ABSTRACT
In this chapter I suggest four different types of universal (or quasi-universal) structures as observational frames: the bodily symptoms of affective reactions; the circadian (daily) rhythms of activity and inactivity; developmental phases in the course of individual life from birth to death; and bureaucratic institutional structures of Western origin. Throughout the presentation of these suggestions I assume the bicultural approach to the problem of translation as the preliminary method of explicating the cultural contexts in which individual behavior is assigned communicative significance. It is proposed as a means of increasing the cross-cultural comparability of psychological material without reducing such material arbitrarily and prematurely to a set of formal operations.
