magazine issue 4 2009 / Issue 9

How on Earth Do People Understand Each Other in Everyday Conversation?

• written by Camiel Beukeboom
• edited by Rene Kopietz

Thus, based on immediate inferences about what they share with a conversation partner, people adapt their utterances. That this may occur quite unconsciously and on the basis on very subtle cues is shown in a classic field experiment by Douglas Kingsbury (1968). Kingsbury asked randomly selected pedestrians on a Boston street for directions to a department store several blocks away. However, he asked his question in either the local Boston dialect, or employing a dialect spoken in rural Missouri - one seldom heard in downtown Boston - or he prefaced his request with the statement "I'm from out of town". The results showed that when the request was made in the exotic dialect, the directions given were significantly longer and more detailed, compared to when he requested directions using the local dialect. In fact, the directions given to the exotic dialect request where quite similar to when it was explicitly stated that he was from out of town. Apparently, on the basis of his foreign dialect alone, people assumed that his level of local expertise was low and, without being asked, provided additional information. This, and other research, demonstrates that people categorize others on the basis of very subtle cues. This enables them to infer what the person is likely to know and to formulate a message that is understandable in light of such knowledge.

Of the individuals we know well, we also carry around quite some information about their expertise and the knowledge we share with them. For instance, if you have lived together for years with your husband, you assume that your shared vacations, preferred meals, disagreements, and private jokes are mutually known and can be referred to.

It should be clear that the amount of common ground between conversation partners has a huge impact on their utterances and the course of their conversation. People adapt their utterances based on the perceived common ground. But common ground is not static, it changes on a moment-to-moment basis. The conversation continues to unfold, new topics are introduced and even the environment and context may change. Whether something is already part of common ground or not influences how people refer to it.

A straightforward example is that with accumulating common ground, people change from indefinite descriptions, like 'a lawyer' or 'some houses', to definite descriptions, like 'the lawyer' or 'those houses' (Linde & Labov, 1975). The first mention of something, when it is not yet part of the common ground, is usually done with indefinite articles (a, an). Later, when a topic has been grounded (i.e., added to the common ground; Clark & Brennan, 1991) definite descriptions are used. This can also be seen in how stories are build up: "This is a story about a girl. The girl lived in a big castle".

Similarly, when speakers are trying to explain what they are talking about, they first tend to offer a conceptualization that is tentative or provisional, using hedges such as sort of, kinda, looks like (e.g., "the guy that acted kinda like Mr. Bean, you know?"). Once conversation partners agree to a conceptualization, they drop the hedges and use more definite descriptions (e.g., the Bean guy; Brennan & Clark, 1996; Clark & Bangerter, 2004).
Related to this is another important finding, namely that with accumulating common ground conversations gain in efficiency. Conversation partners need less words, less turns, and less time to get mutual understanding on a topic (Wilkes-Gibbs & Clark, 1992). You will not need to tell your husband the whole story about your mutual holiday to France in great detail. When referring to this mutual experience you can simply say "just like France", and he will understand. In other words, when common ground between conversation partners increases, they can understand each other more easily (Schober & Brennan 2003).

Miscommunication and grounding

Just as the presence of common ground is enormously important in reaching mutual understanding, many forms of miscommunication are the result of a failure to consider common ground. One thing is that relying on general rules of thumb or heuristics in assessing common ground can lead to errors. First, the reliance on the heuristics of physical and linguistic copresence doesn't guarantee a correct judgment. A conversation partner may have missed the person passing by, and have forgotten about or missed something you previously mentioned. In a similar vein, community membership doesn't guarantee knowledge on a subject. General expectancies based on categorization to a category or community (i.e., stereotypes) do not always fit particular instances. We have beliefs about what elderly people are like in general, but this doesn't mean that each individual older person is exactly like that. As a result, people may address an elderly woman using a loud voice, even when she is not deaf at all. Similarly, if someone speaks with a particular foreign accent, they may have lived in your city for a decade, and may not need extensive directions to the supermarket.