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PALGRAVE PHILOSOPHY TODAY
Philosophy of
Communication
Giacomo Turbanti
Palgrave Philosophy Today
Series Editor
Vittorio Bufacchi
Philosophy
University College Cork Philosophy
Cork, Ireland
The Palgrave Philosophy Today series provides concise introductions to all the
major areas of philosophy currently being taught in philosophy departments around
the world. Each book gives a state-of-the-art informed assessment of a key area of
philosophical study. In addition, each title in the series offers a distinct interpretation
from an outstanding scholar who is closely involved with current work in the field.
Books in the series provide students and teachers with not only a succinct
introduction to the topic, with the essential information necessary to understand it
and the literature being discussed, but also a demanding and engaging entry into the
subject.
Giacomo Turbanti
Philosophy of
Communication
Giacomo Turbanti
Civilizations and Forms of Knowledge
University of Pisa
Pisa, Italy
ISSN 2947-9339 ISSN 2947-9347 (electronic)

Palgrave Philosophy Today
ISBN 978-3-031-12462-4 ISBN 978-3-031-12463-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12463-1
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature
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Foreword
Philosophical problems often arise when we reflect on something familiar and then
it suddenly becomes strange and wonderful. Augustine famously noticed that if no
one asked him, he knew what time is, but if he wished to explain it to one who
asked, he did not know. Communication is like that. We humans are typically
proficient communicators, because all our complex social existence depends on it.
We are constantly exposed to communication, and we know how to practice it even
in very elaborated contexts, as, for instance, giving a public speech, joining a team
meeting, and posting on a social network. Yet, reasoning about the very nature of
communication is not something we are equally accustomed to do. This book is an
invitation to reflect on communication and an introduction to the most important
philosophical issue that one is likely to have to deal with by doing it.
But is it worth engaging in such a reflection? After all, we already do commu-
nicate skillfully. So, it could be argued, why should one get encumbered by
abstract philosophical problems rather than just practicing communication, if
one’s goal is to get better at it? Admittedly, the idea that reflection could hinder
action is part of a certain received lore about philosophy in general. And indeed
there have been even philosophers who have conceived their job as that of liberat-
ing us from the very philosophical problems that we burden ourselves with. Be
that as it may, there is an important distinction to make regarding communication
between skills and competences. While reasoning about communication might
not directly make one better at communicating in specific contexts and with spe-
cific techniques, it definitely improves one’s knowledge and mastery of commu-
nicative phenomena. In this sense, reasoning about communication makes one a
better communicator as a professional figure. Indeed, this book is primarily
addressed not as much to philosophers, who have plenty of independent opportu-
nities to think about the problems discussed here, as to those who have chosen
communication as their job or intend to do so.
This is precisely why this book is an introduction to the philosophy of communi-
cation. It provides the philosophical background that is required to understand and
discuss the theoretical questions raised by the analysis of communicative phenom-
ena. It consists of three parts, devoted respectively to the theory of communication,
v
vi Foreword
the theory of conflicts, and the theory of organizations. These are the main areas in
which professional expertise in communication is formed and exercised, not only
because they represent some of the major fields in which job positions are open for
experts in communication but also because they arguably constitute the very theo-
retical kernel of communicative expertise. A communicator must understand what
communication is and how it works as a unique phenomenon even in the multifari-
ous ways in which humans practice it. That is the ground on which they will be able
to develop the specific skills and techniques required by the different contexts in
which they will be called to operate in their professional life—some of which are
most likely yet to be invented. A communicator must be aware of the social struc-
ture in which communicative phenomena are embedded. They must comprehend
the role of communication in transforming conflicts and fostering cooperation.
Indeed, communication is key to any organizing process in which humans come to
do things together as a group. That is why a communicator must also understand
how organizations are constituted by communicative means. All of these aspects are
inextricably intertwined in any real situation in which the expertise of a communi-
cator is required. With respect to this kind of situations, the philosophical point of
view allows clarifying how meaning is determined through communication, how
such determination is negotiated among different perspectives, and how such nego-
tiation produces our social reality. This is the main thread that binds the three parts
of the book together.
In Part I, the bases are laid down for an account of human communication that
may be plausible from a cognitive point of view. There are different possible
approaches to the theory of communication. A perennial intuition in the history of
philosophy, for instance, has always suggested that communication essentially con-
sists in the transmission of codified information from one individual to another. In
the twentieth century, such an intuition was epitomized by the mathematical theory
of communication defined by Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver. What language
would look like if it were a code can be understood by learning from semiotics and
linguistics the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic rules of a system of signs. We will
not follow this approach though. Unfortunately, the explanatory power of the code
model falls short of providing a satisfactory account of how shared information is
used to interpret communicative exchanges. This is why different intuitions are
needed to ground the theory of communication. Some important suggestions in this
regard can be found in the work of Paul Grice. His essential contribution to the
acknowledgment of the role of intentions in communicative exchanges opened new
horizons in the theory of communication. He proposed an inferential model that
sheds light on how fundamental the ability of recognizing one another’s intentions
is in human communication. Indeed, Michael Tomasello argued that only humans
exhibit such a complex shared intentionality as is required by their communicative
exchanges. At the moment, the inferential model seems to stand more chances of
providing the basis for the development of a cognitive account of communication.
A significant attempt in this direction was made by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson,
Foreword vii
who originally developed Relevance Theory to account for the cognitive process of
interpretation of communicative stimula on the basis of shared information. In this
book, the relevantist approach to the theory of communication is favored and
adopted for both explanatory and didactic purposes. Notwithstanding some well-
known shortcomings, it provides the expressive resources to make explicit the main
result of this first part of the book: the purpose of communication is not to transfer
information, but to extend our mutual cognitive environments.
Part II addresses the role of communication in conflict transformation. The
notion of a conflict has always been problematic in philosophy: some have seen it
as a positive principle of transformation and progress, others as a negative force
disruptive of societies. The analysis of conflictual situations has proved not to be an
easy task itself. Joan Galtung suggested to identify several elements that contribute
to conflictual formations: the behaviors of the parties, their attitudes, and the contra-
diction that constitutes the object of the conflict. The relations between these ele-
ments help explaining the structure of a conflictual situation. Crucial to the
establishment of these relations are the cognitive environments with which the par-
ties interpret the conflict and decide how to act. These cognitive environments are
shaped by communication. Even once the analysis is clear, however, the conflictual
dynamics determined by the actions of the parties are still very complex to under-
stand. A quite convenient way to model them is by deploying the formal tools of
Game Theory. At first glance, however, the game theoretic analysis forces upon us
a basic anticlimactic result: the choice to cooperate could be irrational in conflictual
situations. Luckily, a more careful consideration of repeated games shows that
cooperative equilibria can still emerge under specific conditions. Here again, the
notion of extending mutual cognitive environments by communicative means is key
to obtain the transformations in the structure of a conflict that can foster rational
cooperation. This is in fact the rationale of the reframing approach to conflict
transformation.
Part III explores the thesis that communication constitutes organizations (CCO).
Classical theories of organization mostly looked at communication instrumentally.
Scientific Management considered communication only as part of the tasks estab-
lished by an organization plan. Human resources favored communicative exchanges
mainly as means to improve production. When successive organizational views in
Systems Theory criticized the unadaptability of these traditional approaches, they
also ushered a wider conception of the inner and outer flows of information that
include organizations. Still, systems approaches see information as just part of what
is exchanged between an organization and its environment. A bolder attempt to
characterize the role of communication in organization has been developed by Karl
Weick, who suggested a straightforward identification of organizing and communi-
cative processes. More precisely, he argued that organization consists in the pro-
cesses by means of which groups of people collectively try to make sense of their
environment. Weick gave communication pride of place in the theory of organiza-
tion, but at the price of an ontological tension between the objectual and the
viii Foreword
processual nature of organizations. The original formulation of the CCO thesis,

presented by James Taylor and Elizabeth Van Every, tried to release such a tension
by adopting an emergentist approach. However, the comparison with the results of
emergentism in the philosophy of mind suggests that the CCO thesis requires some
integration in order to avoid the paradoxical identification of organizations with col-
lective individuals. The various dimensions of the objectivity of organizations need
to be carefully spelled out. Such an analysis highlights the normative structure of
organizations as social objects grounded on collective intentionality. Here is where
communication can really be seen as playing a foundational role in organization, by
allowing the reciprocal recognition of the members of the groups whose social
norms constitute organizations as objects and agents.
As is clear from this brief summary, there is a path that the reader is invited to
follow across the three parts of this book. Like any path, it has a point of departure
and it has a point of arrival. The choice of such points is as much relevant from a
meta-theoretical perspective as, if not more than, the trajectory of the path itself.
Indeed, the precise boundaries of the theoretical investigation in the philosophy of
communication are all but clear and uncontroversial. Any choice in this regard
determines a different characterization of the object of the investigation, namely
communicative phenomena. It is important, therefore, to make explicit the choices
that have been made in this introductory volume.
As regards the point of departure, we will not start from scratch. In the account
of communicative phenomena, we will begin with a lot of things already in place.
We will use the language of cognitive sciences to describe these things. Thus, our
starting point will be sapient cognitive subjects endowed with meaningful mental
states. We humans, of course, are such beings. We will express the idea that we
have beliefs, desires, fears, feelings, and so on by saying that we have mental
episodes representing states of affairs that are believed, desired, feared, felt, and
so on. It is important to realize that the idea of the representational content of
mental episodes is an abstraction. Not every mental episode can really be said to
represent a definite state of affairs. More importantly, as far as the topic of this
book is concerned, not every communication exchange can be analyzed just in
terms of the representational contents that the participants have and modify by
interacting with one another.
And yet, while talking about representational contents is definitely an abstrac-
tion, it is a powerful one. It allows us to draw some essential distinctions. For
instance, it allows us to distinguish between thermostats, which react to the varia-
tion of temperature in their environment, and cognitive subjects, who act upon the
content of their mental states. More essentially, it allows us to distinguish between
inner episodes that do not have representational content, such as itches, arousals,
and dopamine hits, and inner episodes that do, such as emotions, desires, and beliefs.
This, of course, is crucial, because while human communication may involve the
former, it cannot be explained without the latter. Surely, we are not always fully
conscious and in control of the mental episodes that we happen to have. And it is
true that communication can be exploited to raise all sorts of inner episodes that can
Foreword ix
deeply influence both our short-term reactions and long-term behavior. But it is just
a conceptual mistake to run together the sense in which a thermostat can be condi-
tioned to switch on the heating and the sense in which a person can be convinced to
buy a certain product or vote for a certain party.
Starting the theoretical investigation about communication without the concep-
tual tools required to draw the distinction between communication and condition-
ing—and thus obliterating the very possibility of discussing it—would be a binding
meta-theoretical choice that cannot but result in a loss of explanatory power down
the road. And even if for some reason we were eventually to come to the conclusion
that communicating is better thought of as conditioning after all, an inescapable task
of communication theory would still be the characterization of the specific ways in
which human beings, as opposed to other things, condition one another. Adopting
the language of cognitive sciences offers the decisive advantage of letting us put all
these distinctions in the right focus and try characterizing what is really specific
about human communication.
On the other side, the point of arrival of the path is equally revealing of the sort
of investigation that the reader is invited to pursue. Indeed, it is probably what
mostly characterizes such an investigation as theoretical. As was mentioned, the
path will lead us through a very complex and varied terrain. Every step we take will
contribute a stroke to a portrait of our social communicative practices. Hopefully, at
the end of this path we will have a better idea of how they are articulated and how
their dynamics works. Our investigation will leave us with the acknowledgment of
the essential role that reciprocal recognition plays in the constitution of the com-
municative practices that ground the ways in which our social reality is determined.
In this sense, our investigation will leave us at the brink of asking a whole new set
of questions: How such a reciprocal recognition is to be achieved? Who should we
recognize as members of our social practices? What sort of communication
exchanges are worth establishing and what is worth pursuing by means of them?
Why and how should we communicate? Now, these are very essential questions.
They are, it could even be argued, the most important philosophical questions for
those who are taking up a career in communication. And yet, they will remain unan-
swered in this book. In fact, those are questions that pertain to communication ethics.
Admittedly, the difference between the theory and the ethics of communica-
tion as fields of research is far from sharp. It is just not the case that ethical ques-
tions can be addressed without a theoretical background on what communication
is and how it works, nor is the case that theoretical investigation can be under-
taken independently of a firm awareness of the means and ends of communica-
tive practices. The distinction, however, is not completely spurious. It still makes
sense to classify problems as theoretical or ethical, when they pertain respec-
tively to the account of what it means to communicate and to the analysis of the
reasons orienting the choice to communicate in one way or another. In this sense,
the present investigation will be mostly theoretical. The choice to adopt a theo-
retical point of view justifies the inevitably partial selection of the topics and
authors that will be discussed here.
x Foreword
This book began as lecture notes for an undergraduate course in the philosophy of
communication at the Department of Civilizations and Forms of Knowledge of the
University of Pisa. It has been written having those students in mind. As it happens,
I have learned from them more than I taught and I want to express my gratitude for
that. I also take this opportunity to thank Brendan George and Eliana Rangel for
their immensely helpful editorial work and the anonymous readers and reviewers
for Palgrave Macmillan for their precious comments and suggestions. I am
particularly grateful to Jolyne Larocque, who helped me to improve the style of the
final version of the manuscript with her careful reading. Most of all, I am deeply
indebted for the idea of the structure of the book to Carlo Marletti, former professor
of philosophy of language and communication the University of Pisa, who originally
conceived this approach as a way to offer a substantial philosophical contribution to
a professional education in communication studies. He began the teaching of the
philosophy of communication in Pisa, and I cannot but try to follow his lead and live
up to it.
Pisa, Italy Giacomo Turbanti

January 2022
Contents
Part I Towards a Cognitive Theory of Communication 1

1
The Phenomenon of Human Communication�� 3
The Origins of the Philosophical Interest in Communication �� 3
The Society of Communication �� 5
What’s Special about Humans? �� 7
The Ninth Month Revolution and the Role of Language�� 10
The Code Model�� 12
Chapter Summary�� 16
Focus Points �� 17
Further Introductory Reading�� 17
Further Advanced Reading�� 17
Study Questions �� 18
Sample Essay Questions�� 18
2 The Semiotic Approach �� 19
What Is Semiotics�� 19
The Peircean Model of Sign�� 20
The Saussurean Model of Sign�� 22
Langue and Parole �� 23
Systems of Signs�� 24
A Semiotic Analysis of Communication?�� 26
3
Syntactic, Semantic, and Pragmatic Rules�� 31
X-bar Theory�� 31
Truth-Conditional Semantics �� 37
xi
xii Contents
Speech Acts�� 40

4
The Limits of the Code Model�� 47
Contextual Information�� 48
Saturation �� 48
Ambiguity�� 49
Free Enrichment�� 50
Indirect Speech Acts�� 51
Inferences�� 53
Mutual Knowledge�� 55
5 Grice’s Inferential Model�� 63
What a Speaker Means�� 63
Natural Meaning and Non-natural Meaning�� 63
Sentence Meaning and Speaker Meaning�� 64
The Role of Communicative Intentions �� 66
A Challenge for Grice’s Approach�� 68
Conversational Implicatures�� 69
What Is Said and What Is Implicated�� 69
Principle of Cooperation and Conversational Maxims�� 71
Examples of Violation of the Maxims �� 74
6 Levels of Meaning�� 79
Kinds of Implicatures�� 79
Entailments�� 79
Conventional implicatures �� 80
Generalized Conversational Implicatures�� 80
Scalar Implicatures�� 81
Contents xiii
Properties of the Implicatures�� 83

Calculability�� 83
Being Part of What is Said �� 85
Cancellability �� 86
Non-Detachability�� 87
How Many Levels of Content Are There? �� 88
7 Relevance Theory �� 95
Mutual Cognitive Environments�� 96
Relevance and Information Processing�� 99
An Attentional Bottleneck�� 99
Processing Effort and Contextual Effects�� 101
Relevance �� 103
Ostension and Communication�� 105
Ostensive Stimuli �� 105
The Principle of Relevance�� 106
The Role of Contextual Information�� 109
Relevance at Play: Cognitive Environments, Echo Chambers,
and Fake News �� 111
Explicatures and Implicatures�� 114
Logical Forms�� 114
Lexical Pragmatics�� 116
Implicatures�� 118
Poetic Effects �� 119
Figures of Speech�� 120
Conclusions�� 121
Problems for Relevance Theory�� 121
What Role is Left for Literal Meaning?�� 123
What Communication is not and What it Probably is�� 124
xiv Contents
Part II The Role of Communication in Conflict Transformation 129

8
What Are Conflicts and Why Do They Occur?�� 131
The Idea of Conflict �� 131
The Ancient World �� 132
The Debate on Modern Jusnaturalism �� 133
Classical Liberalism�� 135
The Dialectic Approach �� 136
Sociology �� 137
Understanding Conflicts�� 140
Different Approaches to a Definition �� 140
Conflict Formations �� 142
Characteristics of a Conflict�� 145
9 Conflict Analysis�� 153
Parties�� 153
Actions and Responsibilities�� 154
Allies and Third Parties�� 155
Attitudes and Interpretations�� 157
Issues�� 159
Resources �� 159
Values and Beliefs�� 160
Needs�� 161
Adversarial Actions�� 163
A Typology�� 163
Questioning Some Distinctions�� 165
Conflict-Copying Styles�� 166
10 Conflict Dynamics�� 171
Interaction and Strategies�� 171
Game Theory�� 173
The Prisoner’s Dilemma: Rationality vs. Cooperation�� 179
Contents xv
Reiterated Games �� 183

The Evolutionary Perspective on Reiterated Games�� 188
11 Conflict Transformation�� 197
Resolution vs. Transformation �� 197
Escalation and De-escalation �� 199
Reframing�� 206
Frames as Cognitive Environments�� 206
Reframing Conflicts �� 208
Overcoming Obstacles in Reframing�� 211
Part III The Communicative Constitution of Organizations 217

12 Organizations and Communication �� 219
What Is an Organization?�� 219
The CCO Thesis�� 223
Different Approaches to the Study of Organizations �� 226
Sample Essay Question�� 228
13 Classical Theories of Organizations �� 229
Scientific Management�� 229
Frederick Taylor �� 231
Henri Fayol�� 233
Max Weber �� 235
Communication in the Scientific Management Approach �� 236
Human Relations�� 238
Elton Mayo�� 238
Douglas McGregor�� 240
xvi Contents
Rensis Likert�� 243

Communication in the Human Relations approach �� 245
Sample Essay Question�� 248
14 Systems Theory�� 249
Organizations as Systems�� 250
A General Theory of Systems�� 250
Organizations and Their Environment �� 252
Organizations as Systems of Roles�� 254
Learning Organizations�� 256
The Beer Game�� 257
The Fifth Discipline �� 258
Systems Archetypes �� 260
Communication in Systems Theory�� 262
Focus Question�� 264
15 Sensemaking �� 267
Organizing�� 268
Loose Couplings�� 268
Making Sense of Experience �� 269
The Need for Sensemaking�� 270
The Ingredients of Sensemaking�� 271
Enactment�� 271
Selection�� 273
Retention�� 275
Cause Maps and Stories �� 276
Sensemaking as a Social Process�� 278
A Tension in Sensemaking�� 279
Contents xvii
16 Emergent Organizations�� 283

The Notion of Emergence�� 283
Emergentism About Mental Episodes�� 284
A Powerful Analogy�� 286
Neural Networks�� 289
Upshots of the Computational Analogy�� 291
17 Objectivity�� 295
Artifacts and Culture�� 295
Texts and Actants �� 299
Norms and Statuses�� 302
18 Normativity�� 309
Shared Intentions and Cooperation�� 310
We-Intentions and Recognition�� 315
Bibliography�� 325
Index�� 341
List of Figures
Fig. 1.1 Aristotelian triangle 13

Fig. 1.2 Mathematical model of communication 14
Fig. 2.1 The circuit of the parole (Saussure, 1916, p. 11) 23
Fig. 2.2 Syntagmatic and paradigmatic axes 25
Fig. 3.1 Syntactic structure of (23) 34
Fig. 3.4 Syntactic structure of (23) with the tense head 37
Fig. 4.1 Syntactic ambiguity 50
Fig. 4.2 The two generals’ paradox 57
Fig. 4.3 Regress of mutual knowledge 59
Fig. 6.1 The Gricean view 89
Fig. 6.2 The syncretic view 91
Fig. 7.1 Attentional bottleneck 100
Fig. 7.2 Relevance 104
Fig. 8.1 The conflict triangle 143
Fig. 8.2 Social structures. (Galtung, 1958, p. 50). 148
Fig. 9.1 Maslow’s hierarchy of needs 162
Fig. 9.2 Conflict-copying styles 167
Fig. 10.1 Battle of sexes 175
Fig. 10.2 Divergence between the sexes 175
Fig. 10.3 Rock-paper-scissors 176
Fig. 10.4 Battle of sexes 177
Fig. 10.5 The two generals 178
Fig. 10.6 The Stag Hunt 179
Fig. 10.7 The Prisoner’s Dilemma 180
Fig. 10.8 The cartel’s Prisoner’s Dilemma 184
Fig. 10.9 The Prisoner’s Dilemma in Axelrod’s tournaments 186
Fig. 10.10 Retaliation 187
Fig. 10.11 Forgiveness 187
Fig. 10.12 Niceness 187
xix
xx List of Figures
Fig. 10.13 TIT-FOR-TAT vs. DEFECTOR 189

Fig. 10.14 DEFECTOR vs. DEFECTOR 190
Fig. 10.15 DEFECTOR vs. COOPERATOR 191
Fig. 10.16 COOPERATOR vs. COOPERATOR 191
Fig. 10.17 Offspring matrix 192
Fig. 11.1 Escalation: the ladder model 199
Fig. 11.2 Conflict variability 200
Fig. 11.3 Escalation: the spiral model 202
Fig. 11.4 Escalation: the river model 204
Fig. 11.5 Resistance to reframing loop 213
Fig. 13.1 Functional foremanship 232
Fig. 13.2 Unity of command 234
Fig. 13.3 Scalar chain 235
Fig. 13.4 Example of organizational chart 237
Fig. 13.5 The “linking pin” model (Likert, 1961, p. 157) 244
Fig. 14.1 Open system model 253
Fig. 14.2 Role-set 255
Fig. 14.3 Beer game 257
Fig. 14.4 Bullwhip effect 258
Fig. 14.5 Reinforcing loop. (Senge, 1990, p. 66) 260
Fig. 14.6 Balancing process with delay. (Senge, 1990, p. 353) 261
Fig. 14.7 The tragedy of the commons. (Senge, 1990, p. 270) 265
Fig. 15.1 Sensemaking process. (Weick, 1969, p. 132) 277
Fig. 16.1 An algorithm for addition 287
Fig. 16.2 Artificial neuron 289
Fig. 16.3 Multi-layered neural network 290
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all day, this stretch of country is singularly desolate.
"Topcoat's cottage, where Vissio lodged, is on the edge of the moor on
the Markthwaite side; about a couple of miles away to the north the moor is
intersected by the secondary road which runs from Kirkby Stephen and
joins up with the main road at Richmond, and three or four miles again to
the north of the road is the boundary wall that divides Lord Crookhaven's
property from that of his neighbour, Sir Timothy Moville.
"It was in September, 1922, that the tragedy occurred which made
Markthwaite Moor so notorious at the time. Topcoat was walking across the
moor in the company of the Italian, both carrying their guns, when about
half a mile away, on the further side of the quarry known as the Poacher's
Leap, the gamekeeper spied a man who appeared to be crouching behind
some scrub. Without much reflection he pointed this crouching figure out to
Vissio and said:
"There's a fellow who is up to no good. After the birds again, the

damned thief. Run along, my lad, and see if you can't put a shot or two into
his legs.'
"Topcoat swore subsequently that when he said this he had not

recognised who the crouching figure was. But he was a very hard man
where poachers were concerned; he had been much worried with them
lately, and a day or two ago had been reprimanded by Lord Crookhaven for
want of vigilance. This, no doubt, irritated his temper, and made him rather
'jumpy.'
"Vissio, with his gun on his shoulder, went off in the direction of the
Poacher's Leap. Topcoat watched him until a bit of sharply-rising ground
hid him from sight. A moment or two later the crouching figure stood up,
and Topcoat recognised Mr. Gerald Moville. He had always had
exceptionally fine sight, and Mr. Moville had certain tricks of gait and
movement which were unmistakable even at that distance. Topcoat
immediately shouted to Vissio to come back, but apparently the Italian did
not hear him; and the last thing that the gamekeeper saw on that eventful
morning was Mr. Moville suddenly turn and walk towards the high bit of
ground behind which Vissio had just disappeared.
"And that was the last," my eccentric neighbour concluded with a
chuckle all his own, "that has been seen up to this hour of those two men—
Mr. Gerald Moville and Antonio Vissio. Topcoat waited for a while on the
moor, and called to the Italian several times, but as he heard nothing in
response, and as it had started to rain heavily, he finally went home. Vissio
did not turn up at the cottage the whole of that day, and he did not come
home that night. The following morning, which was a Thursday, Topcoat
walked across to the Goodens' cottage to make enquiries, but no one had
seen the Italian, and Winnie knew nothing about him. The gamekeeper
waited until the Saturday before he informed the police; that, of course, was
a serious delay which ought never to have occurred, but you have to know
that class of north-country yokel intimately to appreciate this man's conduct
throughout the affair. They all have a perfect horror of anything to do with
the police: the type of delinquency most frequent in these parts is, of course,
poaching, and the gamekeepers on the big estates look on themselves as the
only efficient police for those cases. Half the time they don't turn the
delinquent over to the magistrates at all, and administer a kind of rough
justice as they think best. They hate police interference.
"In this case we must also bear Topcoat's subsequent statement in mind,
which was that at first no suspicion of foul play had entered his head. He
had not heard the report of a gun, and all he feared was that the Italian had
tried to pick a quarrel with Mr. Moville and been soundly punished for his
impertinence, and that probably he did not dare show his face until the
trouble had blown over. Topcoat, however, spent a couple of days scouring
the moor for the missing man, in case he had met with an accident and was
lying somewhere unable to move. On the second day he found Vissio's gun
lying in a gully close to the Poacher's Leap; it had not been discharged; and
the next day—that is, on the Saturday—he very reluctantly went to the
police. Even then he made no mention of Mr. Gerald Moville; he only said
that his assistant, an Italian named Antonio Vissio, who lodged with him,
had not been home for three days, and that he had last seen him on
Markthwaite Moor on the previous Wednesday carrying a gun and walking
in the direction of the Poacher's Leap. Poachers, of course, were at once
suspected; Topcoat referred vaguely to Vissio having gone after a man
whose movements had appeared suspicious. He was severely blamed for
having delayed so long before informing the police; even if the Italian had
not been the victim of foul play he might, it was argued, have met with a
serious accident, and been lying for days perhaps with a broken leg out in
the cold and wet, and might even have perished of exposure and neglect.
But this latter theory Topcoat would not admit. He had scoured the moor, he
declared, from end to end; if Vissio had been lying anywhere he swore that
he would have found him.
"Another three or four days were now spent by the police in scouring the
moor, and it was only after a last fruitless search that Topcoat mentioned the
fact that he had seen Mr. Gerald Moville the very morning and close to the
spot where Vissio disappeared: that, as a matter of fact, he was the man
after whom the Italian had gone, and that the two must have met
somewhere near the north end of the Poacher's Leap.
"Of course, to the general public—to you, for instance—Topcoat's

attitude of reticence all this while must seem positively criminal; but it is
useless to measure the conduct of people of that class in remote north-
country districts by the ordinary rules of common sense. For a man in
Topcoat's position to connect 'one of the gentry' with the disappearance of a
gamekeeper's assistant—and a foreigner at that—would seem as
preposterous as to imagine that the King of England would go poaching on
his neighbour's estate. It simply couldn't be, and when the D.C.C. to whom
Topcoat first made this statement rebuked him with unusual severity, the
gamekeeper turned sulky and declared that he didn't see he had done
anything wrong.
"More than a week you see had elapsed since that Wednesday morning
when Vissio had last been seen alive; for the past four days the police had
worked very hard, but entirely in the dark. Now at last they felt that they
had a glimmer of light to guide them in their search. The public, who had
taken some interest at first in the Moorland Mystery, was beginning to tire
of reading about this fruitless search for a missing dago. But now, suddenly,
the mystery had taken a sensational turn. Topcoat's statement had found its
way into the local papers, and Mr. Gerald Moville's name was whispered in
connection with the case. And hardly had the lovers of sensation recovered
from this first shock of surprise, when they received another that was even
more staggering.
"Mr. Gerald Moville, it seems, had left home on the very day that Vissio
disappeared, and his people were without news of him. Just think what this
sensational bit of news meant! It evoked at once in the mind of the
imaginative a drama of love and jealousy, a real romance such as is only
dreamt of in the cinema, with an Italian dago as the jealous lover, and a
handsome young Englishman as the victim of that jealousy. The police,
holding on to this clue, turned their attention to the investigation of Mr.
Gerald Moville's movements on the morning of that eventful Wednesday:
they had to go very tactfully to work, so as not to cause alarm to Sir
Timothy and Lady Moville. It seems that Mr. Gerald had on the Monday
previously announced his sudden intention to return immediately to
Argentina. According to statements made by one or two of the servants, he
did this at breakfast one morning after he had received a couple of official-
looking letters that bore the Buenos Ayres postmark. Lady Moville had
been very distressed at this, and she and Sir Timothy had tried to dissuade
Mr. Gerald from going quite so soon; but he was quite determined to go,
saying that there was some trouble at the farm which he must see to at once
or it would mean a severe loss not only to himself, but to his partner. He
finally announced that he would have to go up to London on the Wednesday
at latest to see about getting a berth, if possible, in a boat that left
Southampton for Buenos Ayres the following Saturday. Preparations for his
departure were made accordingly. On the Tuesday the chauffeur took his
luggage to Richmond and saw to its being sent off to London in advance. It
was addressed to the Carlton Hotel. On the Wednesday Mr. Gerald had
breakfast at half-past six, as he wished to make an early start; he was going
to drive the little two-seater back to the place in Richmond whence he had
hired it, and then take the train that would take him to Dalton in time to
catch the express up to London. He had said good-bye to his parents the
evening before, and, having tipped all the servants lavishly, he made a start
soon after seven.
"Two labourers going to their work saw the little car speeding along the
road that intersects the moor; according to their statement there were two
people in the car, a man and a woman. They thought that the man who was
driving might have been Mr. Moville, but the woman had on a thick veil
and they had not particularly noticed who she was. On the other hand, one
witness had seen the car standing unattended on the roadside within a
hundred yards of a group of cottages, one of which was occupied by
Gooden. Whereupon Winnie was taken to task by the police. Amidst a flood
of tears she finally confessed that she had seen Mr. Moville on the
Wednesday morning. He had called for her in his car very early; her father
had only just gone to work, so it could not have been much later than seven
o'clock; he told her that he had some business to attend to in Richmond,
would she like to come for a run and have lunch there with him. To this she
willingly assented. On the way Mr. Moville told her that as a matter of fact
he was going away for good, and that he could not possibly live without
her. He begged her to come away with him; he would take her to London
first, and buy her everything she wanted in the way of clothes, and then
they would go on to Paris, and travel all over the world and be the happiest
couple on this earth.
"It seems that the girl at first was carried away by his eloquence; she was
immensely flattered and thrilled by this romantic adventure, until something
he said, or didn't say, some expression or some gesture—Winnie couldn't
say what it was—but something seemed to drag her back. Probably it was
just sound Yorkshire common sense. Anyway, she took fright, turned a deaf
ear to Gerald Moville's blandishments, and insisted on being taken back to
her father's cottage at once. Still to the accompaniment of a flood of tears
Winnie went on to say that Mr. Gerald 'carried on terribly' when she finally
refused to go away with him, and he reproached her bitterly for having
played with him, all the while that she was in love with that 'dirty dago.' But
Winnie was firm, and in the end the disappointed lover had to turn the car
back and take the girl home again. It was then close upon nine o'clock. Mr.
Gerald drove her to within half a mile of her father's cottage; here she got
out and walked the rest of the way home. She had not seen Mr. Moville
since; on the other hand, one of the neighbours told her that soon after she
went off in the car that morning, Antonio Vissio had called at the cottage,
and seemed in a terrible way when he was told that she had gone out with
Mr. Moville.
"As you see the mystery was deepening. Instead of the one missing man,
there were now two who had disappeared, and the question was what had
become of Mr. Gerald Moville and his car. Enquiries at the garage where it
belonged brought no light upon the subject. The car had not been returned,
and nothing had been seen in Richmond of Mr. Moville or the car. Enquiries
were then telegraphed all over the place, and twenty-four hours later the car
was traced to a small place called Falconblane, which is about twelve miles
from Paisley, where it was left at a garage late on the Wednesday night by a
man who had never since been to claim it. The people at the garage could
only give a vague description of this man. It was about eleven o'clock, a
very dark night, and just upon closing time. The man wore a big motor coat
and a cap with flaps over the ears; he had on a pair of goggles, and the
lower part of his face looked coated with grime. It would be next to
impossible to swear to his identity, but the assistant who took charge of the
car said that the man spoke broken English.
"The police searched the car and found a hand-bag containing a number
of effects, such as a man would take with him if he was going on a long
train journey: brush and comb, a novel, a couple of handkerchiefs, and so
on. Some of these effects bore the initials 'G.M.'
"Pursuing their investigations further, the police discovered that a man

wearing a big motor coat, goggles, and a cap with flap ears had taken a
first-class ticket for Glasgow at Beith, which is a small place on a local
branch line, in the early morning of Thursday, and had travelled to Glasgow
by the 7.05 a.m. Glasgow being a very busy terminus, no one appears to
have noticed him there, but one of the porters found a motor coat, a cap,
and a pair of goggles in one of the first-class carriages on the local from
Beith, and a certain Mr. Etty, who was a gentleman's outfitter in the Station
Road, stated that he had a customer in his shop early on Thursday morning
who purchased a tweed cap and an overcoat off the peg. He had come in
without either hat or coat, his face and hands were black with grime, and his
hair looked covered with coal dust. He explained that he was an engineer
who had been engaged all night on some salvage work down the line where
there had been a breakdown, and that he had somehow lost his coat and his
cap. He paid for the goods with a five-pound note, which he took from a
case out of his pocket, and the case appeared to be bulging over with notes.
Mr. Etty thought that he might possibly be able to identify the man if he
saw him again; one thing he did note about him, and that was that he spoke
broken English.
"But from that moment, in spite of strenuous efforts on the part of the
police, all traces of the man with the dirty face, who spoke broken English,
vanished completely. And what's more, all trace of Mr. Gerald Moville had
also vanished. He did not go up to London, and all this while his luggage
was at the Carlton Hotel waiting to be claimed. Nor was it ever claimed by
him, because about a month after that tragic Wednesday in September the
body of Mr. Gerald Moville was found in a 'gruff' or gully about three-
quarters of a mile from the Poacher's Leap. When I say that the body was
found, I am wrong, for it was only a part of the body, and that, of course,
was completely decomposed. The head was missing, and it was never
found, in spite of the most strenuous efforts on the part of professional and
amateur detectives, and lavish expenditure of money, thought, and trouble
on the part of Sir Timothy Moville. It lies buried, I imagine, somewhere on
the moor. The clothes, though sodden, were, however, still recognisable,
also the unfortunate man's wrist watch which had stopped at five minutes
past eleven, his cuff-links, and his signet ring, which had fallen from his
fleshless finger and lay beside it in the 'gruff.'
"And about seventy yards higher up the gully a search party found a
knife of obviously foreign make, which still bore certain stains, which
scientific analysis proved to be human blood. That knife was identified by
Topcoat as the property of Vissio."
§4
The Old Man in the Corner had been silent for a little while, as was his
habit when he reached a certain stage of his narrative. At such moments it
always seemed as if nothing in the world interested him, except the
fashioning of innumerable and complicated knots in a bit of string. It was
my business to set him talking again.
"Of course, there was an inquest after that," I said casually.
"Yes, there was," he replied dryly, "but it revealed nothing that the public
did not already know. A few minor details—that was all. For instance, it
came to light that when Mr. Moville left home on that fateful morning he
was wearing the coat, cap, and goggles which were subsequently found in
the train at Glasgow Station. It was easy to suppose that the murderer had
stolen these from his victim; the cap and goggles being especially useful for
purposes of disguise. The same supposition applies to money. Vissio, it was
argued, had probably only a few shillings in his pocket when in a moment
of mad jealousy he killed Gerald Moville. That, of course, was the
universally accepted theory; it was only desperate necessity that pushed him
on to robbing the dead. Topcoat and others who knew Antonio well
declared that he was quite harmless except where Winnie Gooden was
concerned; but it was more than likely that that morning he was tortured by
one of his jealous fits. He had hated Gerald Moville from the first, and,
according to the girl's own admissions, she must have given him definite
cause for jealousy. That very morning he had called at her cottage and
found that she had gone out with his rival. Perhaps he knew that Moville
was going away for good. Perhaps he guessed that he would try and induce
Winnie to go with him. With such torturing fears in his heart, what wonder
that when he met his rival on the lonely moor he 'saw red' and used his
knife, as Southerners, unfortunately, are only too apt to do?
"The coroner's jury returned a verdict of wilful murder against Antonio

Vissio, and the police hold a warrant for his arrest. But more than two years
have gone by since then, and Vissio has succeeded in eluding the police.
For many weeks the public were deeply interested in the mystery; the
evening papers used to come out with the headlines: 'Where is Antonio
Vissio?' and one great daily offered a reward of five hundred pounds for
information that would lead to his apprehension. But, as you know, it has all
been in vain. The public want to know how a man of unusual personality
and speaking broken English could possibly lie perdu so long in this tight
little island.
"And if he did leave the country, then how did he do it? He hadn't his
passport with him, as that remained with his effects at Topcoat's cottage.
How then did he evade the passport officials at Glasgow or any other port
of embarkation? It is done sometimes, we all know that, and in this case
Vissio had four days' start before Topcoat gave information to the police,
but somehow the newspaper-reading public felt that if Vissio got out of the
country, something would have betrayed him, some one would have seen
him and furnished the first clue that would lead to discovery.
"And so the disappearance of the Italian has been classed as one of the
unsolved mysteries in the annals of crime. But to me the only point on
which I am not absolutely clear (although even there I hold a theory), is
why Gerald Moville should have gone wandering about the moor after he
had parted from Winnie Gooden, and when he hadn't very much time left to
catch his train, if he didn't want to miss his connection at Dalton. That point
did strike Inspector Dodsworth of the C.I.D., who had been sent down from
London to assist the local police in the investigation of the crime. I know
Dodsworth very well, and he and I discussed that point once or twice. Of
course, I was not going to give him the key to the whole mystery—a key,
mind you, which I had discovered for myself—but I didn't object to talking
over one or two of the minor details with the man, and I told him that in my
opinion Moville undoubtedly went out on the moor in order to meet Vissio,
and have it out with him on the subject of Winnie.
"He wanted Winnie—badly—to come away with him, and I believe that
he was just the sort of man who would think that he could bribe the Italian
to stand aside for him by offering him money. I believe those half-bred
Spaniards and Portuguese out in Argentina are a most corrupt and venal
crowd, and Gerald Moville classed Vissio amongst that lot. I have no doubt
whatever in my mind that Moville was walking across the moor to see if he
couldn't find Vissio in Topcoat's cottage. It was obviously not for me to tell
the police that the Poacher's Leap is in a direct line between that cottage and
the place where the two-seater was seen at a standstill on the roadside. But
Dodsworth had to admit that I was right on that point."
"Then you think," I rejoined, "that Mr. Moville, after he parted from
Winnie Gooden, set out to seek an interview with Antonio Vissio with a
view to entering into an arrangement with him about the girl?"
"Yes!" my eccentric friend assented with a nod.
"He wanted to bribe Vissio to stand aside for him?"
"Exactly."
"Then," I went on, "he met Vissio on the moor?"
"Yes!"
"Came out with his proposition?"
"Yes!"
"Which so enraged the Italian that he knocked the other man down and
finally knifed him in accordance with the amiable custom of his country."
"No," the Old Man in the Corner retorted dryly, "I didn't say that."
"But we know that the two men met and that——"
"And that one of them was killed," he broke in quickly. "But that man
was not Gerald Moville."
"He was seen," I argued, "at Falconblane, at Beith, and at Glasgow. The
man with the dirty face, the motor coat, and the goggles."
"Exactly," he broke in once more. "The man in the cap with the flap ears,
and wearing motor goggles; the man whose face and hair were, in addition,
covered with grime. An excellent disguise; as it indeed proved to be."
"But the foreign accent? The man spoke broken English."
"There are few things," he said with a sarcastic smile, "that are easier to
assume than broken English, especially when only uneducated ears are
there to hear."
"Then you think——"
"I don't think," he replied curtly, "I know. I know that Gerald Moville
met the Italian on the moor, that he quarrelled with him over Winnie
Gooden, that he knocked him down, and that Vissio was killed in the fall. I
can see the whole scene as plainly as if I had been there. Can't you see
Moville realising that he had killed the man?—that inevitably suspicion
would fall on him? Topcoat had seen him, witnesses had seen his car in the
road, he was known to be the Italian's rival in Winnie's affections! Already
he could feel the hangman's rope round his neck. But we must look on
Gerald Moville as a man of resource, a man, above all, up to many tricks
for drawing a red herring across the trail of his own delinquencies. I will
spare you the details of what I can see in my own mind as having happened
after Moville had realised that Vissio was dead: the stripping of the body,
the exchange of clothes down to the vest and shirt, the mutilation of the
corpse with the victim's own knife, and the dragging of the body to a distant
'gruff,' where it must inevitably remain hidden for days, until advanced
decomposition had set in to efface all identification marks. Fear, no doubt,
lent ingenuity and strength to the miscreant; and, as a matter of fact, Gerald
Moville is one of the few criminals who committed no appreciable blunder
when he set to work to obliterate all traces of his crime; he left the knife
with its tell-tale stains on the spot, and that knife was identified as the
property of the Italian, and the head, which alone might have betrayed him,
even if the body were not found for weeks, he took away with him to bury
somewhere far away—goodness only knows where, but somewhere
between Yorkshire and Scotland.
"I can see Gerald Moville after he had accomplished his grim task
making his way back to his car—the loneliness of this stretch of country
would be entirely in his favour, more especially as it had begun to rain; I
can see him driving along putting mile upon mile between himself and the
scene of his crime. At one place he stopped—a lonely spot it must have
been—where he disposed of his gruesome burden; then on and on, past the
borders of Yorkshire, of Westmoreland and Cumberland and into Scotland,
till he came close to the network of railway round about Paisley and
Glasgow. Falconblane, a village tucked away on a lonely bit of country but
boasting of a garage, must have seemed an ideal spot wherein to abandon
the car altogether and take to the road, and this Moville did, trusting to the
long night, and also to luck, to further efface his traces. Again I can see him
wandering restlessly through the dark hours of that night, not daring to enter
a house and ask for a bed, determined at all costs to obliterate every vestige
of his movements since the crime.
"Then in the morning he takes train for Glasgow, the busiest centre
wherein a man can disappear in a crowd; in the train he takes the precaution
of divesting himself of the motor coat, the goggles and the cap, but not of
the grime that covers his face and hair. We know how he provided himself
with a more suitable hat and coat; we know how all through his wanderings
he kept up his broken English. At Glasgow all traces of him vanish; he has
become a very ordinary-looking man, wearing quite ordinary clothes, and in
Glasgow people are far too busy to take much notice of passers-by.
"We can easily conjecture how easy it was for Moville to leave the
country altogether. He had plenty of money, and it is never difficult for a
man of resource to leave a British port for any destination he pleases,
especially if he is of obviously British nationality. Money, we all know, will
accomplish anything, and rogues will slip through a cordon of officials
where the respectable citizens will be chivied about and harassed with
regulations. Moreover, we must always bear this in mind, that the police
were not on his track, nor on that of the Italian, for that matter. Moville was
free to come and go, and you may be sure that he was quite clever enough
not to behave in any way that might create suspicion."
The Old Man in the Corner paused quite abruptly. A complicated knot
was absorbing his whole attention. I felt thoughtful, meditative, and after a
few minutes' silence I put my meditations into words.
"That is all very well," I said, "but, personally, I don't see that you have
anything definite this time on which to base your theory. Both the men have
disappeared; the police say that Vissio killed Moville; you assert the
reverse, and declare that Moville deliberately dressed up the body of the
Italian in his own clothes, but you have nothing more to go on for your
assertion than the police have for theirs."
"I was waiting for that," he rejoined with a dry chuckle. "But let me
assure you that I have at least three psychological facts to go on for my
assertion, whereas the police only go on two very superficial matters for
theirs; they base their whole argument firstly on the clothes, watch,
jewellery, and so on found on a body that was otherwise unidentifiable, and,
secondly, on a blood-stained knife known to have belonged to the Italian.
Now I have demonstrated to you, have I not, how easy it was for Moville to
manufacture both these pieces of evidence. So mark the force of my
argument," the funny creature went on, gesticulating with his thin hands
like a scarecrow blown by the wind. "First of all, why did Moville suddenly
declare his intention of leaving England? In order to look after his partner's
affairs? Not a bit of it. He left England because of some shady transaction
out there in Argentina which was coming to light, and because of which he
thought it best to disappear altogether for a time. My proof for this? you
will ask. The simple proof that his parents accepted his disappearance for a
whole week without making any enquiries about him either in Richmond,
or London, or the shipping company that controls the steamers to Buenos
Ayres. Can you imagine that Sir Timothy Moville, having seen the last of
his son on the Tuesday evening, would say and do nothing, when he was
left eight days without news; he would have enquired in London; he knew
to which hotel his son intended to go; some one would have enquired at
Richmond whether the car had been left there. But no! There was not a
single enquiry made for Gerald Moville by his parents, or his brothers and
sisters, until after Topcoat had mentioned his name to the police and the
latter had started their investigations. And why? Because his people knew
where he was; that is to say, they knew—or some of them knew—that
Gerald had to lie low, at any rate for a time. Of course his supposed death
under such tragic circumstances must have been a terrible shock to them,
but it is a remarkable fact, you will admit, that the offer of a substantial
reward for the apprehension of the murderer did not come from Sir Timothy
Moville; it came from one of the big dailies, out for publicity.
"My whole argument rests on psychological grounds, and in criminal

cases psychology is by far the surest guide. Now there was not a single
detail in connection with the Moorland Tragedy that in any way suggested
the hand of a man like Antonio Vissio. Can you see an Italian peasant who,
moreover, has lived all his life with a gun in his hand, solemnly laying that
gun down before embarking on a quarrel with his rival? And yet the gun
was found undischarged, lying in a gully. Vissio was much more likely to
have shouldered it at sight of the man he hated, and shot him dead; more
especially as the Englishman would have an enormous advantage in a hand-
to-hand fight, even if the other man had suddenly whisked out a knife.
Vissio was not the type of man who would think of the consequence of his
crime. Maddened by jealousy, he would kill his man at sight, but in his own
country and also in France, there would be no disgrace attached to such a
deed—no disgrace and very little punishment. The man who last year shot
the English dancing girl on the Riviera because he thought that she was
carrying on with another man, only got five years' imprisonment; Vissio
would not realise that he would be amenable to English law, which does not
look at Homicide quite so leniently.
"Having killed his rival, the Italian would, in all probability, have
swanked as far as the nearest village, had a good drink to steady his nerves,
and then have boasted loudly of what he had done, certain that he would be
leniently dealt with by a judge, and sympathised with by a jury, because of
the torments of jealousy which he had endured until he could do so no
longer. You can't imagine such a man sawing off his victim's head and
wrapping it up in a newspaper taken out of the dead man's pocket.
"And this brings me to the final point in my argument, and one which
ought to have struck the police from the first: the question of the car. How
would Vissio know that he would find Moville's car conveniently stationed
by the roadside? He would have to know that before he could dare walk
across the moor carrying his gruesome parcel. Now Vissio couldn't possibly
know all that, and what's more, though he might not have been altogether
ignorant of driving, he certainly was not expert enough to drive a car all by
himself for over a hundred miles, at top speed, and for several hours in the
dark. To my mind, if this fact had been driven home to the jury by a
motoring expert they never would have brought in a verdict against Vissio,
and if you think the whole matter over you will be bound to admit that there
is not a single flaw in my argument. From the point of view of possibility as
well as of psychology, only one man could have committed that crime, and
that was Gerald Moville. I suppose his unfortunate parents will know the
truth one day. Soon, probably, when the young miscreant is short of money
and writes home for funds.
"Or else he may return to Argentina and under an assumed name start
life anew. They are not over-particular there as to a man's antecedents. They
would perhaps think all the more of him, when they knew that where a girl
is concerned he will stand no nonsense from a rival. Think it all over, you'll
come to the conclusion that I'm right."
He gathered up his bit of string and took his spectacles from off his nose.
For the first time I saw his pale, shrewd eyes looking down straight at me.
"I shan't see you again for some time," he said with a wry smile. "Won't
you shake hands and wish me luck?"
"Indeed I will," I replied, "but you are not going away, are you?"
He gave a curious, short, dry chuckle:
"I am going out of England for the benefit of my health," he said coolly.
I hadn't shaken hands with him, because the very next moment he had
turned his back on me as if he thought better of it. The next morning I read
in the papers a curious account of some extensive robberies committed in
the neighbourhood of Hatton Garden. The burglar had managed to escape,
but the police were said to hold an important clue. A curious feature about
those robberies was the way in which a knotted cord had been used to effect
an entrance through a skylight. The newspaper reporters gave a very full
description of this cord: it was photographed and reproduced in the
illustrated papers. The knots in it were of a wonderful and intricate pattern.
They set me thinking—and wondering!
I have often been to that blameless teashop in Fleet Street since.
But the Old Man in the Corner is never there now, and the police have
never been able to trace the large consignment of diamonds stolen from that
shop in Hatton Garden and which has been valued at £80,000.
I wonder if I shall ever see my eccentric friend again.
Somehow I think that I shall. And if I do, shall I see him sitting in his
accustomed corner, with his spectacles on his nose, and his long, thin
fingers working away at a bit of string—fashioning knots—many knots—
complicated knots—like those in the cord by the aid of which an entrance
was effected into that shop in Hatton Garden and diamonds worth £80,000
were stolen?
I wonder!!
THE END
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Philosophy of Communication Giacomo

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ISSN 2947-9339 ISSN 2947-9347 (electronic)

Cover illustration: I Pettegoli, Diego Saiani, oil on cardboard, 2018

processual nature of organizations. The original formulation of the CCO thesis,

Pisa, Italy Giacomo Turbanti

Part I Towards a Cognitive Theory of Communication 1

Speech Acts���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 40

Properties of the Implicatures������������������������������������������������������������������ 83

Part II The Role of Communication in Conflict Transformation 129

Reiterated Games ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 183

Part III The Communicative Constitution of Organizations 217

Rensis Likert���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 243

16 Emergent Organizations������������������������������������������������������������������������� 283

Fig. 1.1 Aristotelian triangle 13

Fig. 10.13 TIT-FOR-TAT vs. DEFECTOR 189

"There's a fellow who is up to no good. After the birds again, the

"Topcoat swore subsequently that when he said this he had not

"Of course, to the general public—to you, for instance—Topcoat's

"Pursuing their investigations further, the police discovered that a man

"Of course, there was an inquest after that," I said casually.

"The coroner's jury returned a verdict of wilful murder against Antonio

"Yes!" my eccentric friend assented with a nod.

"He wanted to bribe Vissio to stand aside for him?"

"Came out with his proposition?"

"But we know that the two men met and that——"

"But the foreign accent? The man spoke broken English."

"Then you think——"

"My whole argument rests on psychological grounds, and in criminal

He gave a curious, short, dry chuckle:

They set me thinking—and wondering!

I have often been to that blameless teashop in Fleet Street since.

I wonder if I shall ever see my eccentric friend again.

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S.

START: FULL LICENSE

To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free

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Part I Towards a Cognitive Theory of Communication 1

Speech Acts�� 40

Properties of the Implicatures�� 83

Part II The Role of Communication in Conflict Transformation 129

Reiterated Games �� 183

Part III The Communicative Constitution of Organizations 217

Rensis Likert�� 243

16 Emergent Organizations�� 283

Fig. 1.1 Aristotelian triangle 13

Fig. 10.13 TIT-FOR-TAT vs. DEFECTOR 189