Coherence: A Meaningful Adhesive for Discourse

Kellermann, Kathy; Sleight, Carra

doi:10.1080/23808985.1989.11678714

“…The confederates were also asked to identify the event they had chosen about which to elicit an explanation and were asked to complete a second questionnaire specifically about the part of the conversation where the event was discussed. These items dealt with the perceived coherence and the apparent accuracy of the explanation (Kellermann & Sleight, 1989;Read, 1992;Thagard, 1989;Turnbull, 1992). "A" was then told that the camera operator had identified a particular topic about which the researchers were interested.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To assess judgments of the talk, items derived from previous conceptualizations (Kellermann & Sleight, 1989;Read, 1992;Thagard, 1989) about the accuracy and the coherence of explanations were placed on 7-point Likert scales and summed for each dimension. Specifically, two items were created to reflect the perceived truth value or accuracy of the explanation (item 1: "It was probably not what happened" [recoded] and item 2: "It is likely to be true"; alpha = .77).…”

Section: Pre-and Post-interaction Questionnairesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Explanations and impressions: Investigating attributions and their effects on judgments for friends and strangers

Manusov¹,

Trees²,

Reddick³

et al. 1998

Communication Studies

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“…Under the assumptions of centering theory, then, communicators speak or write coherently by creating utterances that deploy a stream of words comprising centers (more specifically, noun phrases) in a strategic way, creating a semantic structure of words. 5 Coherence, in turn, is a fundamental criterion for understandable, relevant communication (Jackson, Jacobs, & Rossi, 1987;Kellerman & Sleight, 1989;Sperber & Wilson, 1995). This notion provides the basis for an efficient automatic coding system for the content of communication, grounded in centering theory, replacing the arbitrary windows of the network text analysis approaches described above.…”

Section: Centering Resonance Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Studying Complex Discursive Systems: Centering Resonance Analysis of Communication

Corman¹

2002

Human Communication Research

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Scholars increasingly theorize about the power of communication to organize and structure social collectives. However, two factors threaten to impede research on these theories: limitations in the scope and range of existing methods for studying complex systems of communication and the large volume of communication produced by even small collectives. Centering resonance analysis (CRA) is a new text analysis method that has broad scope and range and can be applied to large quantities of written text and transcribed conversation. It identifies discursively important words and represents these as a network, then uses structural properties of the network to index word importance. CRA networks can be directly visualized and can be scored for resonance with other networks to support a number of spatial analysis methods. Following a critique of existing methodologies, this paper describes the theoretical basis and operational details of CRA, describes its advantages relative to other techniques, demonstrates its face validity and representational validity, and demonstrates its utility in modeling organizational knowledge. The conclusion argues for its applicability in several organizational research contexts before describing its potential for use in a broader range of applications, including media content analysis, conversation analysis, computer simulations, and models of communication systems.1986; Schiffrin, 1994) makes conversation and interaction analysis less common than perhaps it should be in the communication discipline. Moving to the small group level, the detailed study of interaction is more difficult and rare still, and at the multigroup (i.e. organizational or cultural) level it is virtually unheard of. As our emerging theories and models of communication grow in scope to embrace complex collective phenomena, we risk making them unworkable as guides for empirical research. Put simply, we worry that the existing body of communication research methods is incapable of handling the complexity being theorized in the discipline.In this article, we propose a general analytical framework called centering resonance analysis (CRA), a flexible means of representing the content of large sets of messages, and assisting in their analysis. We present CRA as a text analysis method, suited to studying formalized communication like reports, letters, memos, emails, and other written texts. However, as we illustrate below, CRA is also applicable to transcribed conversations. Developments in voice recognition technology promise the ability in the near future to "textualize" live conversation, making it amenable to CRA methods as well. In establishing the need for CRA, we ground our arguments in the concerns of organizational communication because this is where the need to study large volumes of communication is especially acute. However, this does not mean CRA is only useful in research on formal organizations. As we explain in the conclusion, CRA has many applications in the broader discipline to problems in rhetoric, mass c...

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“…5 Coherence, in turn, is a fundamental criterion for understandable, relevant communication (Jackson, Jacobs, & Rossi, 1987;Kellerman & Sleight, 1989;Sperber & Wilson, 1995). 5 Coherence, in turn, is a fundamental criterion for understandable, relevant communication (Jackson, Jacobs, & Rossi, 1987;Kellerman & Sleight, 1989;Sperber & Wilson, 1995).…”

Section: Centering Resonance Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Studying Complex Discursive Systems..

Corman

¹

,

Kuhn

²

,

McPhee

³

et al. 2002

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Scholars increasingly theorize about the power of communication to organize and structure social collectives. However, two factors threaten to impede research on these theories: limitations in the scope and range of existing methods for studying complex systems of communication and the large volume of communication produced by even small collectives. Centering resonance analysis (CRA) is a new text analysis method that has broad scope and range and can be applied to large quantities of written text and transcribed conversation. It identifies discursively important words and represents these as a network, then uses structural properties of the network to index word importance. CRA networks can be directly visualized and can be scored for resonance with other networks to support a number of spatial analysis methods. Following a critique of existing methodologies, this paper describes the theoretical basis and operational details of CRA, describes its advantages relative to other techniques, demonstrates its face validity and representational validity, and demonstrates its utility in modeling organizational knowledge. The conclusion argues for its applicability in several organizational research contexts before describing its potential for use in a broader range of applications, including media content analysis, conversation analysis, computer simulations, and models of communication systems.1986; Schiffrin, 1994) makes conversation and interaction analysis less common than perhaps it should be in the communication discipline. Moving to the small group level, the detailed study of interaction is more difficult and rare still, and at the multigroup (i.e. organizational or cultural) level it is virtually unheard of. As our emerging theories and models of communication grow in scope to embrace complex collective phenomena, we risk making them unworkable as guides for empirical research. Put simply, we worry that the existing body of communication research methods is incapable of handling the complexity being theorized in the discipline.In this article, we propose a general analytical framework called centering resonance analysis (CRA), a flexible means of representing the content of large sets of messages, and assisting in their analysis. We present CRA as a text analysis method, suited to studying formalized communication like reports, letters, memos, emails, and other written texts. However, as we illustrate below, CRA is also applicable to transcribed conversations. Developments in voice recognition technology promise the ability in the near future to "textualize" live conversation, making it amenable to CRA methods as well. In establishing the need for CRA, we ground our arguments in the concerns of organizational communication because this is where the need to study large volumes of communication is especially acute. However, this does not mean CRA is only useful in research on formal organizations. As we explain in the conclusion, CRA has many applications in the broader discipline to problems in rhetoric, mass c...

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Coherence: A Meaningful Adhesive for Discourse

Cited by 5 publications

References 14 publications

Explanations and impressions: Investigating attributions and their effects on judgments for friends and strangers

Explanations and impressions: Investigating attributions and their effects on judgments for friends and strangers

Studying Complex Discursive Systems: Centering Resonance Analysis of Communication

Studying Complex Discursive Systems..

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