ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews some of the elements that are, tacitly or explicitly, present or negotiated in every act of communication. Any act of communication is momentary, present-oriented, and deeply structurally connected to the total social game played among the actors. Trust and mistrust, peace and conflict, open exchange and defensive war are mixed together and always potentially relevant in all dyadic communication games. Any instance of communication, then, always transcends the solitary world of the information-seeker or the neutral attempt to transmit or receive a message because it adds a distinct type of social exchange to the basic concept of truth. The chapter concludes by discussing how meaning is created in self-fulfilling circles of communication and eventually leads to the various processes of conflict, bargaining, rational discussions, and muddling through that create the dynamics of the organized system.
