Not many people can start a conversation in the middle, but my best friend “Anna” and I can. Anna and I are so close that we almost always have a continuous Blackberry Messenger conversation going. Since we lived together for two years, we can basically finish each other’s sentences and we know just about everything there is to know about the other. The Fussell article says, “information facilitates grounding or the development of mutual understanding between conversational participants” (21). Based on this definition, Anna and I are very grounded; we have a pretty durable mutual understanding of what’s important, and not, to each other.
Anna and I finished texting each other Saturday night just before we were each going out. She was going to a party with some mutual friends of ours that I was dying to hear all about. The next morning, I texted Anna saying, “How was it?” Although we hadn’t spoken, or texted for that matter, since the night before, Anna knew exactly what I was talking about and was able to tell me about every moment of her night. “Interpersonal communication is demonstrably more efficient when people share greater amounts of common ground” (21). This is absolutely true in the case of Anna and I; since we know all of the same people, she was able to quickly give me the highlights of her evening and I understood everything she was saying.
For the sake of this assignment, I also texted my mom that morning. She had told me the night before that she and my dad were going to see a movie. I decided to text her saying, “How was it?” Just as I had suspected, my mom had no idea what I was talking about. She registered that I asked her a question but by saying “How was what?” she confirms that she didn’t understand it. This is similar to what is later pointed out in Fussell’s “Perspectives on Socially Shared Cognition” paper. She notes, “grounding changes with the current purpose and person” (140) which is proved here. Anna knows that each morning after one of us has been out, the other one will want to hear all about it. Therefore, based on our grounding and common ground, she was expecting my text message and did not question its contents. My mom and I on the other hand do not have that same common ground. It wasn’t clearly understood that I would want to know about the movie she saw when I woke up the next morning.
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I've noticed this occurrence with many of my roommates. There is something about living in close proximity or with someone that allows for really solid grounding which wouldn't be found with in groups with co-workers or family members. This suggests to me that conversational grounding can take many forms which involve the nature of the relationship and is irrespective of the information being conveyed. In other words some forms of relationships seem to ground their conversations in specific experiences.
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