Activating, seeking, and creating common ground

Abstract

This paper argues that current pragmatic theories fail to describe common ground in its complexity because they usually retain a communication-as-transfer-between-minds view of language, and disregard the fact that disagreement and egocentrism of speaker-hearers are as fundamental parts of communication as agreement and cooperation. On the other hand, current cognitive research has overestimated the egocentric behavior of the dyads and argued for the dynamic emergent property of common ground while devaluing the overall significance of cooperation in the process of verbal communication. The paper attempts to eliminate this conflict and proposes to combine the two views into an integrated concept of common ground, in which both core common ground (assumed shared knowledge, a priori mental representation) and emergent common ground (emergent participant resource, a post facto emergence through use) converge to construct a dialectical socio-cultural background for communication.Both cognitive and pragmatic considerations are central to this issue. While attention (through salience, which is the cause for interlocutors' egocentrism) explains why emergent property unfolds, intention (through relevance, which is expressed in cooperation) explains why presumed shared knowledge is needed. Based on this, common ground is perceived as an effort to converge the mental representation of shared knowledge present as memory that we can activate, shared knowledge that we can seek, and rapport, as well as knowledge that we can create in the communicative process. The socio-cognitive approach emphasizes that common ground is a dynamic construct that is mutually constructed by interlocutors throughout the communicative process. The core and emergent components join in the construction of common ground in all stages, although they may contribute to the construction process in different ways, to different extents, and in different phases of the communicative process.

The pragmatics of pronominal clitics and propositional attitudes

“…Anticipating the term by Zhang (2009), Capone (2000) wrote of speaker/hearer presuppositions. This notion has been resisted for a while, but I am glad that Kecskes and Zhang (2009) came close to the concept I proposed in Capone (2000). The minidialogue in (54) is an interesting example of emergent presuppositions, since this type of presupposition requires mini-dialogues that ensure acceptance on the part of the speaker and the hearer of a certain proposition.…”

“…In such cases, the clitics, nevertheless, retain their presuppositional status (see also Capone 2003). The embedded proposition in such cases is not an emergent presupposition, according to important work by Kecskes and Zhang (2009), but a socio-cultural presupposition. Consider the following:…”

“…The next step is to accept that the clitic can express a mode of presentation of the DP. The clitic expresses a mode of presentation of a proposition and, in particular, the fact that this proposition is given (or emergent from previous discourse, following Kecskes and Zhang 2009) and must be anaphorically linked to some previous proposition. Now, if one accepts syntactic theories based on movement of the clitic, then there is an empty category, e, which is in argument position, while the DP is in adjunct position (a position compatible with the positions normally occupied by syntactic appositions).…”

“…One of the most cogent results of this paper is that pronominal clitics generally refer back to full propositions (if they refer to propositions at all) and not to minimal propositions. I take my own considerations on clitics to give support to interesting and important considerations on emergent presuppositions by Kecskes and Zhang (2009). …”

Interlocutors-Related and Hearer-Specific Causes of Misunderstanding: Processing Strategy, Confirmation Bias and Weak Vigilance

“…These become detrimental if hearers misattribute unwarranted intentions to speakers (Escandell Vidal, 1998). For instance, during an internship as a hotel receptionist, a Spanish student of English for the Tourism Industry was unduly perceived as rude because of requestive strategies like those in (6): Inappropriate expressive choices may also be motivated by speakers' egocentrism, which prevents them from taking into account hearers' perspectives and, hence, how they might interpret what is said (Keysar and Henly, 2002;Keysar, 2007;Kecskes and Zhang, 2009). By solely relying on their knowledge, beliefs or desires, speakers think that their informative intention is clear enough and refrain from investing the necessary cognitive effort to consider other more efficient formulations (Todd et al, 2011: 134).…”