Tom: Saiiinng?
Josh: Saiiin where u at?
Tom: Annex with oli
Josh: Zombies?
Tom: No I'm done with that.
Josh: Not true.
Tom: I gave COD back to Carter
Josh: We aren't friends anymore
Tom: I hate you
My friends and I have a unique txting etiquette that has evolved (or degraded) from common sayings or utterances frequently used by our close peers. The conversation above is a txt conversation between my former roommate and I. On first read, this should make sense to nobody. But as we know by now, this conversation is grounded by my pre-existing relationship with the individual and the use of common group 'mems' , as well as nicknames and slang.
To initiate the conversation, "saaaiinngg" (pronounced as heavily drawn out version of the word "son") serves as a mutual hello. Next, I ask Tom where he is at and his response is a another example of grounding: Notice that Tom doesn't reply "New York" or "Ithaca" or "college town: because Tom knows that I'm in New York, in Ithaca, in college town. Instead Tom replies, "annex with oli" which refers to our fraternities c-town residence and our friend Oli (his nickname-grounded), respectively. This is an example of mutual information that exists prior to the start of the conversation and thus provides grounding for our convo.
Next I ask Tom if he is up for playing a few rounds of Call of Duty (COD) "Zombies?" He response is "I'm done with that" which I rebuke. Further txting reveals that Tom had given the game (COD) back to it's owner (Carter). Tom knows how obsessed I am with that game so he understands when I say "We aren't friends anymore." In fact he was probably expecting it. And finally, as do most of our conversations, the final line is "I hate you." which has become grounded in meaning as"Over and out." or "Talk to you later"
Try having that conversation without grounding :)
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Ohhh, I get your conversation now! I definitely needed to be clued into that grounding before that made any sense to me. It's clear that your shared slang and common activities made your question of "Zombies?" much faster than explicitly asking him: "Would you like to play a game of Call of Duty?" This shows that the previously grounded content of your conversation had a big role in reducing the costs of the exchange and supports the theory of least collaborative effort. You really got a lot of information from very few words. Even though I'm not sure you created any new grounding in this conversation, it is a nice example of drawing on previous grounding!
ReplyDeleteThis is a very true example of needing past grounding in order to understand the conversation. You were both using a lot of your own knowledge about each other to drive the conversation forward. It is also true that you and your friend have found interesting ways of shortening words and getting your point across to one another with as little effort as possible.
ReplyDeleteThis was a fun post to read. Very straight forward and clear. It's interesting how he has to clarify "I gave COD back to carter" instead of just saying "I gave it back to carter". I feel like you would have understood the latter. Maybe he was unsure and just re-establishing any unsteady common ground.
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