Coordinated Management of Meaning - Application and Models

Application and Models

Pearce is adamant that CMM is not just an interpretive theory but is meant to be a practical theory as well. There is extensive literature involving the use of CMM to address family violence, intra-community relations, workplace conflict and many other social issues. Along this line, CMM theorists have used or developed several analysis models to help understand and improve communication. The models addressed here are the Hierarchy Model of Actor's Meanings, the Serpentine Model, the Daisy Model, the LUUUTT Model and charmed, strange, and subversive loops.

Examples for the first three models have been adapted from ones Pearce uses in one of his writings where he analyzes the courtroom conversation between Ramzi Yousef, the individual convicted of bombing the World Trade Center in 1994, and Kevin T. Duffy, the federal judge who presided over his trial. In Yousef's statement before sentencing, he criticizes the US for its hypocrisy; he accuses the US of being the premier terrorist, and reasserts his pride in his fight against the US. At the sentencing, Duffy accuses Yousef of being a virus, evil, perverting the principles of Islam, and interested only in death. Neither individual really talks to the other, but rather at them.