Abstract
Global developments and the appearance of new devices in information and communication technology have radically modified people's communicative practices and their information-handling behaviours, while both scientific and lay representations of communications and communicative situations have also changed, necessitating the elaboration of a complex theory of communications. The article attempts to give an analytical description of the underlying structure of the field of all forms of communications, using structuring semantic oppositions that explain the norms and strategies that govern people's communicative behaviour. The semantic dichotomies public/private, public/non-public, direct/ mediated build a framework wherein each field is defined according to these oppositions. They help to understand how speakers attempt to place themselves, their partners and their communicative acts and how they construct their communications in this structured space. The semantic oppositions discussed in this article constitute one aspect of a complex theory of communications that covers all forms of communication from personal to mass media and takes into consideration the existence of overlapping public spheres as well as attempting to explain people's communicative behaviours in terms of intentions and success, norms and strategies.
I
The appearance of a great variety of new information and communication technologies and their rapid spread in various layers of society have radically modified people's communicative practices and their information-handling behaviours. Simultaneously, both scientific and lay representations of communications and communicative situations have also changed. Communication is no longer seen as just one sphere of social life; it is increasingly thought of by social scientists as a basic social category, a driving force of social integration (Habermas, 1981) . Theories of information society (Bell, 1973; Masuda, 1980; Toffler, 1990; Webster, 1995; Castells, 1996-7) treat communication and the societal dimensions of its increased significance within a conceptual/ methodological framework of either sociology or communication science. It would be important, however, to elaborate a complex approach to communications in order to understand the processes involved in the new developments.
The extended notion of communication comprises a wide range of different types of communicative actions, ranging from direct personal interaction to mediated forms of communication. In contrast with previous scientific frames of reference, a general theory of communications should be able to treat all various forms of communication (direct, interpersonal, media-related, mass communication and computermediated communication [CMC] ) within a common theoretical framework. A complex theory of communications should handle the different relationships (similarities and differences) between the various forms of communication. As part of a larger research project, our research group worked on several components of a complex theory of communication (Heller and Rényi, 1996) . The main lines of analysis include:
1. The elaboration of a complex model of the communicative situation that is able to cover all forms of communication (personal, transactional, direct and mediated, one-to-one, one-tomany, many-to-one, many-to-many, etc.) . In order to treat all types of communication, the model of interpersonal communications has been extended 1 to include mediated communications, mass media and CMC. 2. The elaboration of a complex theory of the public sphere that is able to handle the diversity of differently sized public spheres (Keane, 1995) and taking into consideration that all communicative acts, depending on the scale of the public addressed, have to follow certain rules and norms but are also governed by strategies. The structure of the public sphere reveals its norms in the light of theories like Habermas's normative theory, but the analysis of everyday realities in the public sphere has to consider strategic action reflected in theories like Bourdieu's field theory applied to communications. In their attempt to elaborate successful communicative acts, speakers use strategic considerations but at the same time they have to obey certain rules and norms without which their communicative acts are doomed to failure. Indeed, the complex theory of communication has to handle principles that govern communicative actions in the public as well as in the private sphere: when speaking before diversely sized publics, people obey normative rules but, at the same time, act in strategic ways. 3. The analysis of the underlying structure of the field of communications. The examination of several models and theories of the public sphere and of public communications revealed that the notions of public and private had to be reexamined. Media-relayed communications enhance access to communicative events over a wide span of space and time.
Increasing use of new ICTs is widening the notion of the public sphere and bringing about an abstract interpretation of access, as well as a mass opportunity to actually access information. The vast acceleration in the development of technological possibilities may have led to a second transformation in the structure of the public sphere, following the first structural transformation described by Habermas (1971) . Keane (1995) advocates the appearance of several overlapping public spheres. Meyrowitz (1986) affirms that television has broken down what were once firm boundaries between private and public. Indeed, the spread of mass media has expanded the circle of accessible communicative events and has had an effect of opening up the private sphere. This development mainly concerns a non-personal, non-physical presence, in other words, public access is relayed primarily by the mass media, where audience participation is passive. However, the dissemination of the latest ICTs has supplied the public with devices that also enhance private, personal communication opportunities and interactivity.
Over the past few years, we have conducted our investigations of 'publicness' on several levels according to the aforementioned points. This article gives a brief review of one theoretical aspect of the research project: the contrast between public and private and the role these play in structuring the field of communications.
II
People distinguish between public and non-public communications. Their behaviours are influenced by the extent to which they consider a given communicative situation to be public: in other words, accessible to others. Working with the semantic dichotomy of 'public'/'nonpublic', we set up a virtual scale on which any given concrete communicative event can be placed depending on how accessible or inaccessible it is to others. Communicative events to which there is unlimited access, in which anyone can participate -at least as a passive participant -are assigned to the 'public' end of the scale. The same criterion of 'access' can be described from the speakers' (the active players) side. For them, a communicative event or act is 'public' if they have no opportunity to limit the participation or access of others, of their audience. Non-public (secluded, intimate or confidential) communications are at the other, 'non-public' end of the scale. There are, of course, many intermediate levels of communicative events between these two ends of our virtual scale. Day-to-day observations tell us that communicative situations and events are assigned on the 'public'/'nonpublic' scale according to certain observable regularities and that placement is by no means random. The most important 'rule' or structuring principle we observed was the private or public nature of the content of the communication.
Analysts treat the concepts of 'public' and the public sphere (Öffentlichkeit) as part of the semantic field governed by the dichotomy of 'public' and 'private', and other related concepts (Benn and Gaus, 1983; Peters, 1994) . We adhere to this view but also believe that the absence of clearly defined concepts is an obstacle to theoretical progress. Therefore, we attempted to investigate available lexical elements in the semantic field concerned.
The English, French, German and Hungarian terminology and word usage we investigated in this field differ by language, but behind the large variation, the meanings connect or overlap. We found the simplest conceptual framework in English, where the terms 'public' and 'private' are used in various contexts, while the precise meanings differ and change, depending on specific contexts. One discreet meaning of 'public' is 'audience', but a second cluster of meanings comprise the notion of 'public' as 'common', 'communal', concerning everybody or anybody ('public interest', 'public issue', 'public sector', 'of public concern', 'impacting the public'). These meanings can go as far as including the 'state', or the 'government'. A third, clearly different cluster of meanings involves 'publicized', 'out in public', 'known or knowable to all', 'publicly accessible'. French uses the word 'public' in rather similar ways. In both languages, the opposite of 'public' is either 'private', privé, or it might also be 'secret', 'non-public', or 'closed', 'exclusive', 'restricted' (e.g. a closed, private gathering). German and Hungarian offer more clarity with a greater number of lexical expressions assigned to the different shades of meaning. In German and especially in Hungarian we found the most 'analytic' use of the concerned concepts, where in addition to the diverse meanings of 'public' and 'private', we found a separate set of semantic opposites concerning the accessibility of events 'in public' (öffentlich, nyilvános) and 'non-public ' (unöffentlich, nem-nyilvános) .
Interesting similarities and differences can be found if we analytically compare the relevant field of meanings specific to each language. They show that the concepts are closely related. They cross over languages and cultures, but the boundaries between the opposing concepts are located in different places in the various languages.
In agreement with Benn and Gaus (1983) , Peters (1994) and others, we too consider the 'public'/'private' concepts to be semantic opposites. They are linguistic tools that play a fundamental role in regulating social institutions and practices of Euro-American culture.
This semantic approach is an attempt to sidestep both the naturalist and the relativist view of 'public sphere' and 'private sphere' (Heller et al., 1992) , 'naturalism' being the position that considers the concepts of private and public to have direct empirical content, and that assigns a status of reality to the social spheres they delineate. It considers the boundaries between them to be self-evident, natural, set once and for all. In contrast, the relativist position assumes that the use of the concepts of 'public' and 'private' is relative, haphazard and that their meaning is redefined for every given situation. That would mean that the contrast of 'public'/'private' has no firm shape or continuity detectable in institutions or mentalities.
In our interpretation, the poles on the 'public'/'private' scale do not have absolute values. They do not constitute either rigid, petrified structures or a naturally detectable 'reality'. However, we do not share the relativist position either, that considers usage of the 'public'/'private' concepts to be ad hoc or quasi-arbitrary.
Without assuming that there is any rigid meaning attached to the 'private'/'public' poles, we believe that because people in Euro-American culture interpret a significant portion of their institutions and practices using these concepts, they are not used in an arbitrary manner. It is to be assumed that there are explicit and implicit rules governing the use of these concepts. The rules may change through space and time: it depends on the judgements of the players in the given situation. It is also to be assumed that the clear-cut cases are to be found only near the opposing poles, and the in-between cases belong to a vast area of grey zone. Consequently, we have very little doubt about where on the scale to put the constitutional issues of a given country or the intimate habits of an anonymous private individual. It is significantly more difficult to place, for example, non-governmental but nevertheless collective actions and institutions along the extensive grey zone between the poles (e.g. the institutions or actions of 'civil society'). Conversely, it is not easy to pigeonhole the private and sometimes actually intimate matters that are connected to the general public in some ways (e.g. whether to legislate on abortion or euthanasia), or that might become a matter of public interest (e.g. the illness of a president, or the scandals of a star).
In everyday life, we are generally flexible in handling the 'public'/ 'private' relationship. Only when there is conflict do we attempt to clearly delineate the two categories or consolidate the definitions.
Everyday language does not generally require clear-cut definitions of 'public' and 'private' just as everyday thinking tolerates the absence of precise definitions, double or multiple meanings, and it generally functions well with uncertainties and inaccuracies. But legal, political or ideological approaches do set the boundaries between 'public' and 'private' in an abstract and normative way. Everyday language only needs this clarification when special interests or stakes necessitate the elaboration of hard-edged definitions.
III
To understand the operation of the 'public'/'private' opposition in practice, in institutions, and above all, in the structuring of communication, it is important to separate the different meanings and uses.
The dichotomous theory between the categories of 'public' and 'private' is an outcome of liberalism. Thus, the use of the terms assumes the existence of a secular and civic society in which the institutional personification of 'public' is the state or the collectivity and in which confrontations between individuals occur within a legal framework.
Analytically, the meanings of 'public' can fit into two major categories. The first group of meanings of 'public' comprises notions akin to 'common', 'collective', 'governmental', etc. Included here are the meanings used by modern society to define institutional actions and spheres of responsibility (Peters, 1994) . The core to this normative distinction is the modern state as a 'collective', as the institutional manifestation of 'everybody'. In this sense, 'public' denotes -and of course, privileges -a special group of interests: 'everybody's' interest is the 'public interest', the interest of the state as res publica. It also denotes a large set of institutions, roles and resources: the institutions serving the public interest (public administration, the Bureau of Public Health, etc.), the positions and roles of special responsibility, competence and authority (e.g. public employee or official), common resources (public assets or property), the public good, etc.
In opposition, the legal, ideological or political self-interpretation of constitutional democracies contrasts the 'public' sphere as defined above with a circle of interests, roles, competencies, responsibilities, actions, authorities, resources, etc., all labelled 'private'. This 'private', privat or privé sphere is considered to be particular, linked to individuals or groups of individuals and exempt from public scrutiny.
In a lengthy historical process that separated the state and civil society, an autonomous private sector based on private property evolved, a private sector of economy and private life, all gradually emancipated from dependence on the state and other individuals (Habermas, 1971) . It also became normatively separated from the public sector by 'protective democracy' (Held, 1991) . Paradoxically, it is the law, a 'public institution' par excellence, that guarantees the autonomy and satisfactory operation of the private sphere. At the same time, the classic institutions of civil law or private law cast their jurisdiction over the private sphere as an area exempt from state or other hierarchic bonds. The private sphere is protected by basic laws, such as protection of private property, the legal guarantees of freely concluded contracts, political liberties, protection of the intimate sphere, etc.
Thus, a dichotomous interpretation of the public and private spheres is specific to liberal thinking. Liberalism also tends to push various hardto-define cases towards the opposing poles. Thus, institutions of civil society or the church are treated as part of the private sphere under the argument that individuals are not mandated to report to society at large on their activity within them (Benn and Gaus, 1983) . In this area, the historical shift in the 'public'/'private' boundary can be distinctly traced: in the social orders prior to liberal ideology, such as in the Middle Ages, many sectors of what is considered 'private life' today, religion for instance, were under public scrutiny (Seligman, 1992) .
Maintaining this normative dichotomy has become increasingly problematic in contemporary society because an extensive transitional zone between state and private action has come into being. Here, activity is not governmental (not regulated by public law), but it is collective: groups conduct actions that are not expressly for private interests, but they do not conform to the interests of 'everyone' or 'anyone' either. It is also hard to place in the dichotomous scale private institutions that handle public functions.
The other main area in which the dichotomy of 'public' and 'private' is manifest is in communications and information flow. Here, the term 'public' means 'in public', 'accessible'. Such events, actions or communications take place in public, freely accessible to all. In other words, anyone can participate or share in it, actively or passively. The term 'public' in this sense can be interpreted through a number of semantic contrasts. The 'public'/'non-public' contrast is the most neutral, defining whether some information, space or communicative event or its content is generally and widely accessible or whether access is limited in some manner. In this case also, day-to-day language does not treat the contrast as an unconditional dichotomy, for the distance between the two extreme categories can be interpreted as a continuous set of public levels (semipublic, open to certain circles or groups, access limited by institutional membership, etc.).
The terms 'non-public', 'secret' and 'confidential' all indicate either de facto or intended limitation of access. Common speech does have other linguistic tools available to describe this state, such as 'exclusive', 'private' and the like. In these cases, however, the bluntness of everyday language appears: the 'public'/'private' contrast itself is being used to regulate access to communication, the public or private nature of the topic or the space of the communicative act is used to regulate the accessibility to communication, to define its 'public' or 'non-public' nature. It can be argued that expressions in common speech describing and/or regulating access to communication are often not analytic: categories and expressions with logically different meanings and qualities tend to come together in everyday language use. This can happen because day-to-day language tolerates and even calls for expressions that do not bow to nuances of far-fetched differentiation. The blurring of boundaries between meanings is widespread in everyday language as non-specificity may yield strategic advantages (e.g. expressions used in political discourse to justify limits to public access: 'private visit', 'private negotiations', 'private hearing'). With the contrasts of 'public'/'private' and 'public'/ 'non-public', the merger occurs in everyday language because the concepts are closely interrelated.
In an analytical approach, however, it is wiser to separate the two semantic oppositions: 'public/private' and 'public/non-public'. On close scrutiny, fundamental day-to-day experience supports this semantic differentiation: it shows us that 'public' in the sense of accessible does not mean the same thing as 'public' in the sense of 'communal'. (It should suffice to think of the intimate subjects of the tabloid press, which makes 'private' issues 'publicly accessible' -but they do not necessarily become 'public' issues.) At the same time, something that is 'non-public' may be a public issue, i.e. in the interests of the entire community (such as secret police operations or a state secret, etc.). So, from this point on, we treat the two pairs of contrasting concepts as two dimensions that are separate from one another. They can be represented as two virtual axes that cross one another perpendicularly creating a -virtual -plane or field (see figure 1 ). This heuristic system of coordinates, dividing the field of communications into four quadrants (A, B, C and D), helps to find the factors that structure and regulate public and non-public communications.
The horizontal axis marks the thematic content of communication (public and private issues) while the vertical axis measures access to communication: the level at which it is freely accessible or is under control by the speaker (levels of public access). Thus, Quadrant A refers to publicly accessible communication about private topics (tabloid press, public (unlimited access) (Öffentlich) non-public private public (communal, state, general)
C D A B

Figure 1 Four quadrants of communication by content and access H E L L E R : N E W I C T S A N D T H E P R O B L E M O F ' P U B L I C N E S S '
public reporting on private life scandals, but also memoirs, diaries, made public, etc.). Quadrant B represents public communication, debates about public issues (such as public debate on reform of the tax or educational system, etc.). Quadrant C refers to private issues spoken of in a non-public way (conversation among friends on a private subject, family quarrels at home, etc.). Quadrant D represents non-public communication on public issues (a closed parliamentary session on national security matters, but also debates on political issues among friends at a private party, etc.). Civic tradition established comparatively clear normative specifications for communication in zones B and C. Modern secular societies have a rather clear-cut awareness of norms assuming that public issues should be spoken of in public and private ones in privacy, the latter being exempt of public access or public scrutiny. So, the norms for communications in Quadrants B and C are well grounded, the status of these quadrants is legitimated, and they are regulated more or less by consensus. Quadrants A and D are more problematic. In these areas, the rules of communication are not as clearly elaborated. Communicative acts in these zones attract an increased demand for supplementary justification and legitimation: we need further justification when publicly debating a person's private life, particularly the intimate sphere (see the debate around the Monica Lewinsky affair or photos of the injured Princess Diana 2 ), or when excluding the public from communications on public matters (e.g. state secrets).
Our empirical research included case studies on these ambivalent communicative situations of 'dubious legitimacy': e.g. the public discussions of the private life of Britain's crown prince (private conversations made public, marital unhappiness, etc.) or public debates in Hungary about whether information collected by the former Communist spy centre on private citizens should be made public. In analysing these cases, our system of coordinates proved to be useful: these oppositions allow us to interpret how speakers use norms and strategies in discourses. They help to interpret the actors' intentions to construct their own place and role as well as the place of their discourses inside this structured communicative field. In putting in the foreground one's public roles on the horizontal axis (MP, responsible to a public institution) or one's public roles on the vertical axis (public reputation, celebrity), the speakers elaborate their specific 'position' in the actual communicative field, but these roles and positions can change according to time, audience, topic, etc.
The two semantic oppositions also make it possible to analyse the speakers' intentions in positioning or shifting their own or someone else's topics in the communicative sphere. Topics can wander around the virtual communicative field, depending on how the current communicators choose to construct them. For example, the details of the intimate life of the British crown prince and princess first occurred in Quadrant C, in private and non-public interpersonal communication. The scandal broke out when the issue appeared in Quadrant A, in the tabloid press. Here, it was a public topic on private matters, serving public voyeurism. However, the issue of the crisis in the royal family's private lives also appeared in Quadrant B as a public topic, in political discourse (e.g. the royal debate broadcast by the BBC). In this topic construction, the private matter has been redefined as a public issue in which diverse interest groups clash with one another, reconstructing the topic to meet their own specific ends. The debate as a 'public' issue included feminist views on marriage, the position of the Church of England, arguments on reforming the British monarchy and political forces discussing the strength of existing British republican traditions. Here, the topic became a public issue involving a series of questions of public concern, reconstructed and redefined according to the intentions of the various interest groups presenting themselves as public representatives. The discursive tools available in the communicative field structured by the two semantic oppositions make it possible for diverse groups to employ a wide variety of strategies and arguments in combating one another on public grounds as part of a symbolic battle fought for different specific stakes.
The most important stakes of the strategies related to public topic constructions concern the location of the topic on the public/private scale. In Quadrant B, the condition for the legitimacy or acceptability of a discourse is that it must be related to some 'collective': it must become 'universalized' on some level. This means that the topic construction has to be or freed from immediate personal or particular aspects. This 'universal constraint' (the need to turn an issue into a universal one) is strongest in political public discourse. The normative theory of 'publicness' defines the principal role of the 'public' sphere in the discussion of public affairs (meaning issues shaped politically), in other words, in public control over the state. The strong legitimation of Quadrants B and C are related to the co-occurrence of the two oppositions. The liberal political traditions of civil society connected the concept of 'publicness' (Öffentlichkeit) to the operation of the state (the 'public', the community) in two ways. On the one hand, they expected the operation of the state to be transparent, to be 'public', i.e. accessible to the community, so that social control could be effective. On the other, they expected the political public opinion that evolved in the public sphere to play a significant role in the legitimation of the government. In other words, the public has the right to a passive procurement of information and to active participation. It is, therefore, eminently clear that in 'public issues' competence lies with the 'public', the community.
At the same time, democratic societies protect private life from unauthorized (public or government) scrutiny or intervention and refer the issues of the private, particularly of the intimate, sphere to the field of 'non-public' communication.
Society's primary regulation of 'public' communication, which may take place before theoretically unlimited audiences, is thematic and based on the 'public'/'private' contrast. Thus, it defines a circle of topics that it is 'mandatory' to discuss in public to keep the political system operating in accordance with the rules of liberal democracy and thus to enjoy legitimacy (Quadrant B). Public discussion of private issues in Quadrant A is 'facultative' and irrelevant for the operation of the political system. It is not explicitly required and may even be legally restricted (rights to privacy, protection of one's good reputation, etc.). Thus, one of the most important elements in the strategies of public players is to construct the topic so that it falls on the appropriate side of the 'public'/'private' boundary. The way the topic is treated as a public or private issue plays a significant role in where it will be positioned in relation to the 'public'/ 'non-public' boundary.
As a consequence, the symbolic work needed to enter the public domain (Heller et al., 1990) includes operations through which the speaker shapes public constructions out of elements that are not yet public. The speaker selects, constructs, redesigns certain elements of his or her non-public sphere to become visible, accessible, that is, to take on a public existence, while leaving other elements behind in the nonaccessible sphere, where they retain their non-public nature. In this process of symbolic construction, the players act either intuitively or deliberately in shaping their topics while using and redefining the boundaries in the 'public'/'private' and the 'public'/'non-public' dichotomy. The positioning of the topic in relation to the boundaries is one of the most important parts of the speaker's communicative strategy.
The strategies also aim at shifting the speaker's own or other players' representations and topics around the four quadrants in accordance with their momentary interests 3 and the status of a given game and the stakes targeted.
However, the social regulation of communications is not exhausted in identifying the political nature or significance of various topics. Social players not only define 'public affairs' and assign a 'publicness coefficient' to them, they also design or interpret rules that they apply to public communication and behaviour. People attempt to establish their public and non-public behaviours and discourses in conformity with these rules, since they want their actions to succeed. In this attempt, they employ various strategies that include calculating the necessary inputs and the size of the expected benefits. They also take into account existing norms when elaborating their communicative acts and the fact that there might be sanctions if they do not follow them.
IV
There is, however, a third opposition that increasingly shapes the communicative field: with the appearance of ever newer ICT devices, the space and time conditions of the possible communicative situations have greatly changed. Reviewing the evolution of human communications throughout the ages, it becomes clear that the time and space constraints that once heavily defined the communicative situation (as a hic et nunc experience) were gradually eased up and broadened by 'communication technology' (writing, painting, printing) and later by various means of electronic media and digital networks. Printing and electronic media, especially, played an important role in the elaboration of the 'public sphere' (Habermas, 1971) and also in its recent diversification (Noam, 1996) . Computer-mediated communication (CMC) and networks enhanced the appearance of a hierarchical, complex structure of overlapping public spheres (Keane, 1995) .
Mediated communication makes it possible to overcome the space and time constraints of any given situation. Different devices provide a diversity of contacts and their capacity for sensual recollection differs according to their technological characteristics: some devices enhance communication through several channels (audio, visual); others have more limited capacity. CMC provides access to the largest range of communications. The availability of ICTs makes it possible for the user to choose the most appropriate device according to the situation, the relation with the partner(s) or audience, the time and space constraints and personal comfort.
CMC offers new ways of access by its capacity to handle the most diverse forms of communications: sound (voice and music), written texts, visual texts (pictures and films) and data. CMC thus offers a wide scope of access to all forms of culture and communications, which can be accessed in completely new combinations. This permits a new approach to culture: cultural intertextuality enhances easy acquisition of all types and forms of cultural products (i.e. communications) through the same device, the computer. This also may radically change future forms of education.
The wide variety of communicative contacts offered by new ICTs can be represented according to the dichotomy of 'direct'/'mediated' communication. Direct communication occurs in situations where no special device is needed to establish the contact between the speaker and the receiver or audience (e.g. face-to-face communication). Mediated communications use devices but they differ according to their capacity to use one or several channels (audio, visual) or to render the communicative situation in its relative complexity (television being more complex vs radio, etc.). It is in this sense that the opposition 'direct'/'mediated' constitutes a dichotomy similar to the two former ones; it measures the complexity of rendering the communicative content and situation. Similarly to the two former oppositions, 'direct' and 'mediated' constitute the two extreme points of a gradual scale (bridging both time and space) between the speaker and the receiver(s).
As we saw in the case of the 'public'/'private' and the 'public'/'non public' oppositions, they are not without connections between them. It is, however, important to examine the relationship of the two former dichotomies with the third one.
First, it is clear that the 'public'/'private' character of the communicative content is in connection with the choice of the medium: private affairs tend to be communicated through more privately accessible devices (mobile or fixed phone instead of fax, where access cannot easily be controlled). Private communications aimed at private groups or persons make use of devices to which access is more discernible or controllable 4 (private channels in chat rooms, personal email contacts, private phones, etc.). On the other hand, civil society, interest groups and protest movements make good use of the facilities offered by mobile devices and CMC (discussion groups, forums, quick mobilization for protest actions, email networks, etc.). Technical innovations offered by new ICTs are also welcomed by users when they want to distinguish public or private communications: ringtones help to identify callers (family, friends, business, etc.). Contacts can also be distanced by choosing the appropriate channels: email instead of a phone call, letter instead of face-to-face communication, SMS instead of mobile call, etc. All these examples clearly show that the 'public'/'private' opposition and the 'direct'/'mediated' opposition are interconnected.
The relationship between the two oppositions can be represented by a plane defined by the two dimensions. Different communicative acts can be assigned to specific spots in this new plane (Figure 2) .
The 'direct'/'mediated' dichotomy is also connected to the 'public'/ 'non-public' dichotomy. 'Non-public' communication uses devices accessible to a limited and controllable range of audience, according to the grade of 'publicness' the speaker wants to reach: face-to-face situations are on the 'non-public' end and this is where direct, immediate communication is used. Personal letters, phone calls, emails or even video conferencing are still on the non-public side although not on the endpoint, i.e. using devices that reach controlled audiences or are not accessible to large audiences. Communications aiming at public accessibility make use of many available devices: even if they may be face-toface (a political party's general assembly), they generally use traditional mass communication devices, as well as new technologies, like the Internet, etc. Figure 3 illustrates how these two dichotomies govern yet another plane, with some examples of communicative actions assigned to concrete spots. The planes defined by the three oppositions ultimately define a more accurately structured communicative field. It can be represented as a three-dimensional space, which is structured by the three semantic oppositions (Figure 4 ). The model can easily account for different types of communications and explains the speakers' special communicative competencies and performances in different communicative actions. They must include the speaker's awareness of the norms and rules as well as strategies that are used and are to be used in each sector because the success of their communications will depend on these choices.
Thus C contains private direct communications, with controlled accessibility (e.g. a family dispute). D gathers direct communications on public topics, in restricted accessibility (e.g. friends discuss presidential campaign at a party). Rumours, publicly accessible communications on private topics are in A (e.g. a public lecture about losing weight), and B includes direct public communications on public (communal) topics (e.g. a public hearing). Non-public mediated communications on private topics are in G (e.g. love-letters, personal emails, cellphone discussions). Non-public mediated communications on public matters are in H (e.g. organizing a protest group through email, Internet correspondence lists on political issues). E comprises publicly accessible mediated communications on private topics (e.g. tabloid press, blogs, chatrooms) and F is for publicly accessible communications on public topics (e.g. newspapers, TV debates).
The model as it is proposed here is an analytical tool to facilitate the structural analysis of the very complex sphere of communications, where the described oppositions define the rules and norms of each section and where the speakers can act according to these norms and rules but also according to their own strategies in order to reach their communicative goals. And while the three semantic oppositions seem to be stable, the rules and norms change according to the negotiations that are continually going on in the different sections. Speakers build up their own communicative strategies according to the state of the actual section where they attempt to place their communication.
Notes
The author would like to thank Á gnes Rényi for her collaboration on this article.
1. The extended model takes into consideration categories like source (as distinct from the speaker) and addressee (as distinct from actual receivers). 2. Tabloid or scandal press often legitimates publicizing private matters with economic arguments or allusions to 'public interest'. Note, however, that 'public interest' in the sense of 'issues concerning the whole community' and 'public interest' as voyeurism are two different concepts, blurred by everyday language use! 3. In Hungary's parliament, the political agora, the 'literary oeuvre' of one-time author István Csurka, who had since become the extreme right party leader, was cited in such an attempt. In 1992, the prime minister and leader of the political party, where Csurka was deputy president at the time, could not accept the extreme right ideas and anti-Semitic theses Csurka expressed in a public speech during a national celebration, but did not want to eject him from the party. It was therefore argued that the discourse was literary and not political, in an attempt to shift Csurka's discourse from Quadrant B to the private sphere (Quadrant A), where private opinions are expressed in public. There, the unacceptable discourse could be treated as the product of the writer's inspiration. Thus, it could become the author's personal opinion, with responsibility resting on him only and not the party he was representing. 4. In a survey on mobile phone ownership, I found a growing number of users own or use several mobiles: business people often have both a private and a company-owned cellphone, politicians also distinguish between public and private phones: public cellphones are often handled by secretaries or campaign aides.

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