Bridges across the communication

It often happens that everyday interactions reveal a state of relational inequality among the participants, which is characterised by an imbalance of forces, an unfavourable context (for one of them, at least), and a difference in status. The gap between the interlocutors' positions in these situations involves the recourse to means of limiting, or even of neutralizing the interlocutor's freedom of action, although s/he might benefit from a privileged status or circumstances. We therefore aim in this book to reveal several discursive strategies of enunciation, which function as indirect or side strategies, in order to establish a balanced relational verbal exchange. Starting from the idea that, in communication, the message is not limited to linguistic updating (any behaviour is a message in terms of the Palo Alto Group), there is a relationship of equivalence, broadly speaking, between the content and statement on the one hand, and between the relationship and enunciation, on the other hand. The meaning of the communication proposed by the Palo Alto School, is made up of a content component and a relationship component.