These fleeting understandings and misunderstandings are a matter of framing—another term and concept developed by Gregory Bateson. Framing is a way of showing how we mean what we say or do and figuring out how others mean what they say or do. It is another aspect of indirectness in conversation. Signals and devices like those presented in Chapter Three serve to frame our utterances through metamessages about what we think is going on, what we’re doing when we say something, and our attitudes toward what we say and the people we say it to.
