Richard West Lynn H. Turner

1. Introducing Communication Theory:Analysis and Application Fourth Edition Richard West Lynn H. Turner

2. Coordinated Management of Meaning Chapter 6 Chapter Overview • CMM at a Glance • All the World’s a Stage • Assumptions of CMM • The Hierarchy of Organized Meaning • Charmed and Strange Loops • The Coordination of Meaning & Influences • Rules and Unwanted Repetitive Patterns • Integration and Critique

3. CMM at a Glance • People co-create meaning through messages sent and received • Rules guide communication • CMM focuses on the relationship between the individual and society • People organize the meanings of hundreds of messages daily

4. All the World’s a Stage • Life experiences are "undirected theater" • Conversational flow is a theater production • Interactants direct their own dramas • Producing meaning is equivalent to communicating • Actors who communicate effectively attain conversational flow, otherwise they coordinate their meaning

5. Assumptions of CMM • Humans live in communication • Humans co-create a social reality • Social constructionism: Co-creating reality in interactions • Social reality: Beliefs about how meaning and action fit in an interaction

6. Assumptions of CMM • Information transactions depend on personal and interpersonal meaning • Personal meaning: Achieved when one brings own experiences • Interpersonal meaning: Achieved when both agree on each other’s interpretations

7. The Hierarchy of Organized Meaning

8. The Hierarchy of Organized Meaning • Humans organize meaning in a hierarchical manner • Six levels of meaning • Content: Converting raw data into meaning • Speech Acts: Determining the intention of the speaker and how a message should be taken

9. The Hierarchy of Organized Meaning • Six levels of meaning (continued) • Episodes: Communication routines that have definable beginnings, middles, and endings • Relationship: Agreement between two people about their relational potential and limitations • Life Scripts: Clusters of past and present episodes • Cultural Patterns: Images of the world and a person’s relationship to it

10. The Coordination of Meaning • Coordination is trying to make sense of message sequencing • Possible communication outcomes: • Coordination • No coordination • Some degree of coordination

11. Influences on the Coordination Process • Coordination requires individuals to be concerned with a higher moral order • Coordination can be influenced by the resources available to an individual

12. Rules • Individuals manage and coordinate through the use of rules • Constitutive rules organize behavior and help us understand how meaning should be interpreted • Regulative rules provide guidelines for the sequence of action or behavior that follows • Rules are not always agreed upon by both persons

13. Unwanted Repetitive Patterns • Unwanted repetitive patterns are recurring undesirable conflicts in a relationship • Arise from rigid rule systems that obligates individuals to act in a particular way • They may see no other option, or they may be comfortable with the recurring conflict