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.