Process and Content

Putting your foot in it.
Sending a message
"Don't get me wrong, but..."
Telling "white lies"
Talleyrand is alleged to have asked, on hearing of the death of the Turkish ambassador, "What did he mean by that?" 

The common feature of all these examples is their attention to issues of process rather than content. This is a tricky issue to unpick explicitly, but an important distinction for making sense of all kinds of complex situations, from politics to mental health, group relations to family arguments. 

Content and process are two different frames of reference which may be brought to bear on the same situation, and often highlight quite different aspects of it. 

Content is the common-sense angle. It is about taking something at "face value". A statement means what it says and nothing else. It follows the rules of logic: a statement may be true or false (or perhaps meaningless), but it is assumed to be uttered in a vacuum. 

Process is about the impact of a statement or action on a situation. To think in process terms is to look, like Talleyrand, behind the "presenting" stimulus for a meaning in wider terms. 

If you are interested in philosophy, you may be aware of J L Austin's (1962) typology of "speech acts": "perlocutionary" and "illocutionary" acts operate within the Process frame, although the current discussion is not confined to verbal communication

See Austin's entry on the excellent Philosophy Pages site, or http://e-anglais.com/
thesis.html 

Similarly, in counselling theory, Heron (1990) categorises his six possible forms of intervention with reference to the intention of the practitioner to influence the course of the conversation.

For a summary see http://www.hotuae.com/
science/psychology/
intervtn.htm

Features of Process

The fact that a communication, a gesture in two senses, an utterance, an action, has been made is more "basic" than the information it conveys. Animal communication is almost content-free. It may fall into broad categories, such as mating calls or alarm calls or threats, but with some exceptions such as the dances of bees, its substantive content is simply about "me" and perhaps “you”, perhaps "our relationship", but not “it” (Bateson, 1966).  Although there is some evidence that primates are capable of deception in their relationships (Dunbar, 1996), animal communication is neither true nor false. Truth values are features only of substantive communication.

It is possible to have Process communication devoid of Content: obvious examples are body language and paralinguistic communication, laughs, smiles, coughs, and sobs. These are not necessarily intentional, and although they are generally interpreted in relation to Content, their effect may be to amplify or negate the Content. Thus Process "frames" the Content. See Goffman (1975) for normal and intriguing examples and Bateson (1969) for pathological ones.

It is probably not possible to have Content without Process, which rather gives the lie to Habermas' "ideal speech act" (1988).

Incidentally, this may suggest why truth is not a terribly important criterion when assessing gossip! Dunbar (1996) argues that gossip, or more broadly “small talk” as the linguistic extension of grooming behaviour among primates, lies at the root of the development of language. The characteristic of such small talk is that “it's not what you say, it’s the fact that you say it”. Talking is used as a means of cementing relations between people, and as long as it is broadly legitimate, in the sense of conforming to cultural standards or group norms, its substantive content matters little.

Next time you are in a spontaneous informal conversation in a small group, note how topics are raised and dropped very casually: the person who insists on pursuing an issue when it has served its purpose is regarded as a bore or socially inept. The interplay between this Process function of talk and its Content can be fascinating, as it is negotiated in slightly more formal groups, and as the privilege of determining the direction of the conversation becomes the marker for status within the group. Here, too, Content is often subordinated to Process.

• Absence of communication is in Process a communication. An expected communication which does not happen is potentially as powerful a determinant of events as one which does. So, for example, my failure to send you a birthday card may well say more about our relationship than sending one. Thus Watzlawick, Bavelas and Jackson (1967) maintain that “one cannot not communicate” and explore communication in what they term its digital (Content) and analogic (Process) aspects. Their attention to Process issues, or what they refer to as the “pragmatics” of communication, explores these issues in great detail: they employ what I have elsewhere called the symptomatic frame but they do not comment on it as such (that term originates from Goffman 1970:9).

• Process communication cannot negate its statements: it cannot assert that something is not the case, only that something else is the case (Austin, 1962; Watzlawick et al 1967:102 ff)
• Thus while in an argument you may "take back" a hot-headed remark by saying "I'm sorry, I didn't mean that"—that only operates at the Content level. At the Process level it is not possible to unsay it (even if some judges instruct the jury to ignore certain inappropriate remarks)

• Partly because of this, Process implies shame-culture rather than guilt-culture.
• ...and makes connections between things rather than explanation such as cause-and-effect. Thus in process terms post hoc ergo propter hoc is true, and magic works. That is why in magic it is so powerful to know the true name of something.
• The Process level is also that of the self-fulfilling and self-defeating prophecy: and hence very powerful in its impact on, for example, stock-markets.
• An essential part of ritual is its awareness and use of the Process dimension, often but not necessarily harnessed to content. The potency of ritual can actually be enhanced by its incomprehensibility (a bit like this paper!)

Trust

If this does not make much sense, think about that archetypal Process phenomenon—trust. Do not just read this—do the thinking!

• Consider how trust (or its lack) frames the entire Content of communication.
• How it is created (and destroyed).
• How clumsily Content is employed (typically by lawyers) to substitute for it.
• Its relationship with Content truth.

Get the picture?

Process and Content in Teaching and Learning

For teachers, the common-sense reading of this distinction is between what we teach (Content) and how we teach (Process or pedagogy). Process issues tend to assume greater importance in teaching which is concerned to develop attitudes and change behaviour. We tend to concentrate on teacher-managed Process (i.e. how “well” the session went), unless something has gone wrong, and the class has for example been disruptive.

Just what is learned is a matter of Content, but helping it to happen is a matter of managing the Process.

In teaching and learning, as in other communicative activities, Process is more basic than Content. Indeed, without a minimally satisfactory Process, Content never gets a look in. That Process, however, has to be tuned so that it helps rather than hinders learning. Not all pleasant, socially acceptable Process is conducive to learning — I, like many other teachers, have received evaluation sheets which say effectively, “I enjoyed the course, but I didn’t really learn anything.” Some "fun" exercises have no more significance for learning than party games (which is what they are, really).

Part of the key to understanding Process is to grasp the distinction between symptomatic and substantive frames. In the former, the meaning of a communication — in this case, perhaps, a comment by a teacher — is bestowed principally by the receiver, on the basis of what that communication represents to her. In the social world of the class, what the communication represents may also be related to the representative structures involved in inter-group terms.

In the latter, substantive, frame, the communication is received on the terms intended by the sender — the teacher or another student — and taken at face value. Successful transmission of Content relies heavily, although not exclusively, on recipients acquiring and using the substantive frame. The acquisition of  the substantive frame is itself a Process issue. Transmission of Content is necessary, but not sufficient, for learning to take place: that depends on a suitable fit being established between Content and Process. 

"Small talk" is more technically known as "phatic communion", a term coined by the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski (1923): see http://english.
unitecnology.ac.nz/
resources/resources/
conversation/part1-C.html

Transactional Analysis refers to the Process dimension of small talk as "strokes"

References

AUSTIN J L (1962) How to do Things with Words Oxford; Oxford University Press

BATESON G (1966) "Problems in Cetacean and other Mammalian Communication" reprinted in Steps to an Ecology of Mind London; Paladin, 1973 pp334-348

BATESON G (1969) "Double Bind" reprinted in Steps to an Ecology of Mind London; Paladin, 1973 pp 242-249

DUNBAR R (1996) Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language London; Faber and Faber

GOFFMAN E (1970) "Expression Games; an analysis of doubts at play" in Strategic Interaction Oxford; Basil Blackwell

GOFFMAN E (1975) Frame Analysis: an essay on the organization of experience Harmondsworth; Penguin

HERON J (1990) Helping the Client London; Sage

MALINOWSKI B (1923) 'The problem of meaning in primitive languages'. Supplement to C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards (eds.) The meaning of meaning: A study of the influence of language upon thought and the science of symbolism (pp. 451-510). London; Routledge & Kegan Paul

WATZLAWICK P, BAVELAS J B, JACKSON D D (1967) Pragmatics of Human Communication New York; W W Norton

 © James Atherton
last updated
November 2003