ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the major advances in the behavioral sciences by the midtwentieth century all involved a concern with communication. It outlines the theoretical premises that were engendered in us by the recent advances in the study of human communication. The theoretical premises underlying the advances that influenced and guided the thinking of those initially involved in the pioneering collaborative microanalytic study of communication process known as The Natural History of an Interview. It is an attempt at synthesis. The natural history of an interview is concerned with trying to put together the parts of the communicational stream that the professional linguist studies (phonemes, morphemes, phrases, vocal modifiers, junctures, etc.) with the parts of the stream that are studied in kinesics (kines, kinemorphs, etc.). It also pays little attention to the failures of communication that are due to the randomization of signals occasioned either by background noise or by imperfect resolving processes in the receiving sense organ.
