Communication assignment

USING CMM

"THE COORDINATED MANAGEMENT OF MEANING"

W. Barnett Pearce and Vernon Cronen A Summary and condensation of A PEARCE ASSOCIATES SEMINAR     Ultimately,  CMM  is  a  way  of  thinking  about  ourselves.  Its  ultimate  questions  are  "who   are  we?"  and  "how  shall  we  live?"     CMM  focuses  on  communication  because  communication  is  the  primary  social  reality.   Communication  processes  constitute  our  knowledge  of  ourselves  and  of  the  world  in   which  we  live;  patterns  of  communication  shape  the  persons  that  we  are  and  the  quality   of  our  lives.  In  a  CMM-­‐ish  perspective,  the  events  and  objects  of  our  social  worlds  are   "made"  in  social  processes  of  naming,  calling,  and  interacting.     In an ironic variation of the Greek adage that "man is the measure of all things," we have come to realize that human characteristics inevitably shape our knowledge of all things. Most human of human characteristics is that we are involved in patterns of communication with each other and with the animate and inanimate objects among which we live. We use language; we live in constant patterns of call-and-response; we perceive within frames or contexts; etc. But who is this "we" who perceive the world? Whatever answer to this question that might satisfy us, it is clear that "we" are both product of as well as producer of the patterns of communication in which we live.

• Descartes claimed that "I think, therefore I am." • Ken Gergen suggested that he should have said, "I communicate, therefore I

am." • Vern Cronen made a more radical suggestion: "We communicate, therefore

we are." It is no longer unusual to claim that our knowledge of reality is mediated by language, or even that our use of language is fateful in shaping our perceptions, relationships and organizations. CMM takes an extreme position among its intellectual cousins, however, by claiming there is a reciprocal, causal relationship between forms of communication and ways of being human.

KEY CONCEPTS of CMM Coordination: the process by which persons attempt to call into being conjoint enactments of their stories about what is good, desirable, and/or expedient, and to prevent

the conjoint enactments of their stories of what is bad, ugly, and obstructive. Coordination is the way we "fit" our actions into those of other people to produce patterns. It does not necessarily entail understanding or agreement with others, or that we like or want the patterns that we produce. Note that the emphasis is on what we conjointly create when our actions join together. Whether we are aware of what we are producing and the extent to which we are acting intentionally are variables. One of the purposes of CMM is to enable people, individually and collectively, to be able to produce "better" patterns of communication. For example, the social and material conditions of contemporary society make some venerable forms of conflict resolution too costly; one of the "agendas" for us as a society is to learn how to produce -- and institutionalize the means of production of -- better ways of handling conflict. This is the context for some of our current emphasis on "public dialogue." The Management of Meaning or Coherence: the process by which we tell ourselves (and others) stories in order to interpret the world around us and our place in it. Coherence is achieved by telling stories about ourselves, individually and collectively, about the world around us, and about the nature of answers to questions like these. "Nothing passes but the mind grabs it and looks for a way to fit it into a story, or into a variety of possible scripts" (Morton, 1984. p. 2). Note that we are simultaneously meaning-makers (in a world the substance of which is stories) and actors (in a world the substance of which is events). These cannot be separated but neither are they the same thing. We always live in the tension between the stories we "tell" ourselves and others and the stories we "live" with others. This tension is the source of much of the joy and pain of human life; the mother of countless dramas. Mystery: the recognition that the world and our experience of it is more than any of the particular stories that make it coherent or any of the activities in which we engage. This is not to argue, as George Steiner does, that there is "a small, queer margin at the very top" of "truth and realness" that is the only thing that cannot "be housed inside the walls of language." Rather, it is to recognize that the creative power of language is a two-edged sword. In creating one picture of reality, for instance, it predisposes us to see reality in that way rather than in all the other ways in which we might have seen it; in interpreting our motives for acting in one way, we obscure all the other ways in which we might have understood the event. This insight is perhaps best expressed in a very old wisdom book, the Tao Te Ching. See particularly the fourth line in the first stanza.

1 The way that can be described is not the eternal Way. The name that can be named is not the eternal Name.

That which cannot be named is the eternal reality. Naming is the source of all particular things.

2 When some things are called beautiful, other things become ugly.

When some things are called good, other things become bad. Being and nonbeing create each other.

Difficult and easy support each other. Long and short define each other.

High and low depend upon each other. Before and after follow each other.

ON USING COMM

• CMM has been used: • As a means of understanding particular conversations • As a means of understanding recurring patterns of communication • As a guide for intervening in unwanted and unproductive patterns of communication • As a way of understanding what it means to live a life, be a person, and act into

situations • As a guide for research • As a guide for consulting with families, organizations, governments and schools • As the basis for teaching and coaching skilled practice • As a way of thinking through complex and interesting situations

  CMM  AS  A  PRACTICAL  THEORY,  OR  WHAT  CMM  TRIES   TO  DO  

  Kurt  Lewin  once  said  that  there  is  nothing  so  practical  as  a  good  theory.    Perhaps  he  was   right,  but  if  so,  his  often-­‐quoted  dictum  begs  the  question  of  what  is  a  “good  theory.”   1. Practical theory is concerned with the way embodied persons in a real world act together to

create patterns of practice that constitute their forms of life. 2. A practical theory provides an evolving grammar for a family of discursive and

conversational practices. The grammar of practical theory should be internally consistent and defensible in light of data.

3. These practices constitute a family of methods for the study of situated social action wherein professionals join with participants and clients. As such, practical theory respects the centrality of the grammatical abilities of persons in conjoint action.

4. Practical theories are assessed by their consequences. They are developed in order to make human life better. They provide ways of joining in social action so as to promote (a) socially useful description, explanation, critique, and change in situated human action; (b) and emergence of new abilities in all parties involved.

5. A practical theory coevolves with both the abilities of its practitioners and the consequences of its use, thus forming a tradition of practice.

   

FOREGROUNDING  COMMUNICATION     To  understand  CMM,  you  simply  must  see  that  it  foregrounds  communication  per  se  as     an  object  of  study.    To  “foreground”  communication  means  to  look  “at”  patterns  of     communication,  not  “through”  them  to  that  which  they  refer.    It  is  to  take  the  structure     of  communication  patterns  as  having  consequences  for  those  who  produce  and  are  in     them.    It  is  to  see  the  events  and  objects  of  our  world  as  “made”  by  patterns  of     communication  and,  simultaneously,  as  “making”  those  who  produce  them.    It  is   to  see  communication  as  actions  that  are  real.   TRANSMISSION AND CREATING SOCIAL WORLDS: TWO CONCEPTS OF COMMUNICATION The most common concept of communication in the contemporary world involves the "transmission" of messages or information from one place to another. While the transmission and interpretation of messages is, of course, an important function of communication, it is not the only or even the most important function. The tendency to identify communication with this single function is a relatively recent historical development, grounded in the cluster of ideas and practices that we call the Enlightenment. The "success" of this idea of communication was heightened by its "fit" with the new technologies of communication such as the telegraph, telephone, and other technologies for sending messages from one place to another. The term "communication" itself comes from a Latin word meaning "to make common." This original etymological sense has more to do with "commune" and "community" than signal generation, transmission, and reception. Even within this definition, however, there are differences in emphases between those who focus on that which is made common and the process by which things are made. The former focuses on the events and objects of the social world -- personalities, organizations, common sense, rituals, and symbols -- as "found things;" the latter focuses on the processes -- conversations -- by which they are made. Of the many theories that have focused on communication, most have focused on communication as transmission. Of those that have focused on communication as "making common," most have focused on that which is made. CMM (along with conversational analysis, ethnomethodology, symbolic interactionism, and dramatism) focuses on the process by which things are made. Some of the differences coming from these two concepts of communication are summarized in the table below.

Transmission Model Definitions: The transmission model is a very popular way of thinking about communication. It suggests that communication is a tool that we use to exchange information. "Good communication" occurs when meanings are accurately conveyed and received.

Social Constructionist Model Definitions: The social constructionist model suggests that the way we communicate, as well as the content of what we say, shapes how we feel about ourselves, the person speaking and even others who are not in the room. The way we talk and the people to whom we talk creates, sustains and/or destroys relationships, organizations, and communities.

How communication works: What gets said? What meaning is transmitted? • _How clear is the information? • _How accurately is it heard? • _How completely is it expressed? • _Was the "channel" effective?

How communication works: What gets elicited by what is said or done? • _What contexts are created for the other? • _What language is elicited? • _What form of speech is elicited? • _What tones of voice are elicited? • _Who is invited to speak and who is not? • _Who is addressed and who is not?

The work communication does: What gets done? • _Is the uncertainty reduced? • _Is the question answered? • _Is the issue clarified? • _Is the problem resolved?

The work communication does: What gets made? • _What speech acts? (insults, compliments) • _What relationships? (trust, respect) • _What episodes (collaboration, conflict) • _What identities? (shrill voices; reasonable persons; caring persons) • _What cultures/worldviews? (strong democracy; weak democracy; no democracy)

NAMING, USING, AND CALLING: THREE CONCEPTS OF WHAT WE ARE DOING WHEN WE COMMUNICATE The contrast between the transmission model and the social constructionist model of communication is one way of clarifying CMM's concept of communication. Another is to make some distinctions among various ideas of what we are doing when we communicate. For this purpose, let's distinguish among "naming," "using," and "calling."

• In his Confessions (I.8), Augustine developed a concept of language as naming things, and of communication as either agreeing or disagreeing about their names. He said, "as I heard words repeatedly used in their proper places in various sentences, I gradually learnt to understand what objects they signified; and after I had trained my mouth to form these signs, I used them to express my own desires."

• Wittgenstein used Augustine's concept as a foil in his Philosophical Investigations, and offered a contrasting idea of meaning as determined by its use: "the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of life" (#23). There are countless kinds of sentences "and this multiplicity is not something fixed, given once for all; but new

types of language, new language-games, as we might say, come into existence, and others become obsolete and get forgotten" (#23). We can imagine any number of new languages "and to imagine a language means to imagine a form of life" (#19).

• CMM builds on Wittgenstein as Wittgenstein built on Augustine. The meaning of language is not only in its use but in its effects. Utterances such as Thomas' call forth or elicits responses from others, and these responses join with the original use to create a co-constructed pattern 1) which shapes but does not control the options open to each participant; and 2) which has characteristics that each participant has shaped but not controlled.

In summary:

• Naming has to do with a word and the thing that the word stands for. • Using has to do with the context and the intentions of the person using it in that

context. • Calling has to do with the use and the response that it elicits and thus the

interpersonal pattern which is produced. PERSON-POSITIONS WITHIN A DEONTIC LOGIC of MORAL OBLIGATION All of us are born into social worlds that we did not make and that we did not choose. We come into the world as helpless infants, engendered, with genetic predispositions that will interact with environmental circumstances. We are assigned a name and a place in a cluster of "conversations" that are already going on. Some of us will be assigned privileged positions as members of elite families or dominant classes, others the opposite. It is not fair. If we are "normal" infants, we will have a marvelous capacity to join into ongoing patterns of social interaction. We will learn to speak a language without studying it, just by being exposed to it. Our capacity for learning is so strong that we will lose the ability to pronounce phonemes that are not in the language that we hear spoken. As we grow older, we will learn to take our place within games and interaction patterns that we could not describe, and we will learn "our" place in them. We will come to believe that these patterns into which we were born are "natural" and "right." Philosophy books are often written as if the primary question confronting us is "what do I know?" CMM starts at a different place, more consistent with Goethe's statement that "in the beginning, was the act." The primary question, in the grammar of CMM, is "what should I do?" and it is answered in the context of the game-like patterns of interaction that we are in with parents, officials, friends, and strangers. We  find  ourselves  enmeshed  in  overlapping,  unraveling,  unfinished  webs  of  perceived   "oughtness”  (deontic  moral  obligation  of  action).  We  must  do  this,  must  not  do  that,  and   may  do  something  else.       One  technical  term  for  this  is  "deontic  logic."  Prior  to  the  20

th   century,  it  was  thought  

that  there  is  only  one  logic,  that  its  structure  was  truth-­‐bearing  assertions  (technically,  

an  alethic  logic),  that  its  primary  operators  were  various  conjugations  of  the  verb  "to   be,"  and  that  it  was  two-­‐valued  (that  is,  as  Aristotle  put  it,  a  thing  is  either  A  or  not-­‐A).  A   number  of  discoveries,  culminating  in  Godel's  "Proof"  that  no  system  can  be  both   complete  and  consistent,  opened  up  the  subject  and  logicians  realized  that  there  are   many  logics.  Georg  von  Wright  ("Deontic  Logic,"  Mind  60  (1951),  1-­‐15)  developed  a   logic  in  which  the  operators  were  terms  referring  to  various  forms  of  "oughtness"  and   called  it  "deontic  logic."  CMM  borrows  this  concept  and  postulates  that  all  of  us  live  in  a   world  in  which,  in  any  given  moment,  a  primary  consideration  is  what  we  should  and   must  and  must  not  do. From a first person perspective: Communication is a process of coordinating actions within a working definition of a situation. Key questions include:

• What are we doing here? (How are we making it coherent? How are we coordinating?)

• What should I do now? From third person perspective: Communication is a game-like pattern of social interaction comprised of a sequence of acts, each of which evokes and responds to the acts of other persons. Key questions include:

• What are they making? (That is, what game-like patterns are they producing? What events and objects in their social worlds to these patterns constitute?)

• How are they making it? • How does it fit into other patterns of other conversations?

    LIVING  IN  THE  TENSION  BETWEEN  ACTIONS  AND  MEANINGS   ("STORIES  LIVED"  AND  "STORIES  TOLD")   "The comparison of 'stories told" and 'lived' evokes a recognition of the two sides of human experience. We write of the stars with hands genetically shaped for grasping a branch or crude tools, we dream of universal peace with minds that are affected by the enzymes secreted by our livers, our souls soar with aesthetic ecstasy while our bodies struggle against a maturational cycle that makes hair gray, skin wrinkle and tendons tear instead of stretch. "We can come to grips with the tension between these two aspects of our experience by contrasting stories lived and stories told. On the one hand, our experience is the stuff of dreams: in the stories we tell, we can be like Superman, leaping over tall buildings in a single bound and feeling more powerful than a speeding locomotive… However, our experience is also the stuff of the physical world. In the stories we live, our attempts to leap too far produce personal injury and public humiliation, and speeding locomotives, in the form of our personal mortality, the whims of the boss, and the routinized practices of the Internal Revenue Service, flatten us where we stand."

"The stories we tell are subject only to the limits of our imaginations; however, the stories we live are performed in concert with other people… "Any attempt to reduce our lives to either the stories we live or tell is a mistake. Although inextricably interrelated, they are distinguishable. One expresses our enmeshment in a world of imagination, including both logic and fantasy. The other expresses our simultaneous enmeshment in a world of movement, including the coordination of our movements with those of the objective world and other people. "Conversations are a fluid result of the interpenetrations of these two worlds. They include both the dream-stuff of the stories we tell and the physical-stuff of the stories we live. Neither is complete without the other; neither is reducible to the other." (W. Barnett Pearce, Interpersonal Communication: Making Social Worlds. NY: HarperCollins, 1994, pp. 63-64). MORAL CONFLICT The landscapes of our social worlds are ultimately moral; they involve the way we "ought" to act and the resources upon which we draw to live lives of honor and dignity. Sometimes we find ourselves in conflict with persons whose moral topography is incommensurate with our own. We call this "moral conflict." Incommensurability refers to relationships in which one landscape cannot be "mapped" onto another. For example, the Religious Right has a concept of ethics that is very different from that of those they call "secular humanists," so much so that when each group bares its soul and tells the other what they hold most dear, the content of what they reveal offends the other group and confirms their perception that that they are mad, bad, or sick. For example, a central tenet of the Religious Right is that morality is simple and that moral certainty is a virtue; those designated secular humanists are more likely to argue that morality is inherently complex and that virtue is found in humility and tentativeness. When groups like this communicate, they set off a predictable sequence of conflict that goes something like this:

• Each side uses its best rhetorical eloquence to describe their own position • Each side politely instructs the other about the perfidy of their position • Each side is offended and begins to use an attenuated rhetoric in which their

precious concepts are not displayed and in which condemnations of the other side is the predominant content

• Both sides try to silence, disempower, and demonize the other. This last stage is the "normal" state of discourse in moral conflicts. It is impossible to "resolve" moral conflicts, but they can be dealt with productively if the participants can create new concepts that transcend the differences between them. This takes advantage of the fact that moral orders are created, and can continue to be created. In this essay, W.B. Pearce describes the basic tenets of Coordinated Management of Meaning. It reviews key concepts such as mystery and coordination, discusses CMM as a practical theory that puts communication in the foreground, discusses naming, and provides a

look at the theory through deontic logic, or logic of “oughtness,” what we are compelled to do or be. It also distinguishes between stories lived and stories told and finishes by including at look at the theory in terms of moral conflict.