Common ground, as discussed in the Clark and Brennan paper, is essential in good communication. For this blog I am analyzing a conversation I had with my friend from back home on the day after Valentine’s Day. This conversation took place through text messaging. We discuss what we did with our boyfriends for Valentine’s Day. Common ground was very important in the conversation because we both have boyfriends, so when we talk to each other about them we already have previous information. Also, we had texted each other the previous day to discuss what we each had planned for later in the day and my friend had expressed a concern that she had, so when we texted the next day I was already aware of that concern.
Friend: awww cute…we saw hes just not that into you and dinner…but I got mad at him before because he didn’t have a letter…lol
Me: lol n did he say y he didn’t have a letter
Friend: because he didn’t have time…
Me: hmm…did u forgive him lol
Friend: Yeah…after half an hour
Me: lol
Friend: and he said I was taking a long time
Me: to forgive him?
Friend: yeah…and he was being mean and using reverse psychology on me…he was saying then
go leave blah blah blah
We basically stuck to our common ground for the most part and it was not very hard. The only part that I had to use grounding was when she said “and he said I was taking a long time” because I was a little lost as to what she meant, so I had review the previous message she sent me to make sure. I feel that this is common in texting or instant messaging because often you just start typing as you think and not really looking at your grammar or sentence structure. As a result, some things do not always flow and need to be looked at a second time to really understand. I used existing knowledge in the beginning of the conversation because I already knew she might be upset with him. However, I needed new knowledge as I continued the conversation. For instance I needed to know what happened on their date and how she feels now.
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To me that sounds like one of those conversations that you have when you are walking across the Art’s Quad, since so you two had so much in common, and so much prior knowledge of each other and your situations that the conversation didn’t really introduce all that much new information. You were able to skip almost the entire ‘initial presentation’ stage and jump right into the conversation.
ReplyDeleteI would imagine that with a conversation that relies so heavily on prior knowledge and common ground, it would have been relatively easy to get lost with just one unclear message.
Looking at this conversation, it is very obvious that the common ground between you two, more or less, makes the conversation. After just reading it, I'm not even sure what you are really talking about. For you two to start the conversation the way that you did and to keep on going, the prior knowledge from the conversation you had the day before had to have had a huge baring on this one.
ReplyDeleteI think your use of 'lol' is interesting. You use it as a positive affirmation, like an "uh huh", to show that you are paying attention and that you understand. You use 'lol' in 3 of your 4 utterances. it's interesting how 'lol' can be a positive affirmation to her boyfriend problems, it's as if being able to laugh at something shows both acceptance and understanding of it by making light of it.
ReplyDeleteI think text messaging is an interesting channel because the cost of production is rather high; it's more tedious to type a TXT message that it is to type on your computer keyboard. Thus, you want to make your messages as short as possible. I think this brings out common ground a lot, and brings out a colorful language that is almost like a code between two people.