The process of communicating about communication, for example, to discuss a past conversation and to determine the meanings behind certain words, phrases, etc. Discussing aspects of how people are communicating to each other is talking about their talking—metacommunication. The term denotes an approach that makes the communication itself the topic of discussion, rather than other content. The impact of how each person reacts to the words of the other person can reveal interpersonal patterns arising from internal responses.

I think it is fascinating. I remember the term from college.

I agree. I think if this was something people knew more about, it would indeed improve communication.

It helped me the other day at work. I was trying to follow this conversation of he said that she said about what she said. And in my mind I was thinking, "Wait a minute you lost me."

Yeah, I've had that happen many times. What seems to happen to me is that I'll be listening to some one, and they'll say something I don't understand, and I'll sort of "stick" at that statement, trying to figure out what it means. Meanwhile, they've continued talking and I've lost a sentence or two or even a whole paragraph of their subsequent meaning. I always thought of it as a semantic problem though. Like they used a word in a way that I wasn't familiar with, which is what made me stop to try and figure out what the word meant to them.

If I could only deconstruct what I said before I say it....
Great subject. Anyone read Marshall McLuan's book The Medium is the Message? Best example I can think of.

I was into metafiction for a while, Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America, Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions, and a couple of my favorite movies are Adaptation, and Stranger Than Fiction which are examples of metafilm. In the end it makes me a little too introspective. I wonder what I meant by that?

the success in communication is based upon the channels.
most of the times the basis for problems are miscommunications.
if the channels (people involved) are not open communication does not flow properly.
I may be talking about colours and the other person may think I'm talking about weather.
Most of the times these misunderstandings lead to arguments and such big troubles that can be solved very easily.
Thus, I think that when we are talking with somebody we should have all our senses into this person to avoid miscommunications.

Very good points.

Great point sky, and great observation. That happens alot I fear.

We speak, something we say will trigger a response in the listening party, it could be like in your example of working out the meaning /intention of a word, or It could be that the person speaking has triggered a memory in the person listening, but it happens to me a lot also, I will then focus too much on that, and lose parts of the remaining message.


Many times however if we do not try to really understand the meanings of words, or relate our past experiences to them, then we do the opposite and jump to conclusions that are not accurate.

Extremely good topic!


Many times to combat this, I will try to place a marker in my mind, and continue listening, if I remember that marker I can ask additional questions to try to get at the meaning of the word, or even be that guy and interrupt to sidebar my memory if I feel it really reinforces, or corrects the path of the conversation (in my mind as the listener)

Conversation is a wonderful thing, you speak of reality in one of the last threads in the context of being the mental construct of the individual. Well a conversation is these mental constructs using language to share reality.

Fun stuff

you mean like transactional analysis? or nlp? both are very good.

Weatherguy

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You can get a college degree in "Communication" from a university, but what is communiction?

Any subject that requires years of study and a colledge education to understand, is not what I'm talking about when I say "communication".

To me communication is extremely simple in it's essence.

It is an idea traveling from one mind to another.

That pretty much says it all as far as I'm concerned.

Semantics deals with the symbols that represent the ideas.

So I guess Metacommunication would deal with the mechanics of how those symbols travel through the physical universe.

This give us an exact means of measuring the quality of communication. Did the idea that started out at mind A, make it all the way to mind B without any alteration? To the degree that it didn't is the degree to hwich the communication failed.

Which brings up an interesting issue.

When you say something to someone, how do you know if the idea you had in your mind, is the same idea the person you're talking to has in their mind, after you say it to them?

Obviously, the intention was to get the idea from you to them. So how do you know it happened?

Well there is one thing for sure, if you receive no communication back, then you have no way of knowing.

You must receive some kind of communication back - whether it be a verbal acknowledgement or just a nod or performing an action in response to a command - in order for you to know that it got there at all.

So to be useful in any inter-personal sense, communication cannot be one-way only. It must be two-way.

And it is this two-way communication that is the very source of understanding. The more communication there is, the more understanding exists between the two participants.

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