1. The need to seek the deeper levels and problems of communication My earlier attempts at investigating the levels of face-to-face interaction that seemed to be neglected in a greater or lesser degree in communication studies hopefully succeeded in presenting together the verbal and nonverbal systems that ought not to be ignored when seeking a realistic approach to the actual semiotic-communicative structuration of an encounter. It has been, however, the interest shown by communication researchers from different fields with respect to an earlier article in this journal (Poyatos, 1983a) that prompted me to offer a much more elaborate study of those deeper levels and problems which either escape us altogether or keep bothering us to no end as we try to analyze language and its nonverbal cosystems.l The type of joint transcription of the basic triple structure language-paralanguage-kinesics that I suggested before (Poyatos, 1983b, pp. 199-202) can only make one more aware of the fact that, although the tripartite complex is the most elaborate and uniquely anthroposemiotic transactional tool, it could still be complemented, and even partially or totally replaced, by chemical, dermal and thermal messages. Once this total somatic dimension of communication was clear, and many missing links of an interactive encounter came into view, I gradually realized that I was still perpetuating a limited view of interaction that was affecting genera1 linguistics and psycholinguistics, developmental studies, the clinical understanding of the patient’s communication skills, the study of perception in interaction, of interaction and the environment, etc., and even research areas such as the employment interview. I knew, in other words, that my view of the encounter was still a limited one, for ‘things happened’ which I could not account for in spite of having defined a rather complex set of communicative elements. This holistic concept of interaction can be developed only when interaction is understood as: the conscious or out-of-awareness exchange of behavioral and nonbehavioral, sensible and intelligible signs from the whole arsenal of somatic and extrasomatic systems (independently of whether they are activities or nonactivities) and the rest of the surrounding cultural systems, as they all act as sign emitting components (and potential elicitors of further emissions) which determine the specific characteristics of the exchange.