According to W. Barnett Pearce & Vernon Cronen, today many theorists hold that the joint use of language creates shapes, and limits the diverse social worlds in which we live, but the Coordinated Management of Meaning theory (CMM) is still the most comprehensive statement of social construction crafted by communication scholars.
However, scholarly definitions provide only a limited interpretation of a subject. To grasp the big picture, specific examples of a theory's application are needed.
An example of CMM in the real world:
Stories that people tell are open to many interpretations. Individual experiences, world views and varying personalities are all responsible for determining the way in which a story is perceived.
Suppose I approach a professor with whom I've developed a strong relationship, and ask him to write a letter of recommendation for me to get into law school. The professor (who knows me and my abilities as a student) would agree to help me out.
Now, suppose I approach a professor at an institution at which I am not affiliated with and have never met before in my life and pose the same question. I would get nothing but a blank stare.
According to CMM, this speech act only makes sense within the multiple contexts of the specific episode, our relationship, my self-identity, and my culture-four frames that shape and are shaped by what I said.
Pearce & Cronen, the developers of CMM, suggest that persons communicating are acting into a context and working out how to get on in life. As related to the above example, "making sense" had to do with "coming into agreement in action." In other words, the only way that a professor would understand my request is if she had a good idea of my identity.
According to CMM, the joint action we achieve in conversation continually makes and remakes our social worlds. "When we communicated," writes Pearce, "we are not just talking about the world, we are literally participating in the creation of a social universe." In the above example, when I approached a professor that I knew, the social universe that we created had meaning that both of us understood. However, when I approached a professor that I did not know, we created a social universe that made little or no sense, especially to the professor.
Other Links:
CMM is a theory designed to explain how reality is constructed in our world. The Elaboration Likelihood Model is an influence theory developed by Richard Petty and John Cacioppo that atttempts to explain some of the same ideas addressed in CMM.
Check out Communication Theory: Aims and Scopes. It is a unique, international journal that publishes high quality, original research into the theoretical development of communication from across a wide array of disciplines, such as communication studies, sociology, psychology, political science, cultural and gender studies, philosophy, linguistics, and literature.
Go back to the CMM title Page
Check out Charles Berger's Uncertainty Reduction Theory
Check out Dr. Judith Lee's Communication Theory Pages.
This page was created by Matt Basinger and last modified on November 18, 1998.