Assignment 4, Beth

Clark and Brennan explain “grounding” as a coordination of content to create common ground. This common ground is accumulated over time with people, so that future communication can be more efficient. This accumulation was clearly evident in a recent email with my mom in which we were discussing our schedules for the upcoming semester. Since we know a lot of the same people, many of her references to various friends and family members only included their first names and I immediately knew who she was talking about. She also mentioned “driving to Kim’s house” and since I know where that is from previous grounding, I knew this meant she could stop by and visit me as Kim lives nearby. She didn’t have to explicitly describe the thought because it was mutual knowledge. Other common ground that already existed included some vague references to objects, like “the poster” and “the flowers,” which I knew meant the poster she had sent me a couple days earlier and the flowers from my brother’s wedding. All of the previously existing references were accepted by me after the presentation phase of my mom’s email, and because of the medium we used to communicate, I did not explicitly give an acknowledgement utterance as I would have in person by saying “yeah” or something of that nature.

Some things we talked about did have to be specified in my acceptance utterances or even clarified more specifically to make sure we both had the same meaning for a certain reference. In some cases, I used phrases like “that week” which was a specific week that she had made clear in her presentation. This is an example of a new reference to something that became common ground in this exchange. At one point in my response, I make a point of distinguishing the exact dates of spring break to make sure that we both were talking about the same dates. This clarification cost some time and a few more utterances to make sure we were on the same page.

The revisability and reviewability of the medium allowed me to look up the dates when I had my calendar with me and think about what I wanted to schedule before sending her a response. The convenience of the email was countered by some delay and reception costs as it was not simultaneous and took a bit more effort to read than to listen. The display is also set up so that the acceptance phase of the exchange probably took longer than other mediums. I was unable to show my understanding with a short “mhmm,” so in some cases only the context of my answer provided any evidence to having really understood. Even with these costs, our scheduling exchange only took two paragraph-sized emails, so the convenience and ease of grounding is clear and shows that least collaborative effort was effective.