Notice that intersubjective communication implies intersubjective relatedness at a preverbal stage of development and that this in turn entails sharing joint attention, sharing intentions and sharing affective states. The issue of intersubjectivity forces us to reformulate our conceptions about human communication. Communication encompasses language, as one of the resources we resort to to get in touch with others, and not the other way round. The unspoken part of human communication is present and plays a large role long before the infant can speak. Such an inquiry is forced upon us when we admit that language may be a part of the far larger function of interpersonal communication and relatedness that grows in the child and accompanies us from the cradle to the grave.
Human beings understand one another intimately and at many levels.
To analyse this ability of persons to act together and to share experience in harmony, we have first to view communication in relation to the private activities of conscious, purposeful action. All voluntary actions are performed in such a way that their effects can be anticipated by the actor and then adjusted within the perceived situation to meet the criteria set in advance. Interpersonal communication is controlled by feedback of information, as is all voluntary behaviour. But there is an essential difference between a person doing things in relation to the physical world and the control of communication between persons. Two persons can share control, each can predict what the other will know and do.