Making Social Worlds: A Communication Perspective

An Invitation . . .......Page 9
Students......Page 12
With Appreciation for . . .......Page 15
A Critical Moment in a 911 Emergency Telephone Call......Page 19
Why Acting Wisely in Critical Moments is Important: We’re in a Race that We Need to Win......Page 24
What happened?......Page 30
How was the story told?......Page 31
How did President Bush respond?......Page 34
Could President Bush have responded in another way?......Page 35
Examples of acting wisely in critical moments......Page 36
Could President Bush have acted more wisely in the critical moment of 9/11?......Page 39
Preview......Page 47
If Communication is so Important, How Should We Understand It?......Page 48
My Discovery of Social Worlds......Page 56
Social worlds......Page 58
The worldliness of social worlds......Page 59
There are many social worlds......Page 60
Social worlds are made......Page 66
Each of us is an agent in the process of making social worlds......Page 70
Questions Asked by Those who Take a Communication Perspective on Social Worlds......Page 71
Preview......Page 75
Paradigms......Page 76
Questions and Questioning......Page 79
Playfulness......Page 83
Systemic......Page 85
Process......Page 86
Emergent Characteristics......Page 88
Theory as a Way of Seeing Things......Page 96
Coordinating Actions......Page 98
Choosing “coordination” as a sensitizing concept for understanding communication......Page 101
Understanding how patterns of communication develop and discerning critical moments......Page 106
Acting wisely in critical moments......Page 111
Making/Managing Meaning......Page 113
Coherence: the gift of meaning and purpose......Page 114
Mystery: the gift of wonder and openings for exploration......Page 116
Communication as the Site where Social Worlds are Made......Page 118
Speech Acts and the Quality of Our Lives......Page 123
Our Social Worlds are Made of Speech Acts......Page 124
Why call them “speech acts”?......Page 126
How many speech acts are there?......Page 127
Where do speech acts come from?......Page 128
Speech Acts are Made in Coordinated Actions......Page 130
Performing Speech Acts......Page 133
What is being done by what is said? Conversational implicature......Page 134
To what is that a response? The conversational triplet......Page 135
What can/must/should I do? Logical force......Page 137
What is the wisest course of action? Ante-narrative......Page 139
Making Better Social Worlds......Page 140
Change the situation so that there will be a different ratio of speech acts......Page 141
Resist or prevent the performance of undesired speech acts......Page 142
Facilitating or enabling the performance of desired speech acts......Page 144
Preview......Page 149
Social Life is Episodic......Page 150
Our Social Worlds are Made of Episodes......Page 151
Making Episodes......Page 152
Making/managing meaning: perceiving the flow of experience as episodes......Page 153
Realizing episodes in coordinated action......Page 166
Patterns of Communication......Page 175
Freeing us up so that we can make wiser choices......Page 180
Calling better patterns of communication into being......Page 183
Here I Am!......Page 189
Selves are Made in Processes of Communication......Page 191
Forms of Consciousness Emerge in Processes of Communication......Page 199
The Role of Selves in Making Social Worlds......Page 207
Making Better Social Worlds......Page 209
Is there a special kind of transformative learning?......Page 210
How can we support each other in our zones of proximal development?......Page 211
How can we structure our institutions so that they support the evolution of consciousness?......Page 212
Can we take proactive steps to structure better forms of communication?......Page 213
The Difference between Being Related and Being in Relationship......Page 217
Relationships and Minds as Objects in Our Social Worlds......Page 218
Relationships as Contexts for the Way We Communicate......Page 222
Making Relationships in Communication......Page 228
The Evolution of Relational Minds......Page 231
Making Better Social Worlds......Page 234
Warning!......Page 242
Ways of “Using” CMM......Page 243
How Do You Know if You’ve Used CMM Well?......Page 244
Description......Page 245
Interpretation......Page 246
Critique......Page 247
Putting it into practice......Page 248
Entry Points for CMM Practice......Page 249
An Example of Consulting Using Systemic Questioning......Page 250
This is a Test . . .......Page 257
Index......Page 259