The Pragmatics of Human Communication

(Full title - The Pragmatics of Human Communication - a study of inter-actional pragmatics, pathologies and paradoxes by Paul Watzlawick, Janet Beavin Bavelas and Don D Jackson)

From the bookshelf of Mark Earls, executive planner, Ogilvy & Mather

If you are in any way involved in communicating with human beings - in advertising, in research, in management, in real life - the contents of this book will make you think again.

The book points out that while homo sapiens is probably the only species which communicates digitally - that is, transmitting verifiable information about things - this is only a tiny part of the richness of human communica-tion. Most of human communication is analogic, that is, it is both behavioural and not "about things" in the same verifiable way. Rather it is about the relationship between two or more humans.

The authors show how readily we mistake digital for analogic communication - when a cat rubs against my legs, the cat lover in me would like to think it is transmitting a specific piece of information like a request for milk or a wel-come home; but a better explanation is found in analogue communication, a behavioural invitation by the cat for me to act as mother to the cat.

The same is true of much human-to- human communication. What if digital and analogue were found in the same proportion in marketing communication as they are in real human-to-human communication? Would this not change the way we think about, practice and evaluate marketing communications - from sending bits of information out into the world to the relationship between the advertiser and the public?

This article first appeared in Brand Strategy, the monthly, thought-leading marketing magazine. www.brandstrategy.co.uk/subs