Importance of common ground in communication

Common ground and grounding was an important topic in the lecture so I thought I'd write something about it in this weeks post.

It was said in the lecture that common ground in communication means that people share meaning and are talking about the same thing so conversation constantly negotiates meaning. According to Herbert H. Clark and Susan E. Brennan common ground refers to the "mutual knowledge, mutual beliefs, and mutual assumptions that is essential for communication between two people”.

If people are talking face to face, it is easy for them to find common ground for their messages and get understood well. However, when thinking of other ways of communication like telephone or different chat systems, it is usually more difficult to find that grounding. This fact poses additional challenges for groupware systems so that misunderstandings due to the lack of common ground can be avoided.

The question of how we use language and the theory of human-human communication is discussed in Andrew Monk's text ”Common Ground in Electronically Mediated Conversation”. This is an intersting text to read and helps to understand the issues that electronically mediated communication might have.

References:

Clark, Herbert H.; Brennan, Susan E. (1991), "Grounding in communication"

Monk, Andrew (2009), ”Common Ground in Electronically Mediated Conversation”