Last Friday, I had an AIM conversation with my friend Miguel asking him to have dinner with me. This is something we do every week or so, and many of our friends usually attend. We have been friends for many years, and we have shared the same circle of friends since our freshman year. We are both engineering majors, we have many of the same interests, and we know a lot about each other’s habits. This gave us a great deal of common ground before our conversation even began which, in general, lessened the need for grounding.
The conversation was relatively straightforward. It concerned things like which of our friends would be joining us and what restaurants we would like to eat at. Because we shared a common ground in our friends and the local restaurants, there was very little grounding in the conversation. We both knew our friends’ schedules, relationships, and housing locations, and we knew detailed information about each restaurant. For example:
Me: i guess mimi won’t be joining us
Miguel: yea
This statement needed no explanation or reference to achieve mutual understanding. The person in question, Mimi, was one of our friends, and we both knew that she was out of town for the weekend. There was no need for grounding here.
There were, however, several cases of ambiguity that required a common ground in language; this led to grounding as a way to confirm mutual understanding. Here is an example:
Me: do you want to do anything for dinner?
Miguel: sure but I am prolly not hanging out after dinner. I have too much work to do. I can hang out after 10/11 when I got some stuff done
In asking Miguel if he wanted to do anything for dinner, I was essentially asking him if he had free time and would like to eat dinner with me. Because of our common ground in language, he realized that I was not simply asking him if he wanted to have dinner that day. However, because of the vagueness of the question, he gave an extended response that provided outside information. His response served as a grounding mechanism, because he contributed knowledge, and he established that my question had been understood. He made it clear, through our common ground in language, that I had understood he wanted to eat with me but that he also had plans afterwards.
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Nice post. I also had a conversation on AIM with a friend and found that there was less grounding needed when there was more common ground between us. References to nicknames of people was a form of common ground that did not need further explanation. If a certain nickname is commonly used to refer to a person, then there will be no need for grounding. However, your question about doing anything for dinner can be interpreted in multiple ways and therefore grounding is necessary to ensure that both people in the conversation understand the way it should be interpreted.
ReplyDeleteIt's very convenient to communicate with someone that you are in close proximity to (like somebody that you see frequently and on a fairly regular basis). You mention that you are both engineering majors and have many mutual friends... I wonder if, in the same situation, you did not see each other frequently, if grounding would occur much more often despite having mutual friends and knowledge of each other's schedules.
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