Chapter 7 1 Chapter 7 Lecture Theories About How People Construct Meaning

Chapter 7 2 Rules Theory  Rules theory and constructivism extend the premises of symbolic interactionism by providing more detailed accounts of how individuals construct meanings.  Rules Theory is the Coordinated Management of Meaning

Chapter 7 3  Rules theory is concerned with how humans construct meaning for their communication.  Coordinated management of meaning (COMM.): We use communication rules to coordinate meanings in interaction with others.

Chapter 7 4  CMM is an interpretive theory that assumes human communication is rule guided and rule following.

Chapter 7 5 Hierarchy of Meanings  Pearce and Cronen believe that we rely on a hierarchy of meanings to interpret experiences.  Pearce and Cronen believe that we rely on a hierarchy of meanings to interpret experiences.  The hierarchy consists of multiple levels of meaning, and each level is contextualized by higher levels in the hierarchy.

Chapter 7 6  Content (Lowest level.)  Speech Act (Communication is action.)  Episode (A recurring routine of interaction that is structured by rules and that has boundaries.)  Relationships (The somewhat scripted ways we interact with particular others.)  Autobiographies (An individual's view of himself or herself that both shapes and is shaped by communication.)  Cultural Patterns (An understanding of speech acts, episodes, relationships, and autobiographies that is shared by particular social groups or societies.)

Chapter 7 7 Discuss an interpersonal communication story and apply the questions.  1. What did you regard as the content?  2. How did you define the speech act?  3. What did you consider the episode?  4. How did you perceive the relationship?  5. How do you describe your autobiography?  6. What cultural patterns can you identify that influenced this specific communication?

Chapter 7 8 Rules  Rules allow us to make sense of social interaction and guide our own communication so that we coordinate meanings with others.

Chapter 7 9 Write a list of interpersonal rules.

Chapter 7 10 WRITE TWO RULES FOR EACH ROLE:  ROLES: (a) Professors, (b) high school teachers, (c) college students.  1. Constitutive rules define what counts as what for example, what counts as support, meanness, joking, praise).  2. Regulative rules guide interaction. In CMM theory, a rule that tells us when it's appropriate to do a certain thing and what we should do next in an interaction.

Chapter 7 11 Constructivism (Kelly)  Constructivism (Kelly) focuses on cognitive processes that we use to create meaning.

Chapter 7 12 Let’s construct  Think of an idea.  What do you already know.  Input.  How do you put it into your life?

Chapter 7 13 Cognitive schema--knowledge structure.  Prototypes are the broadest cognitive structures, ideal, or optimal examples of categories of people, situations, objects.

Chapter 7 14  Personal constructs--the second- broadest knowledge structures are building blocks. Examples would be intelligent-unintelligent, uninteresting-interesting.

Chapter 7 15  Stereotypes are predictive generalizations about how a person will behave.

Chapter 7 16 Scripts  Scripts are guides to action, much like the episodes that we read about in CMM.  This of a situation where you operate from a script.

Chapter 7 17 What do you think?  What prototypes do you apply in interpreting the activity and other people?

Chapter 7 18 What do you think?  What personal constructs are salient in your thinking about the other people?

Chapter 7 19 What do you think?  What stereotypes do you make about how specific others will act? What is the basis of your predictive generalizations?

Chapter 7 20 What do you think?  What script do you follow in this activity?  What script do you follow in this activity?  Has your script ever not worked?  Has your script ever not worked?  What happened?

Chapter 7 21  Cognitive Complexity  Personal constructs are the centerpiece of constructivist theory building.  Constructivists believe that people vary in the complexity, or sophistication, of their interpretive processes.

Chapter 7 22  Differentiation is measured by the number of distinct interpretations an individual uses to perceive and describe others.  Abstraction is the extent to which a person interprets others in terms of internal motives, personality traits, and character.

Chapter 7 23  Organization is the degree to which a person notices and is able to make sense of contradictory behaviors.  Person-centered --cognitively complex people are more capable of engaging in sensitive communication that is tailored to particular others.  The research inspired by constructivist theory is impressive and growing