This post is based on a conversation I had with a friend of mine *Dikembe Mutombo, over Facebook chat. The conversation was about a CD of one of my DJ sets I was giving to him to pass to one of the owners of a college town bar I’m trying to get a weekly night at, we’d spoken before and today we were trying to coordinate a time to get together so I could give it to him. We grounded the conversation really quickly because outside of DJ-ing we don’t really get the opportunity to play Xbox and chill or anything , we met through the DJ scene and whenever we talk it’s usually music related. I never really use Facebook chat but Dikembe’s cell phone is broken so outside of a series of very short e-mails or face-to-face conversation Facebook chat was the easiest way to converse.
Dikembe: what’s up man, my phone’s still broken…but I’ll be around my apartment for a while if you want to swing by and drop me that mix
Vince: Oh word? Sick
D: or if you have it on zshare or something I can download it
V: I actually have it on megaupload-send you the link?
D: Go for it.
Because we are more limited in areas of common ground, and Dikembe was very clear with the purpose of his statements; to explain why he was on FB chat and present a way to make the CD exchange, the initial presentation phase was short and to the point. The use of digital hosting sites was an area of common ground we shared. When he asked if my tracks were on ‘zshare’ he was assuming that I was familiar with the site and its use (to easily share larger files with multiple people). When I responded that the files were on megaupload I was assuming that he was aware of the fact that that is an alternative website that shares a similar purpose.
Almost our entire exchange occurred on common ground, we spoke a little about which nights each of us preferred to play and what may be available to me, we talked a bit about some songs that are fairly popular in DJ circles and I asked for feedback on the mix whenever he got a chance. Our limited common ground actually helped us to focus the conversation and it helped nullify some of the drawbacks to using Facebook chat, like the fact that we could not see when the other was typing, which lead to one confusing situation where he asked me a question right as I typed that I was going to leave, but because of the nature of the question (“how do you feel about Thursday or Friday night?” in relation to my ability to pull a crowd on a given night/desire to work it) we were able to get the conversation back on track quickly and without too much confusion.
(*if you are going to fictionalize a name you might as well go hard)
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I like how you mention that limited ground actually helped to focus the conversation. Personally, I know that when I have conversations with people I only know in a limited context(little common ground), it usually is very succinct and to the point as well.
ReplyDeleteI'm curious as to the extent to which grounding was necessary in the conversation. It would seem likely even though the exchange stays mainly within the realm of common ground, that at least at some point one or both of you would deviate from this and require some form of grounding to help the other understand.
I definitely know people that I only know through one interaction or one context (like a class we had together freshman year) and although we can talk about a limited number of topics without grounding at all (unless someone forgets something about that class, for example), the fact is that's all you really can talk about without doing a whole lot of grounding. Like if you want to move your conversation to something else, you first need to learn more about the person, their habits, what they're interested in, etc. which is a big commitment.
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