ABSTRACT
The body, as a vehicle of communication, is misunderstood if it is treated as a signal box, a static framework emitting and receiving strictly coded messages. The body communicates information for and from the social system in which it is a part. It should be seen as mediating the social situation in at least three ways. It is itself the field in which a feedback interaction takes place. It is itself available to be given as the proper tender for some of the exchanges which constitute the social situation. And further, it mediates the social structure by itself becoming its image. Some of this I discussed in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research (Douglas, 1968a) and in Purity and Danger (Douglas, 1966). To adapt the signal box metaphor to show the full involvement of the body in communication we should have to imagine a signal box which folds down and straightens up, shakes, dances, goes into a frenzy or stiffens to the tune of the more precise messages its lights and signal arms are transmitting. This paper is offered as a background to those others in this conference which treat of specialised signalling systems such as the voice and the face. It is above all offered as a preface to Professor Jenner’s discussion of endogenous factors. I will suggest a parallel set of social factors exogenous to the biological organism, feedback pathways which control the rhythm of social interaction.
