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This interpretive research study explores U.S. adults' lived experiences during the beginning months of the COVID-19 global pandemic. Participants ( N = 44), recruited from a convenience sample of U.S. adults, engaged in in-depth semi-structured interviews or focus groups. Through an iterative analysis of participants' experiences and the theoretical model of communal coping (TMCC), the authors identified three convergent stressors (i.e., isolation, uncertainty, conflict ) and several coping strategies related to participants' stressor appraisal (i.e., individual or joint) and action orientation (i.e., individual or joint). Based on these findings, this study offers the novel theoretical concept of Discursive coping and proposes a model for how this perspective might be integrated with current theorizing about individual and communal coping. Implications for communal coping and discursive theory are discussed as well as practical recommendations for public health messaging.

In this essay, the author makes the case that a defining moment for the communication discipline is to encourage increased uptake of embodied conversation. The essay shares illustrative examples and reviews research on issues such as loneliness, anxiety, social comparison, empathy, compassion, social media, electronic medical records, facial mimicry and more. It then describes various strategies that the communication discipline might employ in their research and pedagogy that motivate the practice of embodied conversation. The essay concludes with an invitation to communication scholars from a wide range of focus areas and generations to join in (re)creating "conversation as cool."