"Making Social Worlds is an exciting and gutsy volume readable by a range of audiences. The focus on critical interaction moments allows intelligent probing communication-based analyses of everything from couples fighting to wars and international relations. The conversational writing style kept me engaged from beginning to end." Stanley Deetz. Professor Director of Peace and Conflict Studies National Communication Association Distinguished Scholar International Communication Association Past-President and Fellow"This is not only a marvelously lucid updating of CMM theory, it also demonstrates the broad applicability of this important conceptual work to problems and potentials of human communication." Kenneth J. Gergen, author of An Invitation to Social Construction
Summary
Making Social Worlds: A Communication Perspective offers the most accessible introduction to the tools and concepts of CMM - Coordinated Management of Meaning - one of the groundbreaking theories of speech communication. Draws upon advances in research for the most up-to-date concepts in speech communication Defines the 'critical moments' of communication for students and practitioners; encouraging us to view communication as a two-sided process of coordinating actions and making/managing meanings Questions how we can intervene in dangerous or undesirable patterns of communication that will result in better social worlds
Table of Contents
reface
Critical moments that shape our social worlds
Taking a communication perspective on social worlds
Paradigms and the"physics" of social worlds
Communication: Coordinating Actions and Making/Managing Meanings
Doing things in communication: Speech acts
Episodes and patterns of communication
Selves and forms of consciousness
Relationships and relational minds
Afterword: Something of a guide for using CMM
