This paper studies meaning as a construct of human interaction. Basic to this approach is the concept of the act of communication, which may be realized verbally or non-verbally. In order to integrate non-verbal behaviors into descriptions of discourse and interaction, a series of functional, not anatomic, categories is needed. For the kinesic component, the following working categories have been established: (1) kinematopoeia, (2) deictics, (3) gestures having illocutionary force, and (4) regulatory behaviors: turn-taking signals, attention signals, address signals. The concept of address is developed, since it provides a powerful tool for the coding of successive contributions to interaction in terms of the participant states, speaker, listener and hearer. The interaction of non-verbal behaviors in a model of discourse leads to the distinction between three "levels" of discourse: (1) Realization: the set of message bearing elements in a situation; (2) Communication: the illocutionary forces of acts; (3) Discursive organization: in terms of interactional tactics. This distinction between communicative and discursive acts greatly reduces the problems of discursive interruption or embedding, since any utterance will be described in terms of both its illocutionary force and its position in structure. The model outlined here should prove useful in discourse analysis and sociological and psychological research, since it permits the formalization of concepts such as role, status and formality. (Author/CFM)