Introduction

Early devisers of category schemes (e.g. Bales, 1950) hoped that their schemes would be equally applicable to all social situations. Bales' scheme has indeed been used to analyse group discussion, classrooms, management–union negotiation, psychotherapy, doctor–patient encounters and family life. The hypothesis that the repertoire of social behaviour is universal to all situations is attractive; it would reflect the constant structure of the nervous system, and enable us to look for universal principles of social behaviour. Beneath the differences between tennis, table tennis and squash, for example, are basically equivalent moves, and the same may be true of social behaviour. We shall examine the alternative hypothesis that the repertoire of social acts is different in different situations; connected with this is the functional hypothesis that these repertoires are related to the goals being sought, for example by forming the steps that bring about those goals, and by providing the distinctions that need to be made between otherwise similar acts in particular situations.

We shall study several different kinds of elements: verbal categories, verbal contents, nonverbal communication and bodily actions. And we shall discuss the question of the size of units of social behaviour. Duncan contrasted the structural approach and the external variable approach to the study of nonverbal communication. By the structural approach he meant ‘studies which have sought to identify fundamental elements (or units) of nonverbal behaviours, and to explore the systematic relationships among these units’ (1969, p. 121), as have been carried out by Birdwhistell, Scheflen, Kendon and others.