixed expressions, the canvas of thoughts, earth-bound souls and transparents souls, circles of life, a smile of many questions, etc... And add to this list "the scale of friendly ocean dwellers". These expressions are difficult to conceptualize and visualize in any concrete forms, but that's exactly what makes them poetic, given that poetry does not talk about things but about itself. At best I can imagine that the scale of friendly ocean dwellers is the "marine acoustics" of fish, dolphin and whale sounds.
Is this another trap - door housed by the content of raw footage?
The branch of this journey now splits into two.
The method of decapitation, top the head to experience new growth.
Rapid as the polarities form [the] ins and outs of a mystical journey.
The forest entrance [is] a spectrum that cures the soul, bleeds emotion.
The force is weak as [compared to] what was experienced before.
Still boils, pure in the blood circulating.
Staring at them both, the smiles are mutual; fire in the sky, it falls.
As it merges as one Maya reveals itself as you.
Forest changes with the sound of trance.
Life hibernates, gone like it's forever missing.
Leaves fall, unmasked itself now remains branches naked
.
(Long Arm ft. Teknical Development 2011: 10)
Here I have lots of transcription issues. For example, I can't be sure whether the forest entrance cures or curses the soul. What I wrote down as "staring at them both" is "steering at temper" in IRH's version; alse I hear "mutual" where IRH version says "neutral". I don't know what steering at temper or neutral smiles mean, but I do know that mutual smiles arise through mutual glancing ("visual contact"). The last two lines sum up the track and the album (it's the last track before a "Thank You" with cheering and then an instrumental version of this same track). I like these lines because they capture the essence of winter - trees become naked branches and it seems to last forever. Ja lõpetuseks eestikeelne kehv proosatõlge:
Kaugel maal on ülimalt müstiline. Külm õhk silitab hingi. Paiguta end kuniks lõuend tantsib cannabis'e järgi. Kollased pintslitõmbed, veripunane taevas ja hüpnootilised vaated hoiavad sind igavesti liikumatult. Vestlus juhendavate pilvedega. See imeline mets sosistab häälega millel pole nägu. Sellel äärmuslike ilude paigal pole loomust, pole suunajuhiseid kuidas sinna saada. Jõgi voolab su iga sammu rütmis, peegeldab nende tugevust ja tekitab veepinnal virvendusi. Puuoksad embavad sind. Väljendus: armastus. Taevas nutab juhuslikel hetkedel. Oksal istub tiivuline olend soojade värvidega mis moodustavad vihmavarju-struktuure. Neoonvalgus helendab pimeduses - need on läbipaistvad hinged. Imetle jahvatatud kristalle mis katavad tervendavat ja eluandvat maapinnast, vaatle selgeima pilguga ala kus elu eksisteerib metsikuna sinu ümber. Vestled okstel ronijatega, lehesööjatega, maaaluste ränduritega kes kõnnivad vetel mis langevad eesriidena. Sul puudub peegeldus. See on kohtumõistmiseta koht. Isegi surm kõnnib sama rada siinkandis, aga siin on ainult naeratused. Pole muud hirmu kui siit lahkuda.
Naasen segaste väljenduste reaalsusesse. Istun, aga ka hõljun puhta energiana, tunnetan uusi vibratsioone. Pilves ilma suitsuta. Me pöörleme aeglaselt ja liikumine loob meie endi mustreid, erinevaid värve ja sümboleid, signaale mõttelõuendilt. Keskkond hingab igal hetkel elu. Korjad üles seemne, vaatad kuidas see kasvab su peopesast ja su silmadesse koguneb pisaraid. Pole mingit tahtmist siit lahkuda, aga sind tuuakse väljapääsu otsides tagasi maapinda aheldatud hingede sekka. Süda vajub saapasäärde mu uute sammude eesmärgi pärast. Mis see oli mis nüüd kadus? Lained eluringidelt, te kohtute peagi taas. Sa tõstad oma käed, küündid taeva poole naeratusega milles on palju küsimusi. Tagasi siin on igav, varem kõndisid sa uute maastike rajal. Klaas on jälle täis, lülitad tule põlema, nüüd me keerame tagasi ja see algab...
Maised mürgid põletavad kõhtu. Peidad klaasi ära. Sügavate vete kokkupõrkest puruneb kaks akent. Jääb uppumise mulje, aga ma rahunen maha ja taipan, et ma hingan ikka veel. Nüüd ujun ma vees, sõbralike ookanielukate skaalal, teise teadlikul elul, aga see tundub nagu midagi ei kannaks mind. Üritan ujuda pinnale, kuid olen nüüd veel üks juveel naudingute kuldsel rannal. Kas see on järjekordne keldrialune mis sisaldab tooreid tajumusi? Selle rännaku oks murdub nüüd kaheks. Kärbitud ladvaga kogeb puu nüüd uut, kiirendatud, kasvu mille polaarsused moodustavad selle müstilise rännaku sisendid ja väljendid. Metsa sissepääs on spektrum mis ravib hinge, veristab emotsioone. Jõud on nüüd nõrk võrredes varem kogetuga. Ikka veel keeb ja ringleb veres puhtal kujul. Vaatame üksteisele otsa ja naeratame. Taevast hakkab tuld sadama. Oksad saavad uuesti kokku ja Maia paljastab iseennast sinuna. Mets muutub koos selle helidega. Elu talvitub, läheb ära nagu see jääb alatiseks kaduma. Lehed kukuvad ja puu jääb nüüd maskita, paljasteks oksteks.

Intrapersonal Network

Ruesch, Jurgen and Gregory Bateson 1951. Communication, the social matrix of psychiatry. New York: W. W. Norton & Co.

SCIENTIFIC theory traditionally distinguishes between that which is assumed to ekist in reality and that which is actually perceived by a human observer. The difference in the picture between assumed reality and perceived reality is explained as being due to the peculiarities and limitations of the human observer. In the study of human communication, it is difficult if not impossible to distinguish between assumed and perceived reality. (Ruesch & Bateson 1951: 273)
I thought about it recently in the following way: suppose an extraterrestial intelligence discovers the remnants of human existence and starts to study human society and culture. The aliens can see on the pictures and videos what human bodies and behavior looked like (perceived reality), but they have little conception of what they are actually seeing, what is the significance of this or that form of behavior (assumed reality). I'd use this metaphor to explain the study of concourse. Suppose the aliens manage to translate human languages and read books. They would soon discover that there are a variety of ways we humans conceptualized our bodies and behaviour, how we describe and prescribe behaviour, etc. The signs of this conceptualization forms concourse.
But this is not what I should be doing right at this moment. I do not have the time to read the whole book, as much as I would like to. Instead, I'll have to Ctrl+F myself through it, given that I'm already somewhat familiar with Ruesch's thought and at the moment only need to know what he says about intrapersonal communication.
Intrapersonal Communication: The consideration of intrapersonal events becomes a special case of interpersonal communication. An imaginary entity made up of condensed traces of past experiences represents within an individual the missing outside person. However, a crucial difference exists between interpersonal and intrapersonal communication with regard to the registration of mistakes. In the interpersonal situation the effects of purposive or expressive actions can be evaluated and if necessary corrected. In intrapersonal or fantasy communication, to perceive that one misinterprets one's own messages is extremely difficult, if not impossible, and correction rarely, if ever, occurs. (Ruesch & Bateson 1951: 15-16)
Some of these aspects are elaborated later by other psychiatrists. It is interesting what else Ruesch and Bateson call intrapersonal communication. "Fantasy communication" is especially good term for the so-called "internal addressee" form of autocommunication. And one can speculate that because correction rarely occurs in intrapersonal communication it is such a great way to come up with new, "misinterpreted", ideas.
Limitations of Communication: The limitations of man's communications are determined by the capacity of his intrapersonal network, the selectivity of his receivers, and the skill of his effector organs. The number of incoming and outgoing signals, as well as the signals that can be transmitted within the organism, is limited. Beyond a certain maximum any increase in number of messages in transit leads to a jamming of the network, and so to a decrease in the number of messages which reach their appropriate destinations. This type of disruption of the communication system the psychiatrist calls anxiety. (Ruesch & Bateson 1951: 17)
Very down-to-earth justufication for "selectivity".
"Comparison" implies that however different the items, some common denominator can be found. This inferred psychological process includes not only our considerations pertaining to the nature of the stimuli and A's possible responses but also includes the idea that A has had certain past experiences. In daily language, the term "justification" denotes certain personal deliberations which serve the purpose of matching present events with past experiences. In this manner contemplated action is matched with ideas which refer to commonly accepted practices. The assumptions we make about A therefore refer to intrapersonal processes, among which we include perception, comparison, justification, and evaluation, which are assumed to lead either to an overt statement of preference or to an action from which we, as observer, can deduce preference. (Ruesch & Bateson 1951: 47)
These aspects can all be approached semiotically, as Ruesch himself does later in his Semiotic Approaches to Human Relations.
The network of communication, therefore, is going to define our psychiatric universe. The origin and destination of messages may be found within the same organism; then we are dealing with an intrapersonal network. If the message originates in one person and is perceived by another, we are dealing with an interpersonal network. If an individual has the function of messenger, then both the origin and destination lie outside that particular organism. Therefore, in order to understand a communication system, and especially the disturbances of communication arising in such a system, the attention of the psychiatrist has to focus on the social situation; the focus of interaction will then be the interaction of people, the influence of mass communication upon the individual, and the shaping of the larger and more complex superpersonal systems through the summation of actions of single individuals (Ruesch & Bateson 1951: 81)
Basically Ruesch's definition of intrapersonal communication.
It is necessary first to point out certain general notions about the nature of intrapersonal and neurophysiological processes — notions so general as to be independent of the types of theory which the reader may prefer. The notion of codification is, we think, of such a general nature as to be common to all psychological theories, though not always explicit. Whether we favor organicist or mentalist concepts, it is clear that the intrapersonal processes are distinctly different from the events in the external world, and the concept of codification refers to this difference. Using an organicist phrasing, one might say that impulses and showers of impulses traveling in the neural network are the internal reflection or picture of the external events about which the organism is receiving information through his sense organs. Or following mentalist theories, one may say that ideas and propositions (whether verbal or nonverbal) are the translation or reflection of external events. In either theory — organicist or mentalist — internal events are different from external and are reflections or translations of events in the external world. The term used by communications engineers for the substitution of one type of event for another, such that the event substituted shall in some sense stand for the other, is codification. (Ruesch & Bateson 1951: 169)
Forecasting Barken & Wiseman's (1966) question: "In "thinking" does the brain encode and decode, or does it merely process information without going through an encoding and decoding procedure?"
The significant fact, for our present purposes, is that in interpersonal communication, the units and aggregate messages reach this same level because words and postures already refer to complex Gestalten corresponding to some of those which the internal system uses. Communication between persons is of course pathetically impoverished compared with the richness of the intrapersonal consciousness, which in its turn is but an impoverished and restricted version of the total psychic life of the person. But still it is important that the external communications are a codification of the internal psychic life and that the recipient of such communication is receiving an already elaborated product from the psychic life of another individual. (Ruesch & Bateson 1951: 206)
Embracing the richness of autocommunication above that of heterocommunication.
At the intrapersonal level, the focus of the observer is limited by the self, and the various functions of communication are found within the self. At the interpersonal level the perceptual field is occupied by two people, at the group level by many people, and at the cultural level by many groups. Concomitantly, in each of these fields, the importance of the single individual diminishes, and at the higher levels one person becomes only a small element in the system of communication. (Ruesch & Bateson 1951: 274)
The self is the limit of self-communication, if that makes sense.
The intrapersonal network is characterized by the fact that:
  • The self-observer (see p. 199) is always totally participant.
  • Both the place of origin and the destination of messages are located within the sphere of one organism (see p. 38); and the correction of errors is therefore difficult, if not impossible (see p. 199).
  • The system of codification used can never be examined (see p. 200).
Within the intrapersonal network (see p. 29) three distinct groups of functions can be distinguished:
  1. Reception includes both proprioception and exteroception. Proprioception gives information about the state of the organism; in popular language these data, if consciously perceived, are referred to as feelings or sensations. In proprioception the end organs are predominantly internal and react to chemical and mechanical stimuli (see p. 30); in exteroception the end organs are located on or near the surface of the body, and give information about relations between the self and the environment (see p. 197). The exteroceptive end organs react to wave phenomena, such as light and sound, in addition to other mechanical and chemical stimuli.
  2. Transmission includes both propriotransmission and exterotransmission (see p. 30). In propriotransmission, nervous impulses travel on the efferent pathways to the smooth muscles, and chemical impulses travel along humoral pathways for purposes of regulation of the organism. In exterotransmission the contraction of the striped muscles is used for action upon the outside world, including communication with other individuals (see p. 203).
  3. The central junctions include coordination, interpretation, and storage of information (see pp. 169, 183). Information received through proprioception or propriotransmission is complementary to information acquired through exteroception or exterotransmission - The complementary relation between proprioception and exteroception is such that complete information could only be obtained by a combination of these two functions. Such total combination seems, however, to be impossible, and in its functioning the organism seems to specialize at certain moments in one or the other mode of experience, with resulting failure to act upon data which might have been derived from the other mode: pain may preclude external perceptiveness, and exposure to violent external events may preclude awareness of pain or fatigue.
(Ruesch & Bateson 1951: 278-279)
An earlier version of the communication system model put forth a few years later in Ruesch's synopsis of communication theory.
The cultural network. In addition to intrapersonal, interpersonal, and organized group networks, which are variously perceived as such by the individuals, there is a host of instances in which the individual is unable to recognize the source and destination of messages, and therefore does not recognize that these messages travel in a network structure. For lack of a better word we describe this unperceived system as the cultural network, since many of the premises of every culture are carried in this way (see p. 41). (Ruesch & Bateson 1951: 281-282)
This is a characteristic of a communicational approach to culture that Lotman apparently didn't notice (or at least didn't talk about much).
At the cultural level, the codification is again entirely different. At the intrapersonal and interpersonal levels, codification is characteristically atomistic: separable and isolable events, such as the neural impulse or the word symbol, stand for separable events in the outside world. At the group level, there is apparently no such atomism; and the organization of the group is evidence of codification. At the cultural level the organization is beyond the reach of observation of the individual, who implicitly carries the cultural message in his actions of everyday life. Being an infinitesimal part of the network, the individual's function as communication channel is overshadowed by the importance of intrapersonal and interpersonal events. (Ruesch & Bateson 1951: 284)
Also an important precept that can aid cultural semiotics. Especially the notion of "cultural message" seems comparable to Lotman's "culture text".
Third, we deal with the problems of predictability — that is, the information which a part possesses about the other part and about the whole system. At the intrapersonal level, the capacity and the extent of the network are more or less known to a scientific observer, who may be the participant himself. At this level the possibilities of rearrangement are limited, and therefore the organism can somewhat predict its own reactions. At the interpersonal level, the capacity and extent of the network are still within assessable range. But because the topology of the interpersonal system is undefined, it is difficult if not impossible to predict future events within the realm of the system. (Ruesch & Bateson 1951: 287-288)
This is exactly the contention of Peirce and Mead when it comes to autocommunication.

Intrapersonal Communicology

Macke, Frank 2008. Intrapersonal Communicology: Reflection, Reflexivity, and Relational Consciousness in Embodied Subjectivity. Atlantic Journal of Communication 16: 122-148.

In their landmark text, Communication: The Social Matrix of Psychiatry, Jurgen Ruesch and Gregory Bateson (1951) theorize that the "intrapersonal network," that is, circumstance of interaction in which "both the place of origin and destination of messages are located within the sphere of one organism," ought to be considered one of the four fundamental levels of communication (p. 278). Neither Bateson nor Ruesch expended any significant energy defending this particular claim; at the time, it was merely a theoretical suggestion, offered as intuitively reasonable (especially given Ruesch's status as a psychiatrist) in the context of viewing the whole world of human interaction and culture in terms of general systems theory. For academicians of that era similarly enthused with systems theory and who were among the first to identify themselves as "communication scholars," the notion of an "inner" cybernetic network of information relay and feedback would, no doubt, have been a comfortable fit with toher contemporaneous assumptions having newfound currency regarding mind, nature, and culture. (Macke 2008: 122-123)
It is notable that Juri Lotman's concept of autocommunication similarly sprung from cybernetics and the notion of feedback.
In any case, the theory suggestion not only was not rejected out of hand in any published writing between 1951 and 1966 (when the first article on "intrapersonal communication" found its way into the Journal of Communication) but began to gather interest. (Macke 2008: 123)
Oh wow. I hadn't thought of it but now searching "intrapersonal communication" in this journal, I find several relevant papers. Thanks for the hint, Macke!
In this article, I seek to establish a theory of intrapersonal communicology. In doing so, I need to reconsider the concept of intrapersonal communication as an element of human experience. To begin, it is difficult to take issue with the collective hunch on which the theoretical suggestion of intrapersonal communication was put forth by Ruesch and Bateson. One can find complementary elements of intrapersonal or intrapsychic processes (the term later employed by Ruesch, 1972) in a wide range of flourishing theoretical positions and philosophical schools through the 18th and 19th centuries, from Kant's theory of perception to Hegel's phenomenology to Peirce's phaneroscopy and semiotics to Whitehead's process philosophy - and that is just for starters. (Macke 2008: 123)
It's good to see someone mentioning Peirce's phaneroscopy. Even more so seeing that someone is actually trying to make what we call autocommunication into a distinct field of study. I would call it simply autocommunicology, but that's me - I'm swayed by Lotman.
It was not that the term intrapsychic or intrapersonal were uniquely seductive to the audience for Ruesch and Bateson's extension of systems theory, it was that there was "already" an implicit sense of how such an embodied scheme might function as a system. (Macke 2008: 123)
It's not like systems theory hadn't the preoccupation for such a thing in the first place. Bertalanffy was taken by Uexküll, who gave him not only the concept of feedback, but probably something like the Ego-Ton as well.
The Anglo-American academic field of communication, from its inception, took on a mechanistic and Cartesian set of assumptions regarding the nature of human experience in the process of perception and expression. Likewise, the study of human interaction soon found its discourse openly conflating the usage of "communication" - a concept etymologically tied to the experience of intimate spiritual unity (as in "communion") and spiritual kinship (as in "community") - with information processing, a concept given form by behavioral psychology. From midcentury onward, the concept of "communication" began to fully emerge as one regarding "messages," as things, being transferred back and forth between existentially and ontologically separate persons operating with existentially and ontologically separate minds. (Macke 2008: 124)
My first reaction is: Bullcocky! Charles Morris dissected communication in the late 30s and early 40s without any reference to such a thing as "message". In that time, "information processing" was talked about in terms of sign-activity. The relation between messages and signs is a complicated, and seemingly ignored, one. Ruesch attributes to messages what otherwise would make sense as signs. Morris, Goffman and others talk about signs where you could as well talk about messages. It is diffficult to impose any concrete distinction without revisiting the whole theoretical field again with this distinction in mind. And I'm not about to do that - I'll settle with "signs" and "messages" being kind of interchangeable.
A thoroughgoing critique of the extant literature on intrapersonal communication was published more than a decade ago by Cunningham (1995). In this critique, Cunningham exhibited a notable skepticism regarding the validity of "intrapersonal" as a subcategory of "communication" and took great pains to establish some sort of criteria by which a private, inner experience can warrant recognition as meeting the conditions of "communication." Much of this argument is quite compelling. His comments on the inclusion of any and all mental operations, be they reflective, symbolic, oneiric, congitive, biological, neurochemical, and so forth, within the category "intrapersonal communication," are particularly well taken. Upon considering an incredibly broad range of subcutaneous neurological activities that had emerged in the literature, cunningham (1995) asked:
What psychological processing within the human agent is not intrapersonal communication? ... For example, the identification of intrapersonal communication or its message with an assortment of mentalistic and/or neurophysiological operations seems forced and hasty. No one would deny that any number of cognitive processes are somehow involved in communication behavior, but the descriptions of intrapersonal communication for the most part unguardedly set up an identity between the definiendum and one or more of these operations. (p. 11)
As I consider Cunningham's critique, it becomes even clearer that the conceptualization of messages as "things" transferred back and forth invites the consideration of all human organismic activity as some form of communication or another. If everything that takes place inside a person's skin can be considered intrapersonal communication, then a much more limiting sense of what is and is not communication becomes immediately necessary. (Macke 2008: 124-125)
This problem emerges also in semiotics, where it becomes difficult to distinguish semiosis from autocommunication. As Randviir put it - the "semiotic subject" is involved in all semiosis, so the notion of autocommunication is superfluous. I have tried to resolve this issue by attributing to autocommunication only messages that are "addressed" to the self, but even this is suspicious. Cunningham's paper appeared in a book titled Intrapersonal Communication Processes.
For Mead, the Self does not exist prior to social situations. It is not as though it is "in hiding" somewhere, dressed and ready to make its appearance; it simply has no being, no existence prior to the social interaction that systematically signifies its position (i.e., it is "posited" by way of the social) and, thus, its meaning. The Self is not, therefore, an entity that can be observed and measured, nor can it be "mapped" through an analysis of its recorded expressions. (Macke 2008: 127)
"Articulating" the ineffability of the Self.
...a careful reading of Mead's concept of "social behaviorism" has me convinced that, for its time, it would closely parallel the human science concept of communicology. A number of writers have commented on the deep similarities between Mead and Merleau-Ponty, particularly in terms of the notions of habit, embodiment, and gesture (Aboulafia, 2001; Joas, 1993, 1997; rosenthal & Bourgeois, 1991). The "structure" of "behavior" that Merleau-Ponty (1983) addressed in his first major work fully emerged in Phenomenology of Perception (1962) as perception, expression, gesture, and speech. These are, as well, the primary terms of Mead's social behaviorism. (Macke 2008: 128)
This is new but not in the least surprising for me.
The psychological discontinuity of the "I" and "me" entails a communicology of a distance, a communicology of the intestice between our first consciousness of a world external to the womb and our first consciousness of ourselves as beings of consciousness. (Macke 2008: 128)
I think "distance" is the keyword here because autocommunication implies a distance (mostly, in time) between the self and that same self. In Meadian thinking, this distance is readily available in the I/Me distinction, given that "I" am immediate to myself but "Me" is mediated (no pun intended, mediation and immediacy are unrelated to these terms) through others.
Merleau-Ponty (1964) nated that the body
begins by being introceptive. At the beginning of life there emerges an entire phase in which extroceptivity (i.e., vision, hearing, and all other perceptions relating to the external world), even if it begins to operate, cannot in any case do so in collaboration with introceptivity. ... In the early stages of the child's life, external perception is impossible for very simple reasons: visual control and muscular coordination of the eyes are insufficient. (pp. 121-122).
As we get older, our range of perception entails a greater sweep of agency, embodiment, and space. Nonetheless, it is not until we arrive at a position of full skeletal and hormonal adulthood (both during and after puberty) that we begin to reach outside the parameters of our growth environment for a sense of selfhood that has not been ordained by our family and its discursive environment. (Macke 2008: 129)
Oh wow. I didn't know Merleau-Ponty also uses Sherrington's notions.
In this formulation I am very careful not to equate all aspects of mental activity or reflection, or even "self-talk," with intrapersonal communication. Simply, there is a fundamental distinction between information theory and communication theory (Lanigan, 1992), and it is the ambition of communicology to maintain the integrity of this distinction as it considers the phenomenon of communication from the context of the human sciences. For communicology, it is not axiomatic that "you cannot not communicate." Information transfer does not automatically give birth to communicative experience. The experience of communication is not a mechanical or logically reductive matter of sign production and sign processing. Even though semiotic theory has participated heavily in the intellectual history of the human science of communicology, a strictly semiotic approach to the event of communicative experience will drain the event of all psychological significance. (Macke 2008: 132)
It is nice to see someone keeping this distinction. It is one that often gets somehow lost in semiotics.
For Heidegger, the person is always already fundamentally connected with her or his world, to the point, as Dreyfus stressed, that even drawing reference to a conventional image of "relationship" invites equivocation. As such, communicating outside of oneself becomes one and the same with thinking (as Heidegger, 1967, would have it), and with perception (as Merleou-Ponty, 1962, would have it). (Macke 2008: 134)
Compare this to Peirce's view that when two minds are communicating, they become one.
For expressive and literary purposes, the poetic function concerns the tone of what is enunciated. (Macke 2008: 135)
No. You are confusing the poetic function with the emotive function.
Intrapersonal communication in particular is the modality of experience that lies at the essence of how, from infancy onward, we are connected to the world. (Macke 2008: 136)
This is not a simple matter, especially from an intrapersonal communication standpoint.
A key element of Foucault's thought lies in his claim that, through the proliferation of discourses and methods for assesing and improving the performance of individual subjects (ethically, morally, politically, educationally, psychologically, and medically), the person has been able to emerge - even under the seeming burden of so many administrative subjectivities and objectifications - with a new and creative freedom to "intervene" in the course of his or her own life. Rather than searching for an illusory truth of our Selves - that is, as an answer to a question someone else has asked - we can experience the possibilities of our selfhood as embodied pragmatics. Though we cannot foretell the experience of a communicative moment, it is a philosophical mistake to say that we know nothing of what is likely to occur in the course of our liven. Although as we invent ourselves, we are thinking along the lines or recognizable social formations (mythic, historical, literary, cinematic), our subsequent identity surfaces as a medium for new experience. (Macke 2008: 138)
A clearer interpretation of Foucault's care of the self.
Among Rimbaud's (1871) most well-known aphorisms is his reflection: "Je est un autre" ("I is an other)" (p. 347). In broader context, the thougt comes up twice in his writing, first in a letter to Georges Izambard: "It's not my doing at all. It's wrong to say: I think. Better to say: I am thought. ... I is an other" (Rimbaud, 1871/1967, p. 100). And in a letter to Paul Demeny he wrote, "For I is an other. ... This is plain to me: I am present at the unfolding of my thought: I watch it, listen to it: I strike a chord: the symphony stirs in the depths, or leaps onto the stage" (Rimbaud, 1871/1963, p. 347; see also Lawler, 1992, p. 3). What Rimbaud demonstrates is that not only is "the I" not "the me," it is something that, if one is free to allow it, meets the phenomenological condition of "the other." The first "other" in our world is not external to our familiar range of perception and contact; to the contrary, it is that which gives meaningfulness and possibility to perception that can make magic out of opening one's eyes. (Macke 2008: 141)
Compare this to Peirce's talk of how we should not say that thoughs are in us, but that we are in thoughts.
As Rimbaud's aphorism deepens our sense of the otherness of thinking, the flesh of adult consciousness, now grasped as the recursive experience of identity and intimacy, leads us to a sense of the otherness of communication. As Merleou-Ponty (1962) wrote, "Bodily experience forces us to acknowledge an imposition of meaning that is not the work of a universal constituting consciousness" (p. 147). As such, as our bodies change, as they become other to themselves, as they become proprioceptively enabled during the waning of all of our growing pains and childhood discipline, and then as they become proprioceptively limited (and at what seems an ever-increasing pace) as infirmity and old age set upon us, we hunt, we gather, we consume, we breathe in and breathe out differently. Carmen (1999) effectively captured this theme:
The intentional constitution of the body is not the product of a cognitive process whose steps we might trace to the founding acts of a pure I. Rather, the body in its perceptual capacity just is the I in its most primordial aspect. (p. 224)
My body, my flesh, is the fundamental substantive agent for any and all of my perception. And it is only by way of my body that I can perceive and feel the strangeness of the strange situation from which an attachment can be experienced intimately. (Macke 2008: 143)
Somehow, all of this feels self-evident.
It may well be said that, as the flip side of human development, loss of memory in the process of aging represents the single most tragic fate of mind in the experience of intrapersonal communication. (Macke 2008: 145)
I am combating this in advance by writing everything significant down.

Barker, Larry L. and Gordon Wiseman 1966. A Model of Intrapersonal Communication. Journal of Communication 16(3): 172-179.

Numerous models to illustrate the communication process have been developed in the past two decades, most of these models have focused on interpersonal communication. Other communication theorists have developed models to describe: (a) mass communication (b) cultural communication and (c) man-machine information systems. But perhaps because communication within oneself is somewhat difficult to investigate, few models have been concerned primarily with intrapersonal communication. (Barker & Wiseman 1966: 172)
Only half a decade after the publication of this paper Juri Lotman developed such a model, but primarily for the study of cultural communication. What Barker and Wiseman mean by models of cultural communication, though, is firstly Lasswell, Harold D. 1948. The Structure and Function of Communications in Society. In: Bryson, Lyman (ed.), The Communication of Ideas. New York: Harper & Brothers, 37. and Ruesch & Bateson's 1951 social matrix.
Intrapersonal communication refers to the creating, functioning, and evaluating of symbolic processes which operate primarily within oneself. Levels of intrapersonal communication range along a continuum according to the extent messages are stored in the environment around the self cummunicating system. Such activities as "thinking," "mediating," and "reflecting," which may require no environmental storage outside the life space of the communicator, are on one end of this continuum and activities such as "talking aloud to oneself" and "writing oneself a note," which require considerably more environmental storage, are on the other end of this continuum. (Barker & Wiseman 1966: 173)
Oh my god. This model is essentially semiotic! And moreover, it has captured the distinction between internal signs and externalized "autocommunicative" signs.
The process of intrapersonal communication can more adequately be understood when it is considered in relationship to the interpersonal communication cycle. Intrapersonal communication is the foundation upon which interpersonal communication is based, but intrapersonal communication may also occur independently. In interpersonal communication acts, intrapersonal communication performs the primary role of feedback processing. In isolation, intrapersonal communication involves such considerations as the generation of stimuli for message development, the transformation and evaluation of the message, and the response to the stimuli. (Barker & Wiseman 1966: 173)
And here they have hit the nail on its head with the contention that autocommunication precedes, accompanies and follows communication; and can occur independently from (hetero)communication.
It is difficult to specify characteristics of intrapersonal communication with any degree of certainty, because the intrinsic personal involvement of the symbolic codification system is at best extremely difficult to investigate. Nevertheless, numerous differences seem evident when intrapersonal communication and other kinds of communication are contrasted. The most significant differences are associated with such considerations as participation of the communicator, location and destination of the message, and the possibilities for detecting and correcting errors. (Barker & Wiseman 1966: 175)
Or as Lotman put it: the grammar of autocommunication is still to be written. The "participation of the communicator" seems the crux of Ruesch's model, where the main principles are those of object- and metachannels (or proprio- and exterofunctions).
The internal processes which occur in communication are set in motion by certain types of stimuli. These include stimuli both internal and external to the communicator. Stimuli are received by the body's sensory organs (the process of reception). Both internal and external receptors transmit information to the central nervous system at the affective level in intrapersonal communication. Internal receptors such as nerve endings relate information in the form of feelings and/or sensations which reflect the psycho-physical state of the individual communicator. The external receptors, located on or near the surface of the body, react to physical and chemical stimuli to provide information concerning relationships between the communicator and his environment. (Barker & Wiseman 1966: 175)
Yup, this is basically a reiteration of Sherrington's model (through Ruesch). The stimuli that sets autocommunication in motion is termed the detonator, fuze or igniter (sütik) by Lotman, once again cruising on the cool side of theorizing (see also Culture and Explosion).
At a given instant, countless numbers of stimuli are received by the sensory organs. The stimuli appear to be classified according to their relative strength. The process through which the stimuli are screened is called "discrimination." The weaker stimuli are usually "filtered out" prior to reaching the conscious level, but even so, multiple stimuli may affect communication at any particular moment. (Barker & Wiseman 1966: 175-176)
Peirce performed the very first psychological experiments in America (at Harvard) and found that although weaker stimuli may not reach the level of conscious acknowledgment, they nevertheless have an effect on conscious evaluations (the person weighing objects with fingers couldn't say which one weighed more when the difference was small, but "randomly" assigning scores arrived at results well above that of chance). He then incorporated this knowledge into his sign theorizing and thus we have Firstness. That is, although I like talk of sensory gating and discrimination, the matter is much more complex than theories sometimes make it out to be.
Exactly what these thought symbols are composed of is a question that has baffled science thus far. Most biologists, however, believe that man thinks in terms of electro-chemical impulses. (Barker & Wiseman 1966: 176)
E.g. what is the microphysiology of semeion? (Count 1969: 80-81).
Once stimuli have been decoded into thought symbols, the cognitive process of "ideation" occurs. Osborn [18, p. 146] defines ideation as "the part of the (communication) process which calls for thinking up all possible tentative ideas as tentative solutions or as leads to other ideas which in turn might lead to solutions." In brief, ideation is the process of thinking, planning, and organizing thoughts. It involves drawing together information and relating it to the proposed message you desire to communicate or problem you wish to solve. An adjunct to the ideation process is "incubation." This is the process of letting ideas "jell" in the mind and pick up the flavor of relationships already buried there. In intrapersonal communication the incubation period may be a fraction of a second or several days. Through the combined process of ideation and incubation the communicator attempts to satisfy the need posed by the original stimuli or to formulate a message to be transmitted interpersonally. (Barker & Wiseman 1966: 176-177)
A neat model of the way autocommunication precedes (hetero)communication. Lotman's contribution to this is the addition of an external code (preferably asemantic, syntactic code) that aids the reorganization of ideation.
Feedback in intrapersonal communication is somewhat different from that received on the interpersonal level. External messages are received overtly, through the sensory receptor organs. Internal messages are received covertly, through bone conduction, muscular contractions, or neurocircuitry in the central nervous system. (Barker & Wiseman 1966: 177)
Oh wow. Someone has actually noted bone conduction in relation with autocommunication! I made the same connection via Fry (1977) and arguing against Mead, according to whom we receive our own speech the same way we receive others' speech.
  1. In "thinking" does the brain encode and decode, or does it merely process information without going through an encoding and decoding procedure?
  2. Is it possible to think without verbal symbols?
  3. If verbal sybols are not used in thinking what is the nature of electro-chemical impulses which activate the brain?
  4. What sort of neurocircuitry provides the channel for feedback in the central nervous system?
  5. What factors determine the length of the incubation period in responding to message stimuli?
(Barker & Wiseman 1966: 178)
I believe these questions are still contended.

Washburn, Donald E. 1964. Intrapersonal Communication in a Jungian Perspective. Journal of Communication 14(3): 131-135.

The term "intrapersonal communication" may seem at times to be a misnomer. Communication ordinarily presupposes a relationship between at least two persons. Accordingly, some theorists regard intrapersonal communication as a special case of interpersonal communication. The outside person is represented internally by condensed memory traces - echoes, so to speak, of what has taken place earlier in two-person situations. This assumption makes interpersonal communication ultimately dependent on external factors. The psychology of C. G. Jung, on the other hand, posits a communication process that arises as a result of the self-regulatory activity of the psyche itself. (Washburn 1964: 131)
In terms of autocommunication this is called the "internal addressee" version, wherein a person has "other minds" inside him- or herself. In Lotmanian theory, not only "condensed memory traces" of other people but of texts can play the role of an intralocutor.
Jung did not deny the importance of conscious processes in which reason and reflection play the principal role. But his major emphasis was on the sepceial kind of communication that takes place between the conscious and the unconscious parts of the human psyche. At the conscious end of the spectrum lie those contents that may be voluntarily brought into awareness; at the opposite end are those which are accessible only when volition is suspended. "Shutting down" the will brings to the surface two kinds of images: those which reflect known experiences that have since been forgotten, and those which symbolically portray contents that cannot possibly derive from conscious experience. The latter, called "archetypes," Jung believed to represent the inherited structure of the psyche itself. (Washburn 1964: 131)
In my interviews on autocommunication with semioticians, this version also came up. But this special type of autocommunication between different parts of the brain or between consciousness and unconsciousness was more often than not related to schizophrenia.
For mental health and balance to exist, the acquired personality and the aboliginal Self must work in harmony. Needless to say, adequate intrapersonal communication is vitally important in this regard. (Washburn 1964: 131)
While early Jakobson and some of my interviewees related this kind of autocommunication with mental pathologies, here, like in Wescott's paper on coenesics, autocommunication is associated with mental health; that a healthy mind talks or otherwise communicates with itself.
Jung himself referred to this interaction as a kind of dialogue or colloquy. He pointed out that unconscious complexes usually enter our awareness as personalities or voices, even when they correspond to no known people of our aquiantance. Moreover, they are best approcahed as one would approach another person:
It is exactly as if a dialogue were taking place beween two human beings with equal rights, each of whom gives the other credit for a valid argument and considers it worth while to modify the conflicting standpoints by means of thorough comparison and discussion or else to distinguish them clearly from one another.
The classic example of this kind of relationship was described by Plato. When Socrates wished to know whether he was doing the right thing, he consulted his daemon, or inner voice. This attitude, according to Jung, is the beginning of wisdom. (Washburn 1964: 132)
In Peirce we similarly find discussion of a critical Self, the voice of reason that must be convinced with sound arguments.
The language of the unconscious is ambiguous in that it is based partly on the imagery of the senses and partly on an underlying logic of equivalences. A dream, for example, does not merely repeat the details of the remembered experience. It condenses and rearranges the ingredients of outer life in such a way that a new pattern emerges. An important feature of Jung's theary is that the individual's inner growth needs may be dramatized in the form of a dream or visionary experienc. (Washburn 1964: 133)
Another iteration of Freud's concept of condensation.
Another barrier to understanding, and a source of communication difficulties, is the selectivity that seems to be fundamental to human awareness at all levels. It has a tendency to maintain those habits of evaluation and behavior that succeed and to eliminate those that do not. Since each communication environment has special requirements, there is a danger that the personality will become increasingly one-sided and rigid. An exceptionally specialized person may be able to communicate in terms of only a single dominant attitude. Such limitations are the subject matter of comedy, which is often based on the laughable spectacle of a human being behaving in restricted and meaningless way. (Washburn 1964: 133)
And another iteration of selectivity (or sensory gating).

Platt, James H. 1955. What Do We Mean - "Communication"? Journal of Communication 5(1): 21-26.

The speaknig, listening, writing, and reading approach would seem to be an over-simplified one. These are recognized as being forms of behavior. According to Lecky, one's behavior is in accordance with his system of values. If this is true, then the "behavior" approach is one in which we are working with manifestations rather than with the true basis of communication. Under such a program, one would predict that there would be only a minimum of lasting effect in improved communication resulting from our teaching. (Platt 1955: 21)
Platt seems to be arguing, like Jakobson, that instead of manifestations (in R. J.'s case, sound) we should be dealing with meaning or semantics (here, in the age of human relationism, democratic "values").
Communication cannot be considered only as involving the level of inter-personal relations because communication involves the inner workings of the individual as well. It can probably be best considered as involving four levels of personality integration, namely: the biochemical, physiological, psychological, and the sociological. Many of our problems emphasize only the sociological level. Yet, since communication is unitary in nature, by stressing communication aspects at this level only, we are attempting to divide an indivisable process. (Platt 1955: 22)
Although Ruesch & Bateson (1951) is also referenced, these four levels aren't theirs but originate from: Lecky, Prescott 1945. Self-Consistency: A Theory of Personality. (New York: Island Press.
Before we can expect to change the student's communication behavior, we must first cause changes to take place within his system of values and in his concept of himself. In order to accomplish this requirement, the student must be given a communication framework which he can use for purposes of self-evaluation. The process of self-evaluation must originate with the student himself Therefore, it seems logical that the communication skills course should focus considerable attention upon intrapersonal communication. (Platt 1955: 22)
Somehow this sounds violent. But then again so did other human relationists of the time, thinking they could manipulate human relations at will. Actually, the overall scheme is pretty close to Lotman's autocommunication, because he similarly uses the violent imagery of "insertion". E.g. the student (a malleable young mind) is inserted/given a framework/code that will change the structure of his or her personality.
We are, in reality, dealing with two general types of communication: (1) communication of silent messages (feelings, visual stimuli, taste, etc.), and (2) communication of the auditory type. One is just as important in the practice of daily affairs as is the other. (Platt 1955: 23)
This is the early version of the verbal/nonverbal distinction. Hall's 1959 book was similarly titled The Silent Language.

Barnlund, Dean C. 1962. Toward a meaning-centered philosophy of communication. Journal of Communication 12(4): 197-211.

One cannot have a superficial, or narrow, or opportunistic concept of communication and be thorough and responsible teacher of that same subject. (Barnlund 1962: 197)
And equally, you cannot be a thorough and responsible teacher if you go in too deep into the details, study the concept of communication in all its marvelous variety and get lost in the hodgepodge of theories and notions.
To be acceptable, a philosophy of communication should fulfill the following criteria: (1) It should provide a satisfactory explanation of the aim of communication. (2) It should provide a technically adequate description of the process of communication. (3) It should provide a moral standard that will protect and promote the healthiest communicative behavior. (Barnlund 1962: 198)
As unrelated this is to autocommunication, it does add something to the "ethics of nonverbal communication". Mainly because so many proponents of "body language" ignore the "healthiness" of people-watching, self-control, etc.
...the listener tends to be regarded as a passive object, rather than an active force in communication. Unfortunately, it is not that simple to deposit ideas in another mind. (Barnlund 1962: 199)
This is one of the problems I see with R. Jakobson's communication model.
Finally, it is too parochial. It neglects man's communication with himself - an area that is fast becoming one of the most vital in communication research - and it fails to accont for the fact that communication is as often a matter of hiding or protecting what is in men's minds as it is a matter of revealing their thoughts and intentions. (Barnlund 1962: 199)
A statement about the status of autocommunication and something to the effect of Danesi's mystification function.
Communication, as I conceive it, is a word that describes the process of creating a meaning. Two words in this sentence are critical. They are "create" and "meaning." Messages may be generated from the outside - by a speaker, a television screen, a scolding parent - but meanings are generated from within. This position parallels that of Berlo when he writes, "Communication does not consist of the transmission of meaning. Meanings are not transmitted, nor transferable. Only messages are transmittable, and meanings are not in the message, they are in the message-user." Communication is man's attempt to cope with his experience, his current mood, his emerging needs. For every person it is a unique act of creation involving dissimilar materials. But it is, within broad limits, assumed to be predictable or there could be no teory of communication. (Barnlund 1962: 200)
There is a long list of thinkers who at some point noted that communication is creative. I'm wondering if this distinction between messages and meanings could help clarify the distinction of messages and signs as well. And Berlo's quote comes from: Berlo, David 1960. The Process of Communication. New York: Holt, Rinehart, Winston.
Meaning is not apparent in the ordinary flow of sensations. We are born into, and inhabit a world without "meaning." That life becomes intelligible for us - full of beauty or ugliness, hope or despair - is because it is assigned that significance by the experiencing being. As Karl Britton put it, "A world without minds is a world without structure, without relations, without facts." Sensations do not come to us, sorted and labeled, as if we were visitors in a vast, but ordered, museum. Each of us, instead, is his own curator. We learn to look with a selective eye, to classify, to assign significance. (Barnlund 1962: 200)
Lotman's semiosphere is this vast sorted, labeled and ordered museum but we still have to be our own curators (semiotic subjects) within its halls. Quote: Britton, Karl 1939. Communication: A Philosophical Study of Language. New York: Harcourt, Brace.
To say that communication occurs whenever meaning is assigned to internal or external stimuli is to enlarge greatly the span of our discipline. Communication, in this sense, may occur while a man waits alone outside a hospital operating room, or watches the New York skyline disappear at dusk. It can take place in the privacy of his study as he introspects about some internal doubt, or contemplates the fading images of a frightening dream. When man discovers meaning in nature, or in insight in his own reflections, he is a communication system unto himself. Festinger refers to this as "consummatory communication." The creation of meanings, however, also goes on in countless social situations where men talk with those who share or dispute their purposes. Messages are exchanged in the hope of altering the attitudes or actions of those around us. This can be characterized as "instrumental communication," as long as we remember that these two purposes are not mutually exclusive. (Barnlund 1962: 201)
This is not the first time in this paper when the author confuses communication theory with information theory (above it is said that communication reduces uncertainty, which is the main function of information, not communication). Viewing an individual or person as a communication system is at the core of autocommunication, but I'd rather take the Rueschian perspective that it is merely one of the "lowest" levels of communication. I do find the notion of "instrumental communication" useful. One theorist (I don't remember the name) had a definition of communication that involved changing the behaviour of others as its function. I would call it the regulatory function (related with social control and regulation).
A theory that leaves out man's communication with himself, his communication with the world about him and a large proportion of his interactions with his fellowman, is not a theory of communication at all, but a theory of speechmaking. (Barnlund 1962: 201)
Saucy! And indeed Jakobson's "communication model" is actualy a "speech act" model.
Communication is not a thing, it is a process. Sender, message and receiver do not remain constant throughout an act of communication. To treat these as static entities, as they often are in our research, is questionable when applied to the most extreme form of continuous discourse, is misleading when used to analyze the episodic verbal exchanges that characterize face-to-face communication, and is totally useless in probing man's communication with himself. Changes in any of these forces, and few forces remain constant very long, reverberate throughout the entire system. Students of communication are not dissecting a cadaver, but are probing the pulsing evolution of meaning in a living organism. (Barnlund 1962: 202)
When approaching culture with these terms (sender, message and receiver), we should equally consider if we are not using inappropriate notions.
Communication is complex. Someone once said that whenever there is communication there are at least six "people" involved: The person you think yourself to be; the man your partner thinks you are; the person you believe your partner thinks you are; plus the three equivalent "persons" at the other end of the circuit. (Barnlund 1962: 203)
Dayum. Aren't you making things more complex than they need to be?
Communication involves the total personality. Despite all efforts to divide body and mind, reason and emotion, thought and action, meanings continue to be generated by the whole organism. (Barnlund 1962: 203)
A truism.
Wheelwright, P. The Burning Fountain. (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1956). (Barnlund 1962: 206)
Among his list of suggested readings, alongside Allport, Burke, Festinger, Fromm, Langer, Osgood, Ruesch and Wiener, is this seemingly non-academic book. As it turns out, The Burning Fountain, a Study in the Language of Symbolism is a work of neo-criticism, something I know absolutely nothing about, and seems to touch upon the same stuff thet Langer discusses in her philosophy in a new key. Why in the world aren't semioticians referring to this? It's as if some stuff is skipped merely because it's title doesn't sound academic enough.
Tenure in the academic community is rightly contingent upon respect for the original contributions of a discipline. (Barnlund 1962: 207)
I'm not sure it is so anymore or in my field, but it should be.
There is a whole universe of communication currently being neglected that could, and should be, studied. (Barnlund 1962: 207)
This is how I feel about internet communication. I am aware that it is being studied somewhere by someone, but why aren't we informed of this field? That is, why aren't semioticians heavily involved in this?

Hefferline, Ralph Franklin 1955. Communication theory: II. Extension to Intrapersonal Behavior. Quarterly Journal of Speech 41(4): 365-376.

The human organism, unlike the most ingenious "self-controlled" robot, acquires its repertory of performable acts, not from arbitrary design, but from organic growth and learning. Physical development is relatively standard for the species, but what the individual is taught and how he is taught depends largely on accidents of time, place, and parentage. (Hefferline 1955: 365)
It almost sounds like the creationist vs evolutionist paradigms carried over to the study of behaviour. The behaviour of robots is created (arbitrarily designed), while humans develop their behavioural repertory incrementally.
A clue to the development of "bottled-up" behavior emerges from a review of our early training. At that time we are held accountable only for behavior which is directly observable. Parents reward and punish what they actually see. What we learn to do privately - in thought, dream, or waking fantasy - escapes detection and thus seems entirely different, as indeed it is in its successful avoidance of immediate social reprisal. However, the actual presence in the intrapersonal system of behavior which is not directly observable may be inferred or even brought under observation by special techniques. For instance, the so-called lie-detector exploits the fact that it is exciting to tell a lie and, furthermore, that evidence of excitement may be found in changed respiration, pulse-rate, blood-volume, skin-resistance, and so on. (Hefferline 1955: 365)
This is as obvious as it is valuable. It is relevant that in the 21st century, or, on the internet, we feel held accountable only for behaviour that can be related to our persons. Anonymous behaviour escapes detection, or at least that the feeling we get when we aren't aware of being monitored by some agencies. The situation is thoroughly different in dystopias where even private behaviour - thoughts, dreams and waking fantasies - are detectable for the "thought police" or "guardians".
Less sensational, but more systematically revealing, is the faint, but unmistakable, behavior disclosed by electromyography. The movements which constitute visible behavior are produced by muscular contractions, and these are attended by electrical phenomena called action potentials. Now suppose that a person, with electrodes suitably attached, is told to "think of" or to "imagine" performing a particular action. While carrying out the instructions, he may make no visible movement; nevertheless, if the instrument for picking up and amplifying action potetials is sufficiently sensitive, it will be found that the appropriate muscles have run through a patterned sequence of activity which is the same, except in magnitude, as that involved when the action is performed "in reality." Thinking and imagination, in the instances thus far susceptible to this kind of test, prove to be a kind of doing in miniature. That is the genuine doing now beyond question. (Hefferline 1955: 366)
This is cool. Reference: Jacobson, Edmund 1932. Electrophysiology of Mental Activities. American Journal of Physiology XLIV: 677-694.
The fact that faint behavior may be invisible to an external observer does not necessarily indicate that it is so faint as to be unobservable by the person himself. He is in a privileged position, not with respect to seeing his own behavior as others see it, but with respect to "feeling" it proprioceptively, or, to use the older term, kenesthetically. Through sense organs embedded in muscles, joints, and tendons, he may respond to his own movements, to patterns of tension, or even to diffuse changes in his over-all tonus or readiness for action. These are inmportant intrapersonal communications which, especially if talked about internally - that is, subvocally - constitute a good part of what has traditionally been called consciousness. (Hefferline 1955: 366)
This is something that I have frequently remarked upon in terms of "nonverbal self-communication". And indeed, looked at this way, proprioception constitutes a good part of consciousness.
When we say, after staying for a time at a dull gathering, "I think it is time to go," we might more precisely, if less politely, report, "I find myself more and more oriented toward the door, and the muscles which would lift me from my chair are already somewhat contracted." (Hefferline 1955: 366)
Wow. This is an operation of replacing discourse (somewhat abstract or ritual utterances) with concourse (verbal descriptions of nonverbal behaviour).
Formal education works directly to set up such "invisible behavior." When educators, for instance, try to "teach the student to think," they proceed in ways calculated to promote miniature, intrapersonal functioning. Ultimately, of course, they are concerned with what the student does in full view, but, since they believe that his public doings are more likely to be correct if preceded by a private "dry run" or rehearsal, they discourage impulsive, premature reactions and uphold the motto: "Think before you act." The way to think, they say, is to "consider the consequences," "follow up logical implications," "visualize the whole situation," "check on whether there are other possible solutions," and so on. Carrying out such instructions constitutes training in speaking subvocally, making minute gestures, attending to images of various kinds - in short, training both in building and in operating the intrapersonal communication system. The value to the individual and to society of "pre-behaved" behavior is that many actions which would prove regrettable, or at least inadequate, are rejected after their "private showing" and those which do get lived out in the full social context are likely to be in better accord with the situation's genuine requirements. (Hefferline 1955: 366)
Wow. Hefferline even manages to relate autocommunication to social control!
A difficult textbook may, on first reading, be incomprehensible. But we can re-expose ourselves to it again and again as we cannot to a speaker. A second reading will clear up some items, which shows that even the initial encounter was not without effect. We may go over key passages slowly, perhaps whispering them aloud, or we may stop while we "think about" the argument just presented. The more we behave with it, the more the material becomes organized in our own behavior as it was organized in the behavior of the author. We fully understand the author when we can say what he says for good and sufficient reasons - that is, when we can say it on our own as if we ourselves were the author. (Hefferline 1955: 367)
This is a good point to add to the "internal addressee" version of autocommunication. When we read a specific author or listen to a specific thinker long and thoroughly enough we can as-if take their position, internalize their voice so to say, and speak and argue as they would.
At a point far back we posed the question: "What manner of tape, if any, runs the human organism?" Subsequent discussion has roughly traced the development of the human repertory, stressing the fact that the organismic system, unlike the man-made robot, is capable of undergoing change and reclassification of the behaviors which it carries in stock. (Hefferline 1955: 368)
I feel as though Lotman argues the same point through the notion of code switching.
Other close observers of the social scene have glimpsed the coming of "unitary man" or "man for himself" or simply the "healthy human roganism"; and in their efforts at description they have employed such terms as flexibility, as opposed to rigidity, interaction as poosed to forced adjustment, breadth and depth of functioning as opposed to narrowness and superficial contact. It is as if an ability to "see through" the socialization process results, not in cynicism or disillusionment, but in a relatively conflict-free, genuinely productive orientation. Such individuals, it would seem, must have been spared the common lot of excessive conformity-pressures in childhood, or else, in later years, through good fortune or expert assistance, had the robotizing effects of early "internalizations" significantly diminished. (Hefferline 1955: 369)
I consider myself such a man. References: Whyte, Lancelot Law 1948. The Next Development in Man. New York. and Fromm, Erich 1947. Man for Himself. New York.
The term inhibition, as ordinarily used, covers both the behavior held back and the behavior which accomplishes the holding back. It involves the simultaneous contraction of those muscles which are the agonists - or doers - and the opposing muscles, or antagonists. The result is behavioral deadlock, or at least behavioral friction, with one part of the intrapersonal communications system tied up in the work of keeping another part in chronic check. This is what was hinted at earlier when it was suggested that the individual could commit partial suicide by "killing off" portions of his repertory. (Hefferline 1955: 370)
Could this explain the "frozen style" in Hall and Joos?
Electromyograptic investigations have been made by Malmo and coworkers at McGill University of headaches produced by chronic contraction of the musculature of head and scalp. They find these related to unexpressed resentment. They also suggest that leg cramps of a certain kind may be related to sexual inhibition, and arm and shoulder cramps to the inhibition of aggression. (Hefferline 1955: 371)
Wow. I immediately remembered an ex-girlfriend with chronic headaches who worked as a cashier and had a ton of "unexpressed resentment". The reference: Shagass, Charles and Robert B. Malmo 1954. Psychodynamic Themes and Localized Muscular Tension during Psychotherapy. Psychosomatic Medicine XVI: 312.
Since muscles are well equipped with sense organs, the proprioceptors, which supply information to the organism of movements, or even states of muscular tension without movement, it is paradoxical that chronic muscular blocking should not be more readily recognized as such. After a fashion it is recognized, but ascribed to recent strain, to "nervousness," to annoying circumstances, to rheumatism, arthritis, and a host of other conditions of which the organism seems to be the passive, innocent victim. (Hefferline 1955: 371)
Maybe because it is easier to "delegate the blame"?
If reminded that he has the voluntary muscles needed to wiggle his ears and yet cannot wiggle them, he is unconvinced or regards this as an irrelevant coincidence. He will readily acknowledge, however, that skills to which he once had to devote painstaking attention now run themselves off automatically because they have become "second nature." If he tries to watch how he performs such automatized activity, the result is interference with or disruption of the sequence. (Hefferline 1955: 372)
Relevant for my interests insofar as those same muscles that wiggle the ears are involved in lifting the eyebrows.
It is paralleled by the equally invalid assumption that, if one wishes to know something about a person's behavior, it is quite sufficient to "ask him." It is true, of course, that if the information sought lies within the area where the person has been schooled to observe himself in action and to verbalize what he is doing, his answer may be as accurate as could be obtained from prolonged observation of him by a trained investigator. But if asked by a trained investigator. But if asked about personal activities which he was never taught to observe and talk about - and therefore is likely to have no knowledge of - it is the rare individual who still does not feel qualified to answer or, if he confesses ignorance, does not feel he ought to have the information. Frequently he will promise to "think about it." (Hefferline 1955: 374)
This touches upon self-reports and nonverbal ethics.
Such "thinking" is nearly certain te be of the kind which has earned the bad name of "introspection." The person stares inwardly at himself, splitting his behavior into a part which does the staring and a part which gets stared at. It is not at all surprising that whatever is observed in this peculiar state should be so distorted in the process as to be peculiar, too, and not representative of the person's behavior under more natural circumstances. In the "Informal Experiments in Self-Awareness" referred to previously, the matter is put as follows:
...you will be at first unable to distinguish true awareness from introspection, and you will probably conclude that we intend you to introspect; however, this is not the case. Awareness is the spontaneous sensing of what arises in you - of what you are doing, feeling, planning; introspection, in contrast, is a deliberate turning of attention to these activities in an evaluating, correcting, controlling, interfering way, which often, by the very attention paid them, modifies or prevents their appearance in awareness. ...
Awareness is like the grow of a coal which comes from its own combustion; what is given by introspection is like the light reflected from an object when a flashlight is turned on it. In awareness a process is taking place in the coal (the total organism); in introspection the process occurs in the director of the flashlight (a split-off and highly opinionated part of the organism which we call the deliberate ega). When you have a toothache, you are aware of it without introspection, but you may also, of course, introspect it - bite down on the sore tooth, wiggle it with your finger, or, deliberately neglect it, force attention stoically away from it.
It is commonly assumed that if a person becomes more aware of his techniques and idiosyncrasies of functioning, he will then be under the constant strain of "having to watch everything at once." Actually, it is only the person very mistrustful of himself or others - afraid of being taken by surprise - who must exercise sugch hyper-alertness. If a person's communication channels are open, he does not have to examine them constantly for arrival of messages. These attract attention without effort, if they involve his interests. For instance, the good driver does not need to listen deliberately to the sounds of his motor. This is in the background of awareness. But should the motor develop a knock or other noise indicating something amiss, the good driver becomes aware of it quickly and takes appropriate action. The same thing is true of the individual who has not been trained to be afraid of his own behavior or who, if formerly afraid, has leaned the value of keeping open the channels of communication with himself. (Hefferline 1955: 375)
Invaluable for my "nonverbal self-communication".
While private, in the sense of invisible behavior, will no doubt always have its merits, it will no longer need to be a reservoir for impounding the backwash of the socially inexpressible. By further development of the methods and techniques for co-ordinating the verbal and non-verbal systems which are crucial to communication "in the full human sense," it appears that man can progressively de-robotize himself and more and more take rational charge of his affairs. (Hefferline 1955: 376)
This is one good paper.