Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM)
W. Barnett Pearce and Vernon Cronen's Coordinated Management of Meaning could quite possibly explain why we tend to switch faces in unique communication settings. This theory suggests that our speech patterns and utterances place us in our social dwellings. Every communication event takes place within a specific context that defines who we are. Communication scholars have thus dug deep into the trenches of this statement of social construction to uncover the foundation.
Let's begin with "persons-in-conversation," the basic underlying theme of CMM. It consists of witnessing the communication from the inside perspective. According to Pearce and Cronen, this is the "primary social process" of human life. Everyday we experience casual, passing, intense, and often influential conversations. We may remember and often visit some conversations, others are stored and never regurgitated. Communication is an ongoing system with interlocking parts that flow together, so every experience is the result of an accumulation of preceding ones. This is so important to remember in our daily lives due to the repetitive nature of our interactions. We all visit the past in a new situation to try and predict the outcome.
Coordinated Management of Meaning claims that there is an obvious pull between the stories told and the stories lived. Stories told are attempts to find clarity and understanding in life, as well as achieve coherence with the other parties involved. Stories lived aim to parallel and coordinate our lives with those we interact with. The stories we tell are open to a unique interpretation from every individual that encounters them, so each speech act will only make complete sense if it follows the same characteristics. These include the specific episode, our relationship with the speaker, the way we view ourselves, and the culture that we have grown accustomed to. These factors all influence our ability to understand messages. Understanding and sharing the preceeding factorsm will help bring clearer meaning.
I can relate these four elements of coherence to a struggle currently plaguing my family. My uncle is struggling with a drug addiction he has been trying to kick for years now. He has been in and out of rehabilitation many unsuccessful times and recently overdosed leaving a world of hurt behind him. This event has torn away at every member of my family. The episode my family has created is one of confidentiality and understanding. He knows his feelings are safe with us, so he feels comfortable expressing honesty in an effort to recover. I feel this is the most important factor for coherence because if the setting for communication is not of comfort, the episode will not be sincere. The relationships involved are trusting and positive with a strong will to work together. My Uncle has an extremely low self-concept at this point in his life and heavily relies on constant reassurance that he will prevail. Untill his self-esteem rises, although he will recover, the situation will not be completely positive. The last element of coherence reminds us that our culture plays a huge role in our communication events. We alll are products of our environments, therefore we must be sensitive to rules, and norms. The major motion picture, "Leaving Las Vegas," starring Nicholas Cage, immediately came to mind while focusing on this issue. He stars as a lonley, broken down man who turns to chemical abuse to suppress his feelings of pain and anger. The movie winds him down a long road eventually resulting in death. Each specific element of coherence in relationships is extremely obvious in this film, with the encounter of Elizabeth Shue.
CMM also incorporates mystery into the scheme to allow room for all that is above and beyond the here and now. It reminds us that there is more to life than the every day-to-day trials and that we must look within ourselves and capture a mystery. CMM is also an extremely practical theory as Pearce and Cronen state. They feel that jumping into the world and interacting with depth and meaning are much more important than actually "understanding the way it all works." This is such an important and valid point. We learn so much more when we actually "get our feet wet" trying it. The only way to learn is to try and try again. Mistakes were named so that we could learn from them to gain a better understanding of what we did wrong. If we never take risks or "jump into things", we will never know what living and learning is really about.
This page was created and is maintained by Stephanie Anop.
The last update was on October 15, 1998.
Go back to the CMM title page.
