Communication: Cooperation or negotiation?

Abstract

Communication is more than exchanging messages or getting one's point across. It is the process by which all the pieces of the living world find their relationships to the other pieces to form larger wholes and to enable the living world to grow, adapt, and survive. In this article I explore the matter of sharing communication in groups, which I refer to as cooperation. Cooperation is different from the process involved when two individuals exchange messages, an interaction I refer to as negotiation. When two or more people come together and interact, a third entity emerges: a relationship. One must necessarily communicate with (relate to) both another person and with the relationship. A married person relates not only to a spouse but to the higher-order entity, the relationship. In school a student relates not only to individuals but to the class as an entity with its own characteristics and demands. While we are fairly explicit about the rules (politeness, use of language) for interpersonal communication, we tend to behave as though groups are only collections of individuals and that cooperation is achieved through negotiation. We do not recognize that the higher-order group-shared communication which I call cooperation requires a different set of rules and has a different purpose or function. Rather, we invoke the processes appropriate for interpersonal communication and thus rarely become a truly cooperating, sharing group,