Structural characteristic of natural languages which distinguishes them from other systems of communication. According to Martinet (1965), linguistic expressions can be broken down into two different levels: (a) the smallest meaning-bearing level (...

Term introduced by G.Bateson and P.Watzlawick in their research on schizophrenia for a pathological behavior pattern in which a speaker A simultaneously directs two contradictory messages to an emotionally dependent hearer B. Because of the...

Double bind is a communicative situation where a person receives different or contradictory messages. The term, coined by the anthropologist Gregory Bateson and his colleagues (including Don D. Jackson, Jay Haley and John H. Weakland), attempts to...