Participants in a communication process comprehend information based on their social intuition which may give rise to construed meanings. Disagreements or misunderstandings arising in communications can be attributed to collision emanating from a misinterpretation of information in a conversation. This discussion directs me to a recent experience whereby I kindly requested my friend Jude to look after my sick sibling while I went out to run some errands.
My statement was as follows, “Jude would you by any chance come to my place and help with my little brother in the event I have to run some errands?” Jude’s reply have all the indications that he misunderstood my request, and this made me wonder if I had by any chance put the request through in an ambiguous manner. His response was, “I would if I did not have any extracurricular activities to attend”, he replied.
I got the notion that he felt as if I was putting him to test on whether he would be available and able to help. The analysis of the response shows a sense of misunderstanding in the sense that I aimed at asking for a favor, but my friend took it as a question of ability.
Coordinated management of meaning (CMM) as a theory argues that, people engaging in a conversation try hard to achieve coherence, coordinate actions and in so doing may experience misery. The difficulty in my conversation with Jude came in a context of relationship and though I might not have made my statement clear on whether it was a proposal or a test of ability, his reply showed that he took it as a question of ability.
The creation of a conversation based on a mutual understanding and the nature of responsibility is inevitable. From my conversation, I failed to create a shared meaning by not expressing my idea in a more clear and coherent way, resulting in the failure in coordination. Thus, Jude acted by his understanding to my statement. Thus, proving that coordination is difficult in situations where people have different perceptions and logic meaning of actions. The consensus was reached once I called again and made my request plain and clear that I needed a favor and not testing his ability to deliver the request.
To ensure for better communication, our interactions ought to be based on rules that guide us on how to act in different situations. Speech act constitutes actions that one performs by speaking, and which guide the feedback given by the interlocutor. The speech act may be a question, promise or even threat. In a situation like mine involving the conversation with Jude, the speech act intended is not grasped wholly by the recipient of the message, bringing about a communication error.
On analyzing my conversation encounter, developing accurate understanding in conversation, communication patterns should be utilized so as to coordinate meaning in the conversation. From a critical perspective, CMM theory presents conversations as events where the involved parties within a dialogue affect or is affected by the other. Constitutive rules relate to how certain communications patterns should be understood depending on the context of the conversation.
It guides the receiver of the message to know how to interpret messages relayed. However, the regulative rules, on the other hand, allow for the understanding of the consequences of various communication patterns thus, enabling the sender of the message to know the resultant outcome of his or her statement. In context, it means that the response is clearly understood.