the coordinated management of meaning (cmm) · 2020. 10. 25. · enemy, the “great satan” who...

22

The CoordinatedManagement of Meaning (CMM)

W . B A R N E T T P E A R C E

35

In one way of telling the story, formal studyand teaching about communication began in

Sicily in the middle of the fifth century B.C.E.1

The Tyrant (the term had not yet acquired itspejorative connotations) had been overthrownand the victors had to sort out conflicting claimsabout who owned parcels of land. To theircredit, they decided to resolve their differencesthrough talk rather than (continued) violence.As they set up courts to adjudicate the issues, anunintended consequence of some importanceoccurred: They found that some forms of talkwere more persuasive than others and that somepeople were more skilled than others in theseforms of talk. Some skilled persuaders becamearguers-for-hire and/or speech coaches; some ofthese began to study what differentiates goodfrom bad argument; and the art of persuasionbecame an important thread throughout thedevelopment of Western culture.

In the subsequent 2,500 years, social andpolitical changes have often challenged theefficacy or desirability of existing patterns ofcommunication. Sometimes the barbarianshave won. Instead of institutionalizing moreproductive forms of communication (as didthe citizens of Rhodes), society has fallen backon less sophisticated, more brutal patterns ofinteraction. At other times, powerful newways of thinking and acting have been devel-oped, such as persuasion rather than force as ameans of governance in ancient Greece andargument based on empirical evidence ratherthan on authority or analogy in EnlightenmentEurope (Toulmin, 1990).

I am far from the only person who believesthat the current situation (variously described asglobalization, postmodernity, late modernity,or simply post-9/112) challenge the efficacy anddesirability of patterns of communication that

02-Gudykunst.qxd 7/1/2004 12:58 PM Page 35

sufficed when most people could live withoutconfronting the fact that their own cultureis one among many and without having toengage in interaction with those whose taken-for-granted truths, values, and ways of doingthings are not like ours. Berger (2001) describedthe challenge facing all of us in this way:

The process of modernization, which by nowhas fundamentally affected virtually everysociety on earth, has as one of its most impor-tant consequences the situation commonlycalled pluralism. The term means quite simplythat people with very different beliefs, values,and lifestyles come to live together in closeproximity, are forced to interact with eachother, and therefore are faced with the alter-native of either clashing in conflict or some-how accommodating each other’s differences.

. . .

Put simply, pluralism relativizes. What in anearlier time was a belief held with absolute con-viction now becomes an opinion or a matter oftaste. . . . This relativization is often experi-enced at first as a great liberation; after a whileit may come to be felt as a great burden. Thereappears then a nostalgia, a yearning for thecomforting certainties of the past. Pluralism,the erstwhile liberator, now becomes anenemy, the “great satan” who must be foughtin the name of timeless truths. This social-psy-chological process unleashes a curious dialecticbetween relativism and fanaticism. . . . Everyfanaticism is vulnerable to relativization, just asevery relativism may be cut short by this or that“Damascus experience.”

While these two positions are psychologi-cal and sociological opposites, they share animportant cognitive assumption: Both the rel-ativist and the fanatic believe that there can beno reasonable communication between differ-ent worldviews, no worthwhile search formutually acceptable criteria of truth by whichthe differences could be discussed. Given thatassumption, there is no middle groundbetween challenging nothing that those othersare saying and hitting them over the headuntil they surrender or disappear. (pp. xi-xii)

Just as the citizens of ancient Sicily avoidedcontinued warfare by developing the arts andhabits of persuasion and institutionalizingthem into their culture, we are challenged todevelop and valorize ways of communicat-ing that transcend the apparent dichotomybetween ignoring the Others and hitting themover the head until they surrender or dis-appear. If we fail to meet this challenge,the barbarians will win again, with moresophisticated social techniques for isolatingand oppressing the Others or technical tech-niques for breaking things and people. Despitetheir prominence in the headlines, the victoryof the barbarians is not inevitable. Berger(2001) notes,

ordinary experience shows that this assump-tion of non-communication does not holduniversally. There have been many cases inwhich there has been meaningful communi-cation between people with widely differingbeliefs and values, as a result of which amiddle ground was indeed established sothat the several groups could co-exist ami-cably without either open conflict or givingup everything in their cherished tradi-tion. . . . The success has very rarely beenthe result of negotiations between theolo-gians or other accredited theorists. Thecognitive and moral compromises haverather been hammered out over lunchbreakconversations between fellow-workers, overbackyard fences by neighboring housewives,or by parents coming in contact because ofshared concerns for their children’s schoolsor recreational activities. (p. xiii)

One of the most exciting aspects of thecurrent, wonderfully chaotic period is theunprecedented attention given by practitionersto finding ways of communicating better.Examples include what some call “track 2” orperson-to-person diplomacy, interethnic andinterfaith dialogue groups seeking to find waysof living together amicably in support of, ordespite, the efforts of their political leaders; thealternative dispute resolution movement that

36 THEORIES OF COMMUNICATION INCORPORATING CULTURE


has experimented with and found ways ofinstitutionalizing nonadversarial ways of deal-ing with conflict; and nations carrying theburdens of civil war who have turned to truthand reconciliation rather than retributionas ways of moving forward together. I thinkBerger is, with significant exceptions, rightabout scholars following rather than leadingthese developments, but, just as the citizens ofancient Sicily discovered, there are importantroles to be played by scholarly contemplation;theoretical formulation; and effective teachingof ideas, values, and skills.

“If I had all my druthers” (a phrase from myculture-of-origin), the theory of the coordinatedmanagement of meaning (CMM) would beseen as a scholarly response to these unsettledtimes and a valuable resource for understand-ing, describing, and facilitating the developmentof the new forms of communication called forby the challenges of contemporary society.

Vernon Cronen and I were the initial devel-opers of the theory, and we began working onCMM during the middle 1970s. The social andpolitical upheavals in the United States associ-ated with the civil rights movement, the war inVietnam, and an unprecedented series of assas-sinations of progressive leaders, were raisingquestions for all of us about our culture, socialinstitutions, personal freedoms, and the rangeof ways in which we might legitimately engagein the pursuit of happiness. The decade of the1970s was also a time of metatheoretical fer-ment within the discipline increasingly beingcalled “communication.” The half-centuryimbroglio between “rhetoric” and “speech”was being set aside by new developments in“communication” (Pearce, 1985) and the gen-eration of theorists who are now full professorsor professors emeritus were young turks, excit-edly exploring the implications of laws, rules,and systems as alternative frameworks for theirtheories (Pearce & Benson, 1977).

CMM began as an interpretive theoryprimarily focused on interpersonal communi-cation, developed a critical edge in work in awide range of communication settings, and

has now morphed into a practical theory thatcollaborates with practitioners to improve thepatterns of communication that it describesand critiques (Barge, 2001; Cronen, 2001;Pearce & Pearce, 2000). In this chapter, I’ll usethese three phases in the development ofCMM as a means to describe it and groundthe discussion in two communication eventsthat illustrate the challenges Berger described.

A MEETING BETWEENCENTRAL AND NORTH AMERICANS

Before dawn on November 16, 1989, soldiersin the army of El Salvador crossed the streetfrom their base and entered the campus of theUniversity of Central America (UCA). Theybroke into the Jesuit residence and murderedsix professors and administrators, their house-keeper, and her daughter. The bodies were leftlying on the lawn of the campus as a blatantstatement of the fate awaiting those who sym-pathized with rebel forces. In 1991, the officerswho ordered the murders (but not the soldierswho carried them out) were found guilty; peaceaccords between the government and rebelswere signed in 1992. With the reduction inviolence, Loyola University Chicago (LUC)explored ways in which it might help its sister-Jesuit university recover from 10 years of civilwar. I was one of three department chairs sentto El Salvador to participate in the commemo-ration of the murders—in a midnight mass heldon the site where the bodies were found—andto work with our counterparts at UCA.

All of us in the Loyola group appreciatedthe cultural differences between academics inthe United States and in El Salvador and wereparticularly sensitive to the possibility ofreproducing patterns of cultural imperialism.In a planning session before our first meeting,we reminded ourselves that Central Americanshave a different sense of time than NorthAmericans. Wanting to respect our hosts’ cul-ture, we agreed that the first meeting wouldhave no agenda; we would concentrate onbuilding relationships rather than discussing

The Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM) 37

02-Gudykunst.qxd 7/1/2004 12:58 PM 7

specific decisions. When we met our colleaguesfrom UCA, we North Americans were relaxed,prepared to enjoy good Salvadoran coffee withour new friends, and to end the meeting with-out substantive discussions.

To our surprise, the Salvadorans had barelygreeted us before they began to discuss theagenda for our meetings and to make specificproposals for collaboration. It took only acouple of minutes for us to realize that theSalvadorans had had a planning session simi-lar to ours in which they took into accountthe differences between North and CentralAmerican cultures and decided to accommo-date to the visitors’ cultural predispositions.With a lot of laughter and goodwill, eachgroup confessed their strategy to the other.Our meetings were reciprocally respectful andproductive, and we were able to bring into ourdiscourse our preferences for the pace of themeetings and the needs of both sides to main-tain their agency independent of the other.

TWO MORALITIES OF TERRORISM

On February 26, 1993, a bomb explodedbeneath the World Trade Center in NewYork. Six people were killed and more than1,000 injured. Five years later, a jury inNew York City found Ramzi Ahmed Yousefguilty of the bombing. As customary inAmerican criminal courts, he was asked if hewanted to make a statement before being sen-tenced. This is an occasion in which the personconvicted often expresses remorse for thecrimes or explains circumstances that mightaffect the severity of the sentence. In this case,however, Yousef defiantly explained that in hisworldview, he had acted honorably. He said,

You keep talking also about collective pun-ishment and killing innocent people to forcegovernments to change their policies; you callthis terrorism when someone would kill inno-cent people or civilians in order to force thegovernment to change its policies. Well, youwere the first one who invented this terrorism.

You were the first one who killedinnocent people, and you are the first onewho introduced this type of terrorism to thehistory of mankind when you dropped anatomic bomb which killed tens of thousandsof women and children in Japan and whenyou killed over a hundred thousand people,most of them civilians, in Tokyo withfire bombings. You killed them by burningthem to death. And you killed civilians inVietnam with chemicals as with the so-called Orange agent. You killed civiliansand innocent people, not soldiers, innocentpeople every single war you went. You wentto wars more than any other country in thiscentury, and then you have the nerve to talkabout killing innocent people.

And now you have invented new waysto kill innocent people. You have so-calledeconomic embargo which kills nobodyother than children and elderly people, andwhich other than Iraq you have been placingthe economic embargo on Cuba and othercountries for over 35 years. . .

The government in its summations andopening said that I was a terrorist. Yes, I ama terrorist and I am proud of it. And I sup-port terrorism so long as it was against theUnited States Government and againstIsrael, because you are more than terrorists;you are the one who invented terrorism andusing it every day. You are butchers, liarsand hypocrites. (Wanniski, 2001).

Immediately after this statement, JudgeKevin Duffy sentenced Yousef to 240 years inprison. He went beyond the requirements ofhis role by recommending that the sentence beserved in solitary confinement, imposing a fineof $4.5 million, and ordering Yousef to pro-vide $250 million in restitution. In explainingthe recommendation for solitary confinement,Duffy said, “Your treatment is like a personwho has a virus that could communicateplague around the world.” He explained thathe added the fines and demand for restitutionbecause someone might be “perverse enough”to buy the 29-year old terrorist’s story and hedidn’t want Yousef to profit from it. Duffy



then denounced the defendant, quoting fromthe Koran to accuse Yousef of betraying thehumanitarian principles of his own faith. Hesaid,

You adored not Allah, but the evil youhad become. I must say as an apostle of evil,you have been most effective. You hadplanned to topple one of the twin towersonto the other. If your plan had beensuccessful, you would have killed a quarterof a million people. Your god is not Allah.Your god is death. (San FranciscoChronicle, January 9, 1998, p. A2)

SOME REFLECTIONS ONTHESE COMMUNICATION EVENTS

In both situations, the people involved actedaccording to the communication patterns oftheir culture. Each of us as individuals developshabitual or characteristic patterns of interact-ing with others; these personal consistenciesare a large part of what we call “personality.”In addition, those who study family and orga-nizational communication have noted thatthese systems have their own “cultures.” To bea “native” in your family, school, or workplaceis to have learned to act with sufficient coordi-nation within these patterns. In addition, thereare cultural patterns—Gerry Philipsen (1997)calls them “speech codes”—that constitutetalking like a member of a culture.

When my colleagues and I went to ElSalvador, both our Salvadoran counterpartsand we were aware that our “speech codes”differed and would cause us problems if boththey and we simply followed them. Because weall were aware of what was going on, and wereall committed to making the meeting work, wemade patterns of adjustments to each otherthat allowed us to communicate successfully.

The conversation between Yousef andDuffy in the New York courthouse was not sosuccessful. Those of us with an ear for suchthings noted at the time that they talked pasteach other. More specifically, each made a

virtue of remaining within his cultural values,beliefs, and manners of expression. Neitherfelt that the other understood him; both feltthat they had acted virtuously; and both feltthat the other was a terrorist. And, tragically,we know that the issue was not resolved inthe courthouse that day. Eight years later, 18equally dedicated men succeeded in doing tothe World Trade Center (and the Pentagon)what Yousef had attempted—and mostAmericans were surprised and, althoughYousef had explained it clearly, did not under-stand why so many people hated us so much.

CMM AS INTERPRETIVE THEORY

When Vern Cronen and I began working onCMM, we didn’t know how the communica-tion theory we were developing could be usedto engage the social issues of our times, but wewere convinced that it would. We were ini-tially concerned with the questions, “What arepeople doing when they communicate the waythat they do?” and “Why did they do that?”The first question located us squarely in thescholarly tradition of those who look at com-munication as performative (i.e., what peopledo by what they say) rather than (at least pri-marily) referential (i.e., what are people talk-ing about). More specifically, it located us inthe Wittgensteinian version of this tradition(see chap. 3, “Speech Acts,” in Pearce, 1994),although we didn’t yet know it.

The second question, why did they do that,has most often been answered within thevocabularies of cognitive states or personalitytraits. However, since we take communicationas performative, as something with character-istics in itself rather than just an expression ofor reference to other things, we developed anumber of concepts tied more closely to thecommunication event itself.

One such concept is the notion of multiplelevels of embedded contexts, or the “hierarchymodel of actor’s meanings.” This model startswith the familiar notion that meaning is



dependent on the context in which it occurs,but adds the idea that communication acts arealways in multiple contexts. While there maybe any number of stories and these may be inany pattern, we almost always find stories ofpersonal identity; of relationships among thepeople involved in the communication event;of the episode itself; and of the institutions,organizations or cultures involved.

As shown in Table 2.1, I interpret Yousef’sactions, both in carrying out the bombing anddenouncing the United States in the court-room, knowing that it would result in aharsher sentence, in the context of four asym-metrically embedded stories. His declaration,“I am a terrorist and I am proud of it,” seemsto name his story of himself as the highest/most inclusive context, but, in my interpreta-tion, that statement in that place and time is inthe context of his “culture” and perception ofthe “episode.” I’m using the term culture in anontechnical way to index his view of theworld, of what is right and wrong, of honorand duty, and of appropriate ways of actingout of and into situations. While Yousef’s pub-lic actions and statements don’t describe themvery fully, I’m struck by how much his actionsare grounded on these untold stories. Mostof what he says describes what I call the“episode,” the sequence of events that has abeginning, a plot or narrative development,and an end. Yousef insists that his actions arean honorable response to atrocities initiatedby the United States. Within these contexts ofculture and episode, Yousef’s concept of selfis, to use a phrase from literary criticism,overly determined. How could he have actedotherwise? In Table 2.1 I’ve placed the story ofrelationship with others as the lowest or leastinclusive. By “others,” I mean the victims ofhis terrorist acts. Yousef may or may notregret killing and injuring innocent people andhave compassion for their families and friends.Either way, it was not enough to change hisactions, and that’s why I placed it where I didin my interpretation.

My interpretation of Duffy, also shown inTable 2.1, shows an identical structure in thepattern of embedded contexts, althoughwith very different content of the stories thatcomprise each level. Like Yousef, Duffy actedout of a largely unarticulated matrix of values,assumptions, morals, and sense of appropriateactions. Within this “culture,” the “episode”is a highly structured one with rituals, roles,and prescribed behaviors: a criminal trial in acourtroom. I call this the “episode” becausethe trial had gone through a long series ofturns (indictment, prosecution’s case, defensecase, deliberations, verdict) and now was inthe sentencing phase with appeals yet to come.In this episode, Duffy was both highly con-strained and empowered by his role. From thetext, it is clear that he had contempt forYousef, but his role as judge dictates thatwhatever his feelings, they should be sub-servient to the rule of law. He was not free tolead a lynch mob, for example. But he didskate close to the line: by quoting the Koran(rather than the laws of the state) and lectur-ing Yousef about Islam, he blurred the natureof his role and of the episode.

Because actions are meaningful in con-texts, the interpretive process of describing theembedded contexts helps answer the question,“What did they do?” To address the subse-quent question, “Why did they do that?” weused the philosophical concept of “deonticlogic.” This is a logical system that uses termsof “oughtness” to act rather than the verb “tobe.” That is, rather than starting with thepremise that “all men are mortal,” deonticreasoning might start with the premise, “Ishould not kill innocent people.” As weemploy the concept in CMM, it is a way ofexpressing the extent to which all of us, wheninteracting with each other, feel that wemust/should/may/must not respond in certainways.

With this as a lens for reading what Yousefand Duffy said, note how prominent the“imperatives”–must/must not–were in their



accounts of their actions. This contrastssharply with the less categorical “mays” and“shoulds” and “mights” in the meetingbetween representatives from LUC and UCA.In addition, note that Duffy and Yousef pri-marily justify their actions by referring toatrocities committed by the other. That is,whatever they are doing—planting a bomb orsentencing a terrorist—it is the other person’sfault: “You made me do it!”

In an attempt to distinguish among formsof motivation, CMM has developed sometechnical language. Both Duffy and Yousef,we would say, are acting because of contextual

and prefigurative forces (i.e., what the existingcontexts were and what the other person didin those contexts) rather than because of prac-tical or implicative forces (i.e., what contextsthey wanted to call into being or what theywanted the other to do—or not do—subse-quently). Neither seemed particularly thought-ful about the consequences of their actions.Would destroying the World Trade Centerlead to a cessation of economic embargoes onIraq and Cuba? Would it stop the oppressionof Palestinians? Would sentencing Yousef tosolitary confinement in prison and muting himby creating an economic barrier to any profits


Table 2.1 My Interpretation of Yousef’s and Duffy’s Hierarchy of Meanings

Yousef:

Culture:

Largely unarticulated; powerful sense of morality and duty grounded in a story of oppressive internationalrelations

Episode:

The United States is the first and most prominent terrorist and hypocritically accuses others of beingterrorists

Self:

“I am a terrorist and proud of it” so long as it is against the oppressors, the United States and Israel

Relationship:

(to victims): untold story(to the U.S.): opposing “butchers, liars, hypocrites”

Duffy:

Culture:

Largely unarticulated; powerful sense of morality grounded in the rule of law and humanistic ethics

Episode:

The “sentencing phase” of a legally prescribed and carefully followed criminal trial procedure

Self:

I am the judge; an officer of the court; the spokesperson for justice

Relationship:

Perceived Yousef as “evil,” carrying a plague-causing virus, betraying his own religious principles

NOTE: Stories positioned lower in the model are said to be embedded in, and derive their meaning from, storiespositioned higher in the model.


resulting from telling his story protect theWorld Trade Center from subsequent attacksor reduce the fervor of militant anti-Westerners around the world? There is noth-ing in these stories that indicates that ythesequestions had any part in these men’s deci-sions to act as they did.

My interpretation of the meeting betweendepartment chairs from UCA and LUC isshown in Table 2.2. In many ways, this com-munication situation was easier than Yousef’strial, but had either or both sides determinedlystuck to an enactment of their own culturallyappropriate ways of acting, it could haveturned out badly. As in my analysis of Yousefand Duffy, I think that both groups had

similar patterns in their hierarchies ofmeanings, but unlike Yousef and Duffy they alsohad similar stories within each level of context.

The placement of “culture” is the moststriking difference between my analyses ofthe two situations. Here, I’ve placed culture asthe least inclusive or “lowest” level, derivingits meaning from being contextualized byepisode, relationships, and self concept. Infact, awareness of culturally appropriate pat-terns of interaction was included in the dis-course—this is part of what is meant by theterm coordinated management of meaningthat has become the name of this theory.

Another difference from the courtroomconfrontation is that the participants explain


Table 2.2 My Interpretation of the Hierarchy of Meanings in the Delegations From UCA and LUC

The delegation from Loyola University Chicago

Episode:

Explore ways to assist UCA recovery from the war while avoiding cultural imperialism

Relationship:

Respect, collaboration

Self:

Thoughtful, sensitive, capable of choosing how to act

Culture:

Aware of speech codes of task-oriented behavior in meetings; great emphasis on punctuality and efficiency

The delegation from University of Central America

Episode:

Explore ways in which collaboration with LUC might assist recovery from the war

Relationship:

Initially cautious

Self:

Thoughtful, sensitive, capable of choosing how to act

Culture:

Aware of speech codes of relationally oriented behavior in meetings; little emphasis on punctuality orefficiency

NOTE: Stories positioned lower in the model are said to be embedded in, and derive their meaning from, storiespositioned higher in the model.


their behavior by referring to their intentionsto call into being something in the future. InCMM’s technical language, the strongestaspects of logical force were practical (intend-ing to elicit specific responses from the other)and implicative (intending to create specificcontexts, such as the episode) forces. We’vefound that when these aspects of deontic logi-cal force predominate over prefigurative andcontextual, communicators seem freer torespond to each other and to the immediatesituation rather than to follow predeterminedscripts, and have more success in finding waysof moving forward together with those whoare not like them.

CMM’S CRITICAL EDGE

The primary question in CMM-ish criticism is,“What are they making together?” That is,what kind of identities, episodes, relationships,and cultures are being constructed by the pat-terns of communication put together as peopleinteract with each other?

Start with the plural pronoun they and themodifier together. CMM envisions communi-cation acts as doing things (i.e., as performa-tives) and thus as making the events and objectsin our social world. However, communicativeacts cannot be done alone. Each act is done to,for, or against someone. Further, what is doneis usually after and before what others do. Theevents and objects of the social world are notonly made in communication, the process isone of co-construction, of being made by theconjoint action of multiple persons.

CMM’s serpentine model, shown inFigure 2.1, is designed to call attention to theto- and fro-ness of the process of communica-tion, and to the way it unfolds over time.When we use this model, we begin by describ-ing the communicative acts in the sequence inwhich they occurred; for example, from left toright on a large sheet of paper. The second stepis to use the hierarchy model for each act as away of understanding what is being done as it

is perceived, first, by the person performingthe act and, second, by the person who inter-prets and responds to it. We often put the hier-archy model for one person above and for theother person below the horizontally arrangedsequence of communicative acts. A serpentinemovement, from which this model gets itsname, is produced by moving up and downfrom the meanings of the person producingthe first act to the meanings of the personresponding (the second act), and from left toright through the sequence of acts.

This serpentine path displays the interac-tion between two or more persons. Two thingshappen as you follow this to-and-fro move-ment. First, the force of the deontic logic (thesense of what you “ought” to do) shifts fromintrapersonal to interpersonal. That is, the rea-son why a person in, for example, the fifthturn in a conversation says or does what shedoes is not only a function of her embeddedcontexts but also what the other person didand how that intermeshes with her own mean-ings. After doing this analysis a number oftimes, I’ve lost my appetite for judging indi-viduals alone for what they’ve done; instead, Iwant to know what happened before the act inquestion (perhaps the immediately previousact or something a long time in the past) andafter they did what they did. This is not amoral relativism; it is a move from an individ-ualist ethic that evaluates specific acts to asocial, systemic ethic that focuses on takingresponsibility within a dynamic pattern. Thissocial, systemic ethic is far from adequatelyworked out, but it is clear that the LUC/UCApersonnel were working within it while Duffyand Yousef were not.

Second, the serpentine model positions thecritic to address issues of which the partici-pants may be unaware. If we were to look onlyat Yousef’s story, we would get a picture ofheroism; his statement of being proud to be aterrorist might inspire us in the same way asdo Nathan Hale’s last words—“I only regretthat I have but one life to give for my



country”—before being hanged for spying andbecoming the first martyr for the Americanrevolution. A similar story might be told ofJudge Duffy, heroically stemming the tide offoreign terrorism. But the critic using the ser-pentine model sees both stories simultaneouslyas well as the way these stories interact andcoevolve. From this perspective, the question,“What are they making together?” might beanswered like this: Duffy and Yousef weremaking more terrorists, more Americans whodon’t understand why “they” hate us, moreacts of terrorism, and more victims. In short,more of the same.

Shifting the scene from a New York court-house to the streets of Gaza, the way conflictslike this “make” more terrorists was describedby Israeli Brigadier General Ya’acov “Mendy”Orr. He tell this story from his time as a divi-sion commander in the Gaza Strip during theintifada:

I was walking down a street and I saw thislittle boy—I think he was a boy—he wasn’tmuch more than one year old. He had justlearned to walk. He had a stone in his hand.He could barely hold on to it, but he waswalking around with a stone to throw at

someone. I looked at him and he looked atme, and I smiled and he dropped the stone.I think it was probably too heavy for him.I’m telling you, he had just learned towalk. I went home and he went home. Ithought about it later, and I thought, Forthat little kid, anger is a part of his life, apart of growing up—as much as talking oreating. He still didn’t know exactly againstwhom he was angry; he was too young forthat. He will know after a while. But fornow, he knew he was supposed to be angry.He knew he was supposed to throw a stoneat someone. . . . He had just learned towalk. (quoted by Friedman, 1990, p. 374)

According to some of those involved in it,the Palestinian intifada began as an incoherentexpression of anger and only later becamea sophisticated strategy for liberation(Friedman, 1990, pp. 373–374). But howeverstarted, the intifada became the social worldinto which a new generation was born and inwhich identities, motives, and habits wereformed. Friedman (1990) interpreted GeneralOrr’s story as evidence of “just how deep andpervasive was the anger that had burst sponta-neously from inside Palestinians” (p. 374).


Yousef’spurposes,

beliefs,training,

plans, etc.

Bombing

Care forvictims,

investigation,arrest

opportunityto be a

martyr (?)

Trial

justice

Verdict Yousef’s statement

outrage

Duffy’ssentencing

????

Arraignment

Search forjustice;followjudicial

procedure

…

Figure 2.1 An Example of the Serpentine Model, Using the Communication Event Between Yousefand Duffy as an Example


Another way of understanding it, closer to thenarrative itself, is as a description of howthe continuing hatred and conflict is made.The conflict may be seen as a factory, massproducing a next generation ready to taketheir turns as fighters. As General Orr noted,this little boy will soon learn at whom to directhis anger as well as how and when to show hisanger. He will develop rich stories about him-self, the relationship between the Palestiniansand Israelis, and the sequence of events thatled to his being who and where and what he is.Someday he, like Yousef, might proudly claimto be a terrorist.

The study of the interactions between theNew Religious Right in American politics andthose they call “secular humanists” is thelargest and most sustained project of criticalresearch in the CMM tradition. In addition toseeking to understand each groups’ socialworlds and describing the pattern of their inter-action, we evaluated these interactions. Forexample, despite the stories told about “toler-ance” and “civility,” we found that neitherworldview contains sufficient resources tounderstand and communicate productivelywith the other, hence we deemed the questfor civility “quixotic” (Pearce, Littlejohn, &Alexander, 1987). In our book, MoralConflict: When Social Worlds Collide (Pearce& Littlejohn, 1997), Stephen and I generalizedfrom this and other research to the observationthat there exists a category of conflicts in whichthe cultural resources of the participants differso much that neither provides a sufficient guidefor how to resolve the conflict. In these con-flicts between incommensurate social worlds,a minimal requirement of satisfactory perfor-mance includes an awareness of one’s own cul-tural resources, a willingness to move beyondthem, and the ability to find ways of coopera-tively dealing with the conflict that transcendthe social worlds of the participants.

With this generalization in mind, I amdistressed by conflicts in which the parti-cipants employ strategies of “more of the

same” in attempts to “win,” with the result ofperpetuating and escalating the conflict. Basedon CMM analyses, I am critical when peopleinvolved in unsatisfactory patterns of interac-tion only blame the other without sharing theresponsibility for what they are making and/orwhen their stories about what they are makingare narrow and shortsighted. CMM is groun-ded in pragmatism, however, not only by itsinterest in what people actually say anddo (rather than abstractions such as attitudes,power, values, etc.), but also in its spirit ofwanting to do something constructive in thesocial worlds that it interprets and critiques.

Since 1980, I’ve had the opportunity to workas a communication theorist and researcher withprofessionals who improve patterns of commu-nication. These include therapists, mediators,national economic development officials, orga-nizational consultants, and large-group facilita-tors. We’ve explored several ways in which theirpractice and my theoretical contributions couldbe mutually beneficial. I began in an observer’sposition, literally behind one-way mirrorswatching therapists and mediators at work.Later, my relationship with practitioners becamemore symmetrical as they learned more aboutCMM and I learned more about their practice.In recent years, I’ve integrated the roles ofpractice and theorist in my work with PearceAssociates and the Public Dialogue Consortium.My shift in these roles has paralleled the evolu-tion of CMM as a practical theory.

CMM AS A PRACTICAL THEORY

The primary purpose of a practical theory isto join with the people in various systems andsituations to articulate the knowledge neededto act constructively. This purpose stands inmarked contrast to that of developing pro-positions describing situations or the relation-ships among variables (Cronen, 2001, p. 14).The orienting question for CMM as a practi-cal theory is, “How can we make better socialworlds?”



Having done quite a few interpretive andcritical studies, I’m struck by how complexeven mundane instances of communicationare, and how what communicators actuallysay and do underrepresents this complexity.One way of making better social worlds isto help people enrich the communicationpatterns of which they are a part and to inter-vene so that the participants see previouslyobscured possibilities.

For example, some CMM-ers and sometherapists were working with family violence.The perpetrators repeatedly said something tothe effect, “I had to hit him [her]! In a situationlike that, a person like me has no choice! I hadto do it!” You’ll recognize this as a descriptionof a powerful deontic logical force, heavilyweighted toward contextual and prefigurativeforces, and naming the episode (“situation”)and self as levels of embedded contexts.

We chose to treat statements like these ashonest descriptions of persons’ social worldsfrom a first-person, insider’s perspective. Butfrom our third-person, observer’s perspective, itwas clear that the perpetrator had many otheroptions. The practitioner’s task was to help theperpetrator discover that there are other optionsand learn how to select them. My colleaguePeter Lang developed the technique of askingquestions like these: “Why didn’t you go aheadand kill her?” In the case I observed, thehusband recoiled and said, “I’d never do that! Ilove my wife!” “Ah,” Peter replied, “then howdid you decide how hard to hit her? Would ithave been alright if you had just broken herarm?” “No!” And so on. Peter’s purpose was tohelp the abusive husband discover that he was infact making choices while telling himself that hewas out of control. Once the husband’s deci-sion-making process was brought into the con-versation, Peter could follow up with a line ofinterviewing focusing on other options. The roleof the practical theorist is to help develop avocabulary for describing situations like this thatcan be used by other practitioners in other cases.Many of the models in CMM have this function.

The hierarchy model suggests a variety ofplaces for intervention. I was struck by thequestions not asked and the statements notmade in the interaction between Yousef andDuffy. I’m convinced that Duffy was con-strained by the “episode” of the criminalcourt. But what if they had been in a differentcontext? One of the things that the PublicDialogue Consortium does best is to designmeetings that facilitate forms of communica-tion that don’t often occur in public places.What might have happened if, under thepatient guidance of a facilitator, the “episode”had been redefined so that Duffy could haveresponded to Yousef’s denunciation of theUnited States something like this: “You know,you’re right about some things. For a peace-loving nation, we have been in a lot of warsand we’ve done some pretty horrible things inthose wars. And the economic embargoes dohurt innocent people. But we live in a danger-ous world and there are nations who seek toharm us, just as you did. So, from your per-spective, how might the United States guaran-tee its security without doing harm to others?”No one can tell how a conversation like thismight turn out, but (using the serpentinemodel as a guide) it would certainly havecreated a different interpersonal logic ofaction. It is at least possible that Yousef mighthave made a suggestion more articulate than abomb, and that suggestion just might havetrickled up to appropriate decision makers,leading to changes that would have reducedthe number of bombs that have been explodedsince Yousef had his day in court.

The daisy model, shown in Figure 2.2, isanother CMM tool for exploring the richnessof a communication situation. This model isdesigned to remind us of the multiple conver-sations that are occurring in each moment.The exchange between Duffy and Yousef wasnot just between two people; it was a specific“turn” in many conversations, including somewith people who were not in the courthouse.As a practitioner, you might use this model by



putting Duffy and Yousef’s conversation in themiddle of the model and begin to trace outsome of the other conversations of which it isa part. One petal on the daisy model might bea conversation including Osama bin Laden.To what extent was the exchange betweenDuffy and Yousef a “turn” in longer conver-sations that led to the plans that destroyed theWorld Trade Center 3½ years later? WasYousef really the intended audience forDuffy’s remarks? Or was he speaking toYousef but, more important, in front of hisfamily members, other judges, and perhaps thevoters in the next election for his office? Andto whom was Yousef really speaking? Was heusing this opportunity to speak through themedia to the girl he left behind, to other youngmen and women who might rally to his callto oppose the United States’ hypocrisy andterrorism, or to Saddam Hussein, who pro-vided financial compensation to the familiesof martyrs? As you foreground each of theseconversations, the meaning of what is saiddiffers, as well as the deontic logical force thatexplains why they said it.

Another CMM model, called LUUUTT(see Figure 2.3) as an acronym of its compo-nents, also helps practitioners enrich specificinstances of communication (Pearce & Pearce,1998). The components are stories Lived,Untold stories, Unheard stories, Unknown sto-ries, stories Told, and storyTelling.

If we take the role of a practitioner seekingto enrich the conversation through the LUU-UTT model, we might begin with the two T’s:stories Told and the manner of storyTelling. Inthe UCA/LUC meeting, the participants toldstories that included cultural differences and areadiness to adapt to the other culture, and, asit turned out, to adapt again to the specificform that the interaction took in the firstencounter. In the confrontation betweenYousef and Duffy, the participants told storiesthat had no provisions for uncertainty or alter-native perspectives, and they told these storiesin an accusatory manner. As a practitioner, I’dapplaud the UCA/LUC participants but feelthat Duffy and Yousef present a real challenge.

The accusatory mode of storytelling oftenleads to an escalation of the loudness and


Family

SaddamHussein

Peers(other

Judges)

Nationalism

Journalists

Family

Voters OsamaBin Laden

Yousef

Appealscourt

Peers

Religion

DuffyCourtroom

conversation

Figure 2.2 An Analysis of the Conversation Between Judge Duffy and Convicted Terrorist YousefUsing CMM’s Daisy Model


dogmatism with which stories are told; anunwillingness to express one’s doubts, reser-vations, or uncertainties; and an inability tohear nuances in what the other says (e.g.,“unheard stories”). Knowing this, mediatorsor facilitators will often intervene by inter-rupting; asking the participants to clarifywhat they are saying; and following up withquestions about their uncertainties, percep-tions of the other, or persons/situations notincluded in the talk that has just gone on. Bydoing this, mediators and facilitators slowthings down, change the interpersonal deon-tic logical force that is driving the exchange,relieve the participants of the obligation torespond immediately to the Other, invitehearing previously unheard stories andtelling previously untold stories, and providea model of listening to and questioningrather than denouncing the Other. All of thisis an attempt to change the mode of story-telling to one that has more opportunities forgood things to happen.

In my description of the two events, I namedsome of the untold, unheard, and unknownstories. After doing a LUUUTT analysis, apractitioner should have some ideas aboutwhere to start to enrich the communication.For example, the elephant-sized untold storyin the LUC/UCA meeting was that the UnitedStates overtly supported the Salvadoran mili-tary government with money, arms, andtraining during 10 years of bitter warfareagainst its own citizens and routinely turned a

blind eye to the government’s violations ofhuman rights. At least I felt guilty as I metformer FMLN (Farabundo Marti NationalLiberation) guerrilla fighters and UCA staffwho bravely supported the guerrillas’ legiti-mate grievances if not their choice of tactics. Iwas surprised to be greeted so warmly, par-ticularly during a trip we took behind FMLNlines. Belatedly, I realized that the onlyAmericans these people had seen were likeour Loyola colleague (not invited to make thistrip) who had inserted himself in the combatzone on several occasions to help the guerril-las. They had not seen that portion of the$100 billion in U.S. support during the 1980sthat came from my taxes that purchased thebullets and bombs used against them. So I wascarrying around a tremendous amount ofguilt that was never expressed. I never foundout whether the UCA department chairs withwhom we met were supporters of the govern-ment or the guerrillas. Had our conversationincluded this untold story, it would havechanged the pattern of our interaction in waysthat can only be guessed.

BEYOND CULTURALPATTERNS OF COMMUNICATION

I began this chapter by quoting Berger’s (2001)description of a dialectic, fueled by modernity,between fanaticism and relativism. Thisdescription is similar to Barber’s (1995) con-trast of “jihad vs. McWorld” and Friedman’s(1999) paired symbols of the Lexus and theolive tree. These analyses depict a restlessdynamic that is present within all ethnic andnational cultures, each side imperiling thatwhich the other holds most dear. When threat-ened, human beings tend to fight, and thegravest danger to humankind as a species isthat the barbarians among us—or, more dis-turbing yet, the barbarian within each of us—will destroy us all while trying to protect usfrom the satanic Other.


Unheardstories Unknown

stories

Untoldstories

Stories lived

Storytelling

Stories told

Figure 2.3 The LUUUTT Model


Like the victors in the overthrow of theTyrant of Sicily, we have the choice to con-tinue to do more of the same—that is, tofight, now with each other rather than thedeposed common enemy—or to develop newways of communicating with each other. Thepolitical, economic, and technological worldin which we live throws most of us, whetherwe want to or not, into contact with peoplewho are not (and will not become) like us,many of whom do not like us. And this char-acterization holds no matter which “us” wehave in mind. The contemporary challenge isto find ways of acting together that create asocial world that does not take the form ofculture wars but, instead, creates a frame-work within which individuals and groupscan find the comfort and stability of their tra-ditions without denying the same privilege tothose in other traditions or even those whotranscend their traditions.

If it were up to each of us to figure outhow to act into this situation, we would haveto summon the patience of saints, wisdomof sages, flexibility of diplomats or travelingsalespersons, and altruism of consultants ortherapists. That sets the bar too high, parti-cularly in those crunching moments of lifewhen circumstances diminish our capacity foracting at our best. I don’t know what gave thecitizens of Sicily the idea that it is better toresolve differences through sharpened witsrather than by sharpened weapons and theability to translate that idea into social habitsand institutions, but I hope that communica-tion theory can provide an enabling scaffold onwhich we can lean as we confront the chal-lenges of our era.

In this final section, I summarize somemaxims and values embedded in CMM inthe hope that they provide a means for mak-ing the kind of social world in which wewant to live. After this, I identify some ofwhat I see as the promising directions forthe continued evolution of communicationtheory.

CMM’S CONTRIBUTION TOMAKING BETTER SOCIAL WORLDS

According to the story with which I began thischapter, the study of communication beganwith the rhetorical question of what the goodreasons are for making decisions among con-flicting claims. As I see it, the task for contem-porary communication theorists is to answerthe question of how we can make better socialworlds when those involved in the process aregrounded in traditions that frequently havebeen treated as if they are mutually exclusive.

As Yankelovich (1999) puts it, the issue isone of both will and skill. I’m assuming thatthe descriptions of the two situations earlier inthis chapter are sufficient to summon your willto make better social worlds, and that the issueis that of skill. The CMM models—hierarchy,serpentine, daisy, LUUUTT, and others—canhelp us understand the complexity of and iden-tify some opportunities in specific instances ofcommunication. However, they don’t addressthe question of how to act into those specificsituations.

I’m not a fan of trying to raise anyone’s skillin making social worlds by individual effort.My preference for working with groups andinstitutions is based on Vygotsky’s (1978) con-cept of the “zone of proximal development.”In his studies of how we learn to do all sorts ofthings, Vygotsky noted that, at any given time,there is a range of things we can do even with-out help and/or when circumstances are notfavorable (e.g., hitting a routine slice back-hand into the middle of the tennis court) and arange of things that we can’t do no matterhow much help we have (e.g., hitting a run-ning topspin backhand around the post downthe line for a winner). Between these is (a mov-ing) zone of proximal development: things wecan do if we have sufficient support.

Having the help of a skilled facilitator isperhaps the best way for us to practice betterworld-making skills in our zone of proximaldevelopment. As coach, model, and skillful



interaction partner, a facilitator can enable us,however briefly, to communicate at a level thatwe could not achieve unaided. The experienceof communicating in this way is both skillbuilding (we become less dependent on thefacilitator’s help) and addictive (most peoplewant to be involved in this quality of communi-cation again). The Public Dialogue Consortiumis the organization in which I’ve worked asfacilitator and through which I’ve learned a lotabout putting communication theory into prac-tice and vice versa (Littlejohn & Domenici,2000; Pearce, 2002; Spano, 2001).

In the absence of a facilitator, memorablemaxims may function as supports for skills inmaking better social worlds. The following aremy attempts to work out such maxims basedon the key terms in CMM.

Coordination

The term coordination calls our attention tothe fact that whatever we do does not standalone. As shown in the serpentine model, italways intermeshes with the interpretationsand actions of other people. Both Duffy andYousef treated their actions (imposing sen-tence; bombing the World Trade Center) as ifthey were the final turns in a sequence. I won-der if they would have acted differently if eitherhad been more mindful about the responsesthat would have been elicited in all of the con-versations depicted in the daisy model.

Being aware of the inevitability of coordi-nation does not, however, imply a commit-ment to coordinate smoothly with others.Gandhi’s social-change producing tactics ofcivil disobedience were calculated refusals tocoordinate within oppressive practices. Somepatterns of coordination are simply richer inopportunities than others: a repetitive“hello”—“hello” between neighbors is wellcoordinated but has within it very limitedopportunities for richer forms of relationships.To equip us to make better social worlds, thesemaxims might help:

• Be mindful that you are participating in amultiturn process.

• Be mindful that you are part of, but only onepart of, a multiperson process.

• Be mindful that the process involves recipro-cally responding to and eliciting responsesfrom other people.

• Be mindful that this process creates the socialworld in which we all live.

Management ofMeaning: Coherence and Mystery

CMM uses two terms to describe what wecan do to manage our meanings: coherenceand mystery. Coherence directs our attentionto the stories that we tell that make our livesmeaningful. Its opposite is something like ver-tigo, a loss of orientation. Mystery directs ourattention to the fact that the universe is far big-ger and subtler than any possible set of storiesthat we might develop. Whatever we think,there’s more to it than that; it’s not a riddle tobe solved but a mystery to explore. Thesemaxims for making better social worlds can bederived from the concepts of coherence andmystery:

• Treat all stories, your own as well asothers, as incomplete, unfinished, biased,and inconsistent.

• Treat your own stories as “local,” depen-dant on your own perspective, history, andpurposes.

• Treat stories that differ from your own as“valid” within the framework of the otherperson’s perspective, history, and purposes.

• Be curious about other people’s stories.

Value Commitments

Theories that intend to describe the worldrather than to change it may claim the valuesof objectivity and detachment; critical andpractical theories like CMM cannot. CMM ispart of a cluster of schools in philosophy andsocial theory that recognize that every theory“about” social worlds is also a part “of” those



social worlds and as such should not pretendto be an objective mirror that only reflectsthem. Paralleling the principles for practicedescribed in the preceding section, these aresome of the commitments or responsibilitiesimplied by CMM’s view of communication.

• Develop sufficient self-awareness of the“localness” of your own stories to treat otherpeoples’ stories with curiosity and respect.

• Develop habits and skills of articulatingwhat you think, know, believe, and value inways that enable and encourage others toarticulate what they think, know, believe, andvalue, particularly if they disagree with you.

• Assume responsibility for authoring themost important stories in your interactionswith others instead of allowing those storiesto author you. Sometimes this will requirechanging your stories and/or the way you tellthose stories.

• Develop abilities to think in terms ofpatterns, relationships, and systems, not justin terms of specific acts, your own intentions,and the way the world appears from yourown perspective.

• Develop habits and skills of listening toother people so that you understand themand that they know that you have listened toand understood them.

• Develop the ability to move amongperspectives, understanding situations fromthe perspective of other people involved andfrom the perspective of observers as well asfrom your own, first-person, perspective.

• Develop sufficient understanding ofyourself, and confidence in your abilities, tobe able to enter into high-quality rela-tionships with others, even under less thanoptimal conditions.

• Realizing that you as a person aremade by the same process that you are a partof making, be committed to improving exist-ing social worlds, preventing the realizationof unwanted social worlds, and calling intobeing better social worlds.

IMPLICATIONS FOR THECONTINUING EVOLUTIONOF COMMUNICATION THEORY

There is no disrespect for my intellectualforebears implied in my belief that the theoriesthat they developed in response to the chal-lenges confronting them do not necessarilyserve us well in confronting the challenges ofthe contemporary era.

Toward a Rhetoricof Contextual Reconstruction

The first formulations of the art of persua-sion were culture specific without being awareof it. The notion was that tests of evidence andforms of valid reasoning were universal.Bitzer’s (1968) notion of “the rhetorical situa-tion” was a major step forward, arguing thatthe arts of persuasion had to be tailored to theexigencies of specific situations. The case forthe relativity of persuasion (and other forms ofcommunication) has been further strengthenedby studies of cultural patterns of communi-cation (e.g., Carbaugh, 1996; Philipsen,1997). Nearly 20 years later, I am even moreconvinced of the argument (Branham & Pearce,1985) that contemporary challenges require usnot only to adapt to different situations, butalso to construct and reconstruct the situationsthat we encounter. For example, I’ve critiquedthe interaction between Duffy and Youseffairly thoroughly. But the context they werein—a criminal trial—imposed significantlimits on what they could do as individuals. Inmy judgment, many of the institutions andpractices of our society are functionally auto-nomous (Allport, 1939). That is, they servedsome good function when they were originallydeveloped, but have lingered on—held in placeby habits and laws—even though they nolonger serve those functions. Communicationtheory and training, I believe, should focus notonly on individual skills within contexts butalso on abilities to analyze, critique, and recon-struct contexts.



Toward TransformativeCommunication Skills

Earlier in this chapter, I referred to a nascentsocial, systemic ethic, saying that it was neces-sary but far from adequately developed.McNamee and Gergen (1998) have begun toexplore what this type of ethic would look likein contexts of informal interpersonal relations.Is it possible to extend this thinking to corpo-rate, government, and/or legal contexts? If wecould, I think that we would see Yousef’s trialfor bombing the World Trade Center as, forthe most part, an irrelevant ritual. What if wewere to pose the questions, “How can we con-struct a world in which sincere young men andwomen would never think of blowing up build-ings?” rather than, or in addition to, the ques-tion “Is the defendant innocent or guilty?”

The literature on transformative learningprovides an underpinning to the developmentof these skills of thought and action. AsMezirow (2000) describes it, transformativelearning is

the process by which we transform ourtaken-for-granted frames of reference(meaning perspectives, habits of mind,mind-sets) to make them more inclusive,discriminating, open, emotionally capableof change, and reflective so that theymay generate beliefs and opinions that willprove more true or justified to guide action.Transformative learning involves participa-tion in constructive discourse to use theexperience of others to assess reasons justi-fying these assumptions, and making anaction decision based on the resultinginsight. . . . Transformative learning . . .demands that we be aware of how wecome to our knowledge and as aware aswe can be about the values that lead us toour perspectives. Cultural canons, socio-economic structures, ideologies and beliefsabout ourselves, and the practices theysupport often conspire to foster conformityand impede development of a sense ofresponsible agency. (pp. 7–8)

Just as the rhetoricians of Sicily noted thatsome people are better persuaders and asked,“How do they do that?” our research mightprofitably note that some people are betterable to understand their own beliefs and cul-tural patterns, and ask the same question.

Study What Works

One of the underlying concepts of “appre-ciative inquiry” (Cooperrider & Whitney,2000) is the notion that what one studies,grows. If that is true, why should we want tostudy all the ways in which communicationgoes wrong? Why—except for the fact thatagencies who fund research are set up thatway—would we want to become experts incommunication problems? Why wouldn’t wewant to become experts in what works welland to foster its development?

The good news is that the discipline of com-munication has always and continues to study“good communication.” For example, Fossand Foss (1994) began the analysis of “invita-tional rhetoric,” which recognizes that speakerand audience, and members of the audience,may have different cultural patterns of com-munication. And I’m very excited about thenew emphasis on dialogue in many contexts(Anderson, Cissna, & Clune, 2003).

CONCLUSION

Sometimes I look back to the first 5 or 10 yearsof CMM’s development with nostalgia. Aclosely knit group of us worked with highenergy and creativity in the protective grasp ofobscurity within a single department at a singleuniversity, itself a bit out of the mainstream inour discipline. The situation is very differentnow. The members of the original group aregeographically dispersed; CMM (at least a veryearly form of it) has become one of the theoriesroutinely included in survey textbooks in theUnited States; and, to my great pleasure, someof the most active sites where CMM is being



developed are service-delivery centers in avariety of professions (for a reconnaissance ofthe ways CMM is being used, see Pearce, 2001).

I’ve described CMM’s development as mov-ing through three phases: interpretive, critical,and practical. I don’t know what the nextphase will be—perhaps it will stabilize as apractical theory, but maybe there will beanother unforeseen development. A leader in apolitical party in Ireland and I recently dis-cussed the possibility of establishing CMM asthe Irish National Communication Theory, butperhaps because that conversation occurredover a few pints in a Dublin pub, no one hasredesigned the Irish national flag to include theCMM crest and coat of arms. My more realis-tic hope is that there will be continued interac-tions between theorists and practitioners thatwill spur the evolution of CMM as a practicaltheory, and that it will provide useful resourceson which we can all draw when confrontingthe communication challenges of our time.

NOTES

1. I learned this story through oral history—that is, it is what someone told me when I was astudent. It may well be true, but, although I havenot spent much time trying, I’ve not been able toverify it. For more and better information, seeEnos (1993).

2. “9/11” refers to the terrorist attacks on theWorld Trade Center in New York City and thePentagon in Washington, D.C., on September 11,2001.

REFERENCES

Allport, G. W. (1937). The functional autonomy ofmotives. American Journal of Psychology, 50,141–156.

Anderson, R., Cissna, K. N., & Clune, M. K.(2003). The rhetoric of public dialogue.Communication Research Trends, 22, 3–27.

Barber, B. R. (1995). Jihad vs. McWorld: How theplanet is both falling apart and comingtogether and what this means for democracy.New York: Times Books.

Barge, J. K. (2001). Practical theory as mapping,engaged reflection, and transformative prac-tice. Communication Theory, 11, 5–13.

Berger, P. L. (2001). Foreword. In R. C. Neville(Ed.), The human condition (pp. xi-xiv).Albany: State University of New York Press.

Bitzer, L. F. (1968). The rhetorical situation.Philosophy and Rhetoric, 1, 1–14.

Branham, R. J., & Pearce, W. B. (1985). Betweentext and context: Toward a rhetoric of contex-tual reconstruction. Quarterly Journal ofSpeech, 71, 19–36.

Carbaugh, D. (1996). Situating selves: The commu-nication of social identities in American scenes.Albany: State University of New York Press.

Cooperrider, D., & Whitney, D. (2000). Coll-aborating for change: Appreciative inquiry.San Francisco: Barrett-Koehler.

Cronen, V. E. (2001). Practical theory, practical art,and the pragmatic-systemic account of inquiry.Communication Theory, 11, 14–35.

Enos, R. L. (1993). Greek rhetoric before Aristotle.Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland.

Foss, S. K., & Foss, K. A. (1994). Inviting transfor-mation: Presentational speaking for a changingworld. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland.

Friedman, T. L. (1990). From Beirut to Jerusalem.New York: Anchor.

Friedman, T. L. (1999). The Lexus and the olivetree: Understanding globalization. New York:Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

Littlejohn, S. W., & Domenici, K. (2000). Engagingcommunication in conflict: Systemic practice.Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

McNamee, S., & Gergen, K. J. (1998). Relationalresponsibility: Resources for sustainable dia-logue. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Mezirow, J. (2000). Learning as transformation:Critical perspectives on a theory in progress.San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Pearce, K. A. (2002). Making better socialworlds: Engaging in and facilitating dialogiccommunication. Redwood City, CA: PearceAssociates.

Pearce, W. B. (1985). Scientific research methods incommunication studies and their implicationsfor theory and research. In T. Benson (Ed.),Speech communication in the 20th century(pp. 255-281). Carbondale: Southern IllinoisUniversity Press.



Pearce, W. B. (1994). Interpersonal communication:Making social worlds. New York: Harper-Collins.

Pearce, W. B. (2001). CMM: Reports from users.Redwood City, CA: Pearce Associates.

Pearce, W. B., & Benson, T. (1977). Alternativetheoretical bases for human communicationresearch: A symposium [Special issue].Communication Quarterly, 25.

Pearce, W. B., Littlejohn, S. W., & Alexander, A.(1987). The New Christian Right and thehumanist response: Reciprocated diatribe.Communication Quarterly, 35, 171–192.

Pearce, W. B., & Littlejohn, S. W. (1997). Moralconflict: When social worlds collide. ThousandOaks, CA: Sage.

Pearce, W. B., & Pearce, K. A. (1998).Transcendent storytelling: Abilities for sys-temic practitioners and their clients. HumanSystems, 9, 167–184.

Pearce, W. B., & Pearce, K. A. (2000). Extendingthe theory of the coordinated management of

meaning (“CMM”) through a communitydialogue process. Communication Theory, 10,405–423.

Philipsen, G. (1997). A theory of speech codes. InG. Philipsen & T. Albrecht (Eds.), Developingcommunication theory (pp. 119–156). Albany:State University of New York Press.

Spano, S. (2001). Public dialogue and participatorydemocracy: The Cupertino CommunityProject. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton.

Toulmin, S. (1990). Cosmopolis: The hiddenagenda of modernity. Chicago: University ofChicago Press.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: Thedevelopment of higher psychological pro-cesses. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress.

Wanniski, J. (2001). The mind of a terrorist.FuturEdition, 4(19).

Yankelovich, D. (1999). The magic of dialogue:Transforming conflict into cooperation.New York: Simon & Schuster.



Coordinated management of meaning (CMM), is a practical theory[1] that sees communication as doing things fully as much as talkingabout them. "Taking the communication perspective" consists of looking at communication (rather than through it to what it is ostensiblyabout) and seeing it as a two-sided process of (1) coordinating actions with others, and (2) making/managing meanings. Theseinterwoven threads of stories and actions comprise the texture of social worlds.Â So, I concluded, communication is about thecoordinated management of meaning. â€” W. Barnett Pearce.

Coordinated Management of Meaning Theory. The CMM is theory that lays down the process that helps us to socially communicate thatmakes us create meaning and also manage the social reality. This theory of CMM advocates on articulation of a process on developingprepositions on given situation by the people. The process happens in an order to present the appropriate action/reaction.Â Thetheorists believe that the co-construct of social realities are shaped as they are created and human beings create an hierarchy toorganize the meanings to it that is associated with assumptions. So the organizing of meaning will help the people to determine theoutput/the throw of the message sent. There are two major rules in Coordinated Management of Meaning. A BRIEF INTRODUCTIONTO "THE COORDINATED MANAGEMENT OF MEANING" ("CMM") W. Barnett Pearce School of Human and OrganizationDevelopment, USA (San Mateo, Californi). The article was published in Spanish in the following journal in Argentina W. Barnett Pearce(2001). "Introduccion a la teoria del Manejo Coordinado del Significado," Sistemas Familiares, 17: 5 - 16. If it is permissible to personifyCMM, its "day job" is that of a communication theory.Â Using CMM, we have to think of social worlds as extending through time inunfinished processes, as multi-layered, fully reflexive, and having the ultimate shape of a self-referential paradox.Â Meaning-making is,apparently, an inherent part of what it means to be human, and the "story" is the primary form of this process.

the coordinated management of meaning (cmm) · 2020. 10. 25. · enemy, the “great satan” who...

Documents