Grounding is the means by which the participants in conversation try to reach a mutual belief, thus understanding what each other is saying during their conversation (Clark and Brennan, 6). This allows for effective communication. A few days ago, I had an online chat with my friend via instant messenger. Whenever a new topic of discussion was introduced, there was a need for grounding the conversation with clarifying statements. However, less grounding was needed when there was more existing common ground about what we were discussing. For example, an excerpt of our conversation reads:
[J]: nice des knows where to buy sunglasses
[Me]: what do u mean?
[J]: the sunglasses he wore
[Me]: ...
[J]: theyre only sold in some store in Miami
[Me]: cool, right near u haha
[J]: yea
Based on existing common ground between us, I already knew the television actor who my friend was referring to by typing “des.” This mutually shared knowledge made it unnecessary to clarify who he was referring to in this utterance. However, I did not understand what he meant so by asking “what do u mean?” I initiated a “side sequence,” which is an attempt to enter the final state of the acceptance phase (Clark and Brennan, 7). This could be reached when I had registered as well as fully understood the utterance. Although I provided negative evidence by asking what he meant, I did not give a clue to what I had misunderstood, thus a grounding error remained unresolved and he replied “the sunglasses he wore.” This does not clear up my confusion, because I had already known the sunglasses the actor was wearing but I still did not know what he meant originally.
After waiting a number of seconds for my friend to explain himself, I typed “…” to let him know that he should further elaborate. This is an example of common ground, since we usually are very succinct in our messages so we may type “…” to one another on occasion to let each other know to elaborate more. By reading his response, one may think that he still is not explaining his first utterance. However, I reply with positive evidence of understanding that is represents a form of acknowledgement as well as a “relevant next turn,” which Clark and Brennan (1991) describe as a response that answers the partner’s utterance to imply understanding. My reply represents another instance of our existing common ground, because after he mentions Miami I understand that he was originally referring to the actor’s sunglasses being sold near my friend’s school location in Miami. This common ground allowed for mutual understanding and the conversation could now move forwards past the acceptance phase. In addition, the principle of least collaborative effort is supported in this excerpt of our conversation, since we are trying to minimize our collaborative effort towards mutual acceptance by using as few words as possible and adding further clarification as needed from negative evidence of understanding (Clark and Brennan, 12).
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"..." is a pretty common way to communicate a "What?" sort of feeling without actually saying it. Obviously in conversation we just give a strange look or use body language to convey it, so I find it interesting that this happened. You say this happens between the two of you, but I feel like this happens often in IM conversations with everyone.
ReplyDeleteI'd be curious to see how this conversation would be different in person or over Skype or something. The way it'd be phrased differently over voice because one might use more words to describe the situation. Essentially, the principle of least effort probably occurs to a higher extent in IM conversations than vocal conversations.
I wonder though if this principle should be defined more at a higher level in this case. You're still wanting to talk with the least amount of effort, but instead, it's the least amount of information to communicate a point, not necessarily a conservation of words.
I think it is really intersting how your common knowledge affected your conversation. All you needed to type was “…” to signal elaboration needed. This seems more of a sign and interpretation of a symbol. I never thought about the actual symbols that we use when we are using texting or IM conversations.
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