I often IM my friend Kelly, who is a student at Ohio Northern University. When examining a conversation for this assignment, two things immediately jumped out at me. First, grounding was obviously much easier when we talked about shared experiences or mutual friends. Secondly, I noticed that some subjects that used to lack any common ground now have plenty of it.
When we talked about things that we were both familiar with, such as high school or a mutual friend, it was simple to convey an idea. Conversely, where we lacked overlapping experiences, it took a lot longer to express our ideas. For example, when talking about someone from high school, she said only "Chris is workin a lot more hours apparently." We both know Chris, we both know where he works, and we both know that he wanted to pick up some more hours to help pay for a new car. Yet when I asked her to tell me a story about last week, she had to spend much more effort explaining things to me. She said "I think I told you about my roommate Kristi? Well she has a crush on a guy she met in class. She finally got his number after our chem class." In those sentences, I wasn't familiar with the subject and I needed details explained to me. Even after she said that, I still didn't know very much about the story, the people involved, or what exactly happened. It was much easier for her to convey events, as well as their importance, when we shared common ground. Also, she knew we lacked this common ground so she gave a long answer so I would better understand.
When the conversation turned to one of my friends from Cornell, I was able to use shared common ground. I said that I was "hanging out with Allison later to study." Last year, this wouldn't have meant anything to Kelly because she had no idea who I was talking about. Yet, now we share common ground because she actually has met Allison. Since I'm sure they met (I introduced them after all), I knew that I could refer to Allison without going into a detailed explanation. My past conversations and experiences with Kelly had affected our common ground, so communication was much easier. I definitely noticed how much grounding a duo has can affect how easily they communicate.
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I can relate to how it is easier to explain a story to someone about a situation where both of you are familiar with the background.
ReplyDeleteI do wish that you had provided examples of a particular chat and fully analyzed that since in reality, there wasn't too much here to work with.
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ReplyDeleteYou make a good point that with less common ground, there is more explanation to do and more collaborative effort on both sides. I wonder if that's the reason many people use social networking sites or online communication tools mostly to talk to their friends. Since it takes more effort to use communication mediums other than face-to-face, people are more likely to communicate to others that they have more shared experiences with, to put in least collaborative effort. Although there are some exceptions when people choose electronic communication mediums to talk to others they are not close to for their advantage. For example, some people may find flirting easier through IM since there is no time pressure, and participants are able to revise the content before they send it.
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