Coordinated Management of Meaning Theory
By Tara Howes
Coordinated Management of Meaning Theory was introduced in the late 1970's by Barnett Pearce and Vernon Cronen. It examines the flow of communication between people. It states that the use of language makes the social world we live in.
The Coordinated Management of Meaning says communication is a process that allows us to create and manage our social reality. This theory describes how we as communicators make sense of our world, or create meaning. Meaning comes from many sources and can be interpreted differently because of the following ways of creating meaning:
Raw sensory data - the inputs from your eyes, ears and skin. It is the
visual and auditory stimuli you interpret to see images and hear sounds,
and also the stimuli from touch.
Content - interpreted content. Words that are spoken by one may not always
be understood to be what they refer to if the interpreter is from another
culture or interprets the communication in a different way from what it
was meant to be.
Speech acts - content is more meaningful when it is interpreted as belonging
to a speaker who has the same communication style, a relationship with
the listener, or the same intentions as the speaker.
Episodes - a communication routine that has boundaries and rules.
It reoccurs with many different people at many different times in our lives.
A common one among OU students is saying "What's up?" to a friend.
They then reply something like "Oh, not much. So what are you doing this
weekend?" This is a routine we all do many times during the day with
many different people.
Master contracts - these define the relationships of the communicating
participants, and also what each can expect of the other in a specific
situation.
Life scripts - the things in life a person expects they will be a part
of. These may include graduating from college, getting married, getting
a job, etc...
Cultural patterns - culturally created set of rules that govern what we
understand to be normal communication in a given episode. People
from different cultures must learn to be compatible for effective communication.
People
use two types of rules to coordinate the management of meaning for the
seven types of meanings above. First, we use constitutive rules to help
understand how meaning at one level determine meaning at another level.
They are guides for coherence. Second, we use regulative rules to help
us regulate what we say so we are what is considered "normal" while communicating
with others. These rules are guides for coordination.
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This
page was last updated by Tara Howes on June 29, 2000