Summary of the Bateson essay

1. Although you mention that your aim is to fiddle with different aspects of Bateson's work and that you cannot give it a proper conclusion because in your mind it is not finished, I would ask you to make a brief summary of the main findings, in your opinion, that concern your analysis of Bateson, Ruesch and other authors with regards to mammalian communication.

To begin with, I believe that Bateson's complex concepts, such as deutero-learning, can be translated into Uexküllian semiotic terminology. That is, Batesons ideas can be incorporated into Tartu semiotics without significant obstacles. This is because Bateson shares a fundamentally cybernetic understanding of communication with both Uexküll and Lotman (one influenced cybernetics and the other was influenced by cybernetics). Nowhere is this more clearer than in Bateson's discussion of digital and analogic forms of codification.
Bateson's insistence on the importance of ineffectiveness in interspecific communication should be taken seriously if we were to attempt to model communication from an Uexküllian perspective. Ineffectiveness is caused by differences in Umwelten. His insistence on mutual awareness and influence on the other hand is almost a perfect model for constructing an Uexküllian communication model: here mutual awareness concerns perceptual cues and influence operational cues. (Personally I would not attempt an Uexküllian communication model because I cannot read Uexküll in his original language, although I find the idea interesting enough.)
I devoted much of my essay to the connection between Bateson's μ function and Ruesch's metacommunication, because these notions share a common core that was borne from their cooperation in 1951. It is also worthwhile to mention that the earliest mention of the metalingual function I can find by Jakobson dates to 1954, when he had just read all the (then) available literature on communication theory. There are other hints that Jakobson had read their work - such as Ruesch and Bateson's intrapersonal communication that Jakobson discussed under the same name before renaming it as autocommunication - but this link is especially relevant for elaborating the code in his scheme. It is also the case that semioticians are so fond of the metalingual function that they use it in inappropriate contexts (e.g. Boudon 1986a[1977]: 104), as if forgetting that metalanguage is by definition language about language and the metalingual function operationalizes talking about language. If we are not dealing with language but with communication then the correct term is metacommunication.
I am especially fond of the μ function because it is further distinguished from metacommunication. Ruesch developed his approach to metacommunication to a beautiful but almost absurd complexity and talked about metacommunicative instructions that concern almost every factor in Jakobson's scheme. Bateson distinguishes communication about relationship as essentially the channel or contact function of communication all the while considering that the contact between individuals is not a mechanical and transient link but involves social relationships. Curiously, this was also the original point of Malinowsky's phatic communication. Jakobson reduced it to a linguistic function or a rather restricted use of language, while Bateson's μ function involves much more, such as the patterns and contingencies of the relationship. (Very schematically - even perhaps unfairly - put, the only pattern and contingency that Jakobson's phatic function considers is: "Are we talking to each other at this very moment?")
There is a lot that can be done with the μ function. My essay took only the first baby steps towards untangling the possibilities. The most elegant analogue to this function that I can think of is what I call goffmanian triad and which involves: (1) a self (an individual or organism); (2) some others (other members of the group or participants in an interaction); and (3) the social situation that unites (1) and (2). The μ function targets the social situation in which the communication occurs. That is, not the "context" in Jakobson's scheme, but the communication process itself (which are not the same thing, as a closer examination of Jakobson's context reveals). In classical approaches the μ function also involves an old and almost forgotten concept, the definitions of the situation. I could go on, but the point is clear: the μ function is a powerful and useful conception. I believe it will be of great help in disentangling Jakobson's "communication model".

2. Also, you said that in the future you want to study more thoroughly the interplay between Jakobson and Bateson, to what extent do you plan on including zoosemiotics or animal communication?

I am positively inclined towards zoosemiotics because my object of study, nonverbal communication, belongs to this field (according to Sebeok) and has historically been influenced by the same ideas, authors and in some cases same books (e.g. Darwin 1872; Hediger 1950; Lorenz 1966). General ethology and "human ethology" seem to comprise a continuum, sometimes even within a single collection (in Pliner 1975, for example). Human nonverbal behaviour is not that much different from animal behaviour, so that an ideal approach to nonverbal communication, in my opinion, would be comprehensive enough to encompass both human and animal communication. In the end, humans are also animals and the study of nonverbal communication has repeatedly brought this very obvious knowledge to our consciousness. In more a eloquent phrasing:

The language of action is spoken by the body; and yet, it is not something given from the very first. All that nature permits is that man, in the various situations in which he finds himself, should be able to make gestures; his face is agitated by movements; he emits inarticulate cries - in other words, cries that are 'coined neither by the tongue nor by the lips'. All this is not yet either language or even sign, but the effect and consequence of our animality. (Foucault 2002[1966]: 115; my emphasis)

I am taken to Ruesch and Bateson because their "communication system" approach is applicable on most all forms of communication. They advance a theory of communication that can be extended to the analysis of semiotic or communication systems such as human face-to-face interaction, organizations (corporations, groups, herds, flocks), cultural communicatian as well as interspecific human-animal communication.
Sebeok and others tried to advance the study of animal communication in the late 1960s by taking Jakobson's scheme of language functions as their starting point. My thesis is that we can keep Jakobson's general approach but we must turn back to earlier authors to construct a truly comprehensive model of communication. This involves not only turning back to Ruesch and Bateson and elaborating the code component and metalingual function to include a variety of semiotic systems and metacommunicative operations, but also a revisitation of Jan Mukařovský, who wrote not only about the poetic and aesthetic functions, but also informational and practical functions.
Looking back I find it surprising that anyone can think of Jakobson's scheme as a communication model without there being anything explicitly communicative about it. In the end, my aim is firstly to make the model operational by including explicit communication functions and secondly to make it much broader by turning to Charles Morris and adding so-called sign functions. I cannot be sure if it will turn out as I intend it because the work is still in progress, but ideally I would end up with a much heavier model that complements Jakobson's language function with Morris's sign functions and Ruesch-Bateson's communication functions.
There is a high risk of failing to bring a harmonious cooperation to these approaches, but I feel that someone has to at least attempt it. Zoosemiotics or animal communication figures into this plan because the final model that I have in mind should be applicable on a wide variety of communication systems: human-human, human-animal, animal-animal. In my opinion we are at a phase in semiotic theorizing when we cannot set any living organism beyond the semiotic pale and it's high time that communication modeling followed suit.

3. You are making a good work in contextualising Bateson's essay in general semiotics and protosemiotics. My question is simple: should Bateson be included more openly to the history of the field? Whatever your answer would be, please give arguments to pro and contra.

My answer is an unequivocal yes. On Wikipedia he is labeled as an English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist. All of these listed fields have something or other to do with semiotics anyway. Like Jurgen Ruesch, who came to recognize the "semioticity" of his work only later, so is Bateson heavily involved in theorizing that is by all means semiotic but perhaps wasn't labeled as such at the time.
At the moment I am unable to produce arguments not to include Gregory Bateson more openly to the history of semiotics. I have yet to read the whole of Steps to an Ecology of Mind and I cannot give an evaluation based on one paper only. The paper that I did read proved to be very semiotic but I can't vouch for his other writings. If I were to construct any arbitrary contra-argument then I would question whether enough time has passed to start writing the history of semiotics since the 1950s (what is in archaeological terms still the present). But if someone were to write a history of semiotics (or more specifically, the history of 20th century semiotics) after 2050, I would see no reason why not to include Gregory Bateson, Jurgen Ruesch, as well as Susanne Langer. These may not perhaps be the most popular thinkers, but they were certainly some of the deepest and greatest thinkers of their time.