Theories About The Conversation

Question 1

Symbolic Convergence Theory

Ernest Bormann

Answer 1

Originally a theory of organizational communication. Bormann noticed the use of storytelling and their use of structuring reality. In times of stress people create crazier stories.

• Stories structure reality
  
  • called these stories “Fantasy themes”
• Technique: “fantasy theme analysis” to uncover “rhetorical vision”

Question 2

What is a conversation?

Answer 2

A series of messages in the process of making meaning, making relationships and social worlds. It is a matter of coordinating meanings and messages.

Question 3

Constituitive View of com

Answer 3

Communications is….

• Comm as an action (speech acts)
• constructs identities
• makes relationships
• Makes social worlds
• fateful and consequential
• invites the question –> What are we making with out communication?”

Question 4

The Coordinated Management Of Meaning - Barnett Pearce , Vernon Cronen

Answer 4

We try to coordinate meanings with others.
How conversation create social worlds. 
World view II
Social constructionist 
Somewhat nontraditional
CMM is a collection of "heuristics"

Question 5

Deontic Logic

Answer 5

Different people have different versions of their Deontae logic based on their social worlds.
Internalized logic of what you ought/ought not do.

Ex. Discouraged vs not allowed to do in class.

Question 6

Rules

Answer 6

Constitutive

Regulative

Question 7

Bifurcation Points

Answer 7

What you do in a moment is fateful and consequential. ( like looking back on a convo and realizing what you could or should have said.)

Question 8

Hierarchy Model

“Your a jerk” -> joke -> this is our normal banter -> This is a long standing friendship -> I’m a friendly person who enjoys fun ->A norm in this group is to engage in playful insults.

Answer 8

Content-> Speech act-> Episode (named communication events)-> Relationships -> Autobiography -> Cultural patterns

Question 9

A practical CMM tool

Writing the rules

Answer 9

• Making the implicit, explicit
• Taking all the assumptions and examining them directly
• look for coordination or lack thereof

Question 10

Force/Logical force

Prefigurative
Practical
Contextual
Implicative
Reflexive

Answer 10

What causes an action? What causes someone to enact a particular Regulative or constitutive rule?

Prefigurative Force
-Antecedent->Act

Practical Force
-Act-> Consequent

Contextual Force
-Pressure from hierarchy of meaning.

Implicative Force
- Pressure to transform contexts and change definitions

Reflexive Force
- A “metaperspective”. From an awareness of the game, a motivation to transform communication

Question 11

Unwanted Repetitive Patterns

Answer 11

Episodes of conflict that arise over and over again, where the participants seem powerless to break the cycle.

• may or may not be about the same topic but there is something about it that follows the same pattern.

Question 12

Unwanted Repetitive Patterns

Answer 12

• Strong link between act and antecedent (pre figurative force)
• Strong link between act and autobiography (Personal identity)
• Perception of a narrow range of alternative acts.
• Weak link between act and consequences (little use of practical force)
• Reflexive relationship between episode and relationship (looped)

(Reflexivity - cause and effect begin to become blurred)

-Strong contextual force