Generally, CMM is "how individuals establish rules for creating and interpreting the meaning and how those rules are enmeshed in a conversation where meaning is constantly being coordinated",[1] and where "human communication is viewed as a flexible, open and mutable process evolving in an ongoing joint interaction, which enables movement, shifts and evolving ways with each other".
[2] CMM embodies this vision and allows interpersonal connection and open conversation among individuals or groups, and can be applicable across multiple academic fields and social scenarios.
However, some commonly agreed upon definitions of CMM would be: it is "a multi-level structural theory in which rules describe the movement or linkages among meanings and actions.
In communicating with others, people assign meanings in their messages based on past conversational experiences from previous social realities.
Through communication, an underlying process takes place in which individuals negotiate common or conflicting meanings of the world around them, thereby creating a new social reality.
[2] There is high importance also on the "processes between people take the form of rule-governed patterns of interactions and that there is logic to the way the we act in communication".
[2] There are also rules and stigmas that vary in cultures when we disclose information or communicate in the ways we are socially taught when assigning meaning to our messages that CMM designs to take into consideration.
Their scholarly collaboration at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst offered a major contribution to the philosophy of communication as story-centered, applicable, and ever attentive to the importance of human meaning.
Pearce describes the creation of CMM through the following story:[6] ...I think that I am the first person ever to use the awkward phrase "coordinated management of meaning".
For years, I had been trying to bring together what I was learning from social science research, rhetorical studies, philosophy, theology, and, in my father's term, the "School of Hard Knocks".
Among other things, CMM's concepts and models guide practitioners in helping clients become aware of the patterns of communication which make up aspects of the social world.
[9] As mentioned, Pearce and Cronen together have set the stage for CMM and have unpacked this theory various times in order to give it the depth it needs.
They found that in their game-like study, respondents reported more engagement based on the structure, or in this case coordination, produced different articulations for determining the value and action of said rules given to them.
Regulative rules in meaning are "structures that have the temporal quality to them and relate to how individuals manage the unfolding sequence of actions in a social episode".
[8] The content or message, according to CMM theory, relates to the raw data and information spoken aloud during communication.
The concept of culture in CMM theory relates to a set of rules for acting and speaking which govern what we understand to be normal in a given episode.
[32][33] There is extensive literature involving the use of CMM to address family violence, intra-community relations, workplace conflict, and many other social issues.
Examples for the hierarchy model have been adapted from ones Pearce uses in one of his writings where he analyzes the courtroom conversation between Ramzi Yousef, the individual convicted of bombing the World Trade Center in 1994, and Kevin T. Duffy, the federal judge who presided over his trial.
According to Parker, "facilitators suggest that they share with each other aspects of their backgrounds and their careers relevant to their peer coaching goals, as mentioned before, by first drawing a diagram in the shape of a daisy using the petals to depict how they would describe themselves".
The levels of meaning from lowest to highest are: content, speech act, episodes, relationship, life scripts, and cultural patterns.
Contextual force causes a person to follow a form of logic that leads one to believe that an action or interpretation is a direct result of, and is appropriate to, the context.
The hierarchy of meaning model addresses questions of: "what are the different contexts that are happening simultaneously?, which layers are most foregrounding or relevant?, how are they shifting as you share your story?, and how might I be personalizing this too much or not enough?".
[24] The CMM theorists take the hierarchy model a step further by reinforcing the importance of interaction and adding the aspect of time.
[41] This model addresses questions of: "what do I want to make in the next turn?, how am I marking the beginning and end of this episode?, and how would it be different if I went further back or further forward?".
It may result in intentionally outrageous behavior, efforts to act in uninterruptible ways, or refusal to recognize the possibility that the outsider can understand the situation of the insider.
Now, it focuses on cultural influence to get insights into how individuals negotiate complex messages occurring at different levels of meaning.
From a humanistic perspective, CMM theory is seen as valuable as it seeks to provide a way to clarify communication for better interaction and understanding.
Its utility lies in "how people achieve meaning, their potential recurring conflicts, and the influence of the self on the communication process is admirable.
They offer us techniques that to understanding the depth of communication in specific scenarios and open the floor to other thoughts and perspectives on the engagement in a conversation.
Now having read through all of the definitions, contributions, models, examples, and other linked connections, a bigger picture of CMM can be better understood and critically applied in everyday communication.