we are conscious of them and or unconscious of them. When consciously aware of them, they can either be "obligatory, legitimate, undermined, or prohibited," or when unconsciously aware of them, they can be "caused, probable, random, or blocked". Content The content or message, according to CMM theory, relates to the raw data and information spoken aloud during communication. To put it simply, content is the words used to communicate. The content is essentially the basic building blocks of any language; however, it is important to note that the content by itself is not sufficient to establish the meaning of the communication. Speech act Another integral part of the CMM theory includes the speech act. "Speech acts communicate the intention of the speaker and indicate how a particular communication should be taken." The simplest explanation of a speech act is "actions that you perform by speaking. They include compliments, insults, promises, threats, assertions, and questions". CMM theory draws upon the speech act theory, which further breaks down speech acts into separate categories of sounds or utterances. Though the speech act theory is much more detailed, it is important to have an understanding of both illocutionary and perlocutionary utterances. An illocutionary utterance is a speech that intends to make contact with a receiver. A perlocutionary utterance includes speech that intends to alter the behavior of the receiver. There are many different utterances or speech acts, including questions, answers, commands, promises, and statements. Having knowledge of each of these plays a large part in an individual being able to participate in a communications exchange. Episodes An episode is a situation created by persons in a conversation. The same content can take on different meaning when the situation is different. For example, a phrase used among close family or friends may take on an entirely different meaning in a job interview. In the interactions, people may punctuate differently on the same episode. This will result in people dealing with the differences in their punctuations on subsequent episodes. Especially when people situated in the bi-cultural or multi-cultural situation have identified a number of specific acts which occurred in an equivalent situation in the other culture, it would have totally disrupted the episode. Relationship Relationship is the higher level of the meaning, where "relational boundaries in that parameters are established for attitudes and behaviors." This building block is fairly easy to understand as it is the