Analysis Of Pearce And Cronen's Coordinated Management Of Meaning Theory

1) Communication Event:

Three summers ago I left the country for the first time. I was provided this opportunity when I was offered a job to work in Spain. My job was to speak English with the campers, so that they could practice their second language (English) speaking skills. During my Skype interview before going to Spain, I made it very clear to my soon-to-be bosses that I had very little knowledge of Spanish. To my surprise, this was actually preferred so that the campers would be forced to practice their English with me instead of speaking Spanish with me. It was not until then that I realized just how dominant of a language English is. At the Barcelona airport my bosses picked me up and then we drove 2 hours to Ripoll, a village …show more content…
This communication theory would provide me with a sufficient foundation to challenge Ana’s frustrations and opinions about me based off of our interactions because as it draws her to consider our communication events through an organized, hierarchy model. The hierarchy model would be essential to making sense of this communication event as it takes into account the multiple contexts that contribute to the conversation. While this is overly simplified, CMM is opposite of just listening to a face-to-face conversation and creating meaning solely off of that. To further explain this, the levels of the hierarchy (from top to bottom) go as followed: cultural patterns, life scripts, relationship, episodes, speech act, and content. Each level of the pyramid allows for communicators to understand why they communicate the way they do, why others communicate the way they do, and together form meaning through the many episodes. Thus, Ana and I would coordinate a meaning as she also would considered what I have and have not been exposed to in the world, why I isolated myself so much/lacked an appetite and all of the other aspects of our communication that caused her negative emotions towards …show more content…
Ana considering my life script could help her understand that I did not grow up in a culture that values the same thing as her, Catalan culture. Next, is life script. This supports Ana in examining how both her and my life script, the events we identify with today, effects our actions. Due to the fact that I had no exposure to Catalan culture or ever even left my home country, taking life script into consideration would possibly craft a sense of empathy within Ana due to my extreme culture shock. This would also help Ana understand my struggle to learn a second language, just as she does not know English. Below life script is relationship. Considering relationship when creating the meanings within our interaction would encourage us each to reach an agreement and understanding. Though we struggle to communicate with each other, we are both trying. This would possibly make Ana more aware of her body language of aggression (rolling her eyes etc.), so that there is less of a hostile, inpatient attitude towards me. Then, examining the episodes would allow each of us to take into consideration how the Catalan and American cultures expectations for the way a person communicates is differ. Understanding this would allow for us to understand that these differences are not a matter of being rude, but just each of our