This paper discusses the question of the legitimacy of applying structural analysis to actual human behavior and illustrates its legitimacy by using the reasoning in an essay by Paul Ricoeur. It then asks if the principles of communication development (obliqueness, exchange, and dying) derived from Helen Keller's experience of communication learning can hold for a contemporary college student's experience of communication learning. After analyzing and discussing the case study of a college student, the paper concludes that a major technique of structural analysis is just as legitimately applied to actual human behavior as it is to texts and contributes to understanding how people learn to communicate. (TJ)