This article develops a theory regarding the interactive and contextual properties of signs and shows how it might be applied in analyzing imagery from face-to-face communication in a self-analytic group. It is proposed that such imagery develops a code that is amenable to structural analytic techniques similar to those used by Levi-Strauss in analyzing primitive myths. This code gives one access to a rich layer of meaning hidden beneath the manifest discourse. By examining the way specific encoded elements are drawn into relation through the associative process in speech, it is possible to construct a code of greater power that reveals the global meaning of the discourse.
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