Earlier in the week, “Sarah” and I had planned to get together before a formal we were both attending to finish getting ready together. Therefore, on the day of the formal, Sarah sent me a blackberry message asking me what our plan was. I replied by telling her that I would come pick her up at 7:15. Just by this message we drew on common ground. Because I have known Sarah the entire semester, I am aware that she lives on north campus and that she does not have a car. Also, she knew that I would much prefer if she came to my house rather than me going to the freshman dorms.
After we had discussed the overall logistics of our plans, Sarah proceeded to ask me about what dress and shoes she should wear. She attempted to try and describe all of her potential outfits to me through Blackberry Messenger. For example, one of her messages read: “what do you think of my tight red dress with the sparkles and the frills on the bottom?” Sarah asked me this question as if I had known every dress in her closet. I could not use existing knowledge in this case since the different dresses and accessories Sarah owned was never ground we had covered in the past and it was quite difficult to discuss this new information via blackberry messenger. Another problem we encountered was the contemporality of the communication tool we were using. Since we could both type to each other at the same, there were a couple of times that we both asked each other a different question at the same time which caused some confusion. If we had been having this conversation in person we would have reacted to each other’s cues.
This conversation that Sarah and I had, relates to Clark’s idea that grounding changes with purpose. Sarah and I tried to establish a collective purpose, to figure out what we were going to do together before the formal. Therefore, we had to complete different parts of the plan: the time, transportation and outfits. Given our existing knowledge, the common ground we shared, and the medium we were communicating on, parts of our plan were easier to do than others. Blackberry Messenger has some constraints on grounding as I explained before, which caused some costs on grounding. For example, a formulation cost arose when Sarah tried to explain her unfamiliar dresses to me and a production cost occurred since we were trying to communicate via typing on blackberry messenger, which requires more effort than speaking in person or on the phone.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
Excellent post. You had great examples that applied well to the readings. For example, you had an example of grounding as well as an example where one of you had to clarify. It seems that in most of these posts, the more people have known the other person they're interacting with as well as how often they communicate, the less grounding they had to do. You mentioned that you've known "Sarah" for the entire semester. Even though this is a short time to know someone, it seems that you interact with her often, causing there to be situations with less grounding.
ReplyDeleteI like how you brought up the unique affordances of BBM, such as cotemporality. I've never used BBM, so I have no experience from which to draw on, but it seems very similar to AIM.
ReplyDeleteCertain parts of the conversation, especially the dress descriptions, seem like they would do much better with a picture or video medium.