Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-ndmmz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-08T13:00:11.572Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

10 - Common Ground in Linguistic Theory and Internet Pragmatics: Forms of Dynamic Multicultural Interaction

from Part II - Key Issues in Intercultural Pragmatics Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 September 2022

By
Elke Diedrichsen
Edited by
Istvan Kecskes
Istvan Kecskes
Affiliation:
State University of New York, Albany
Get access

Summary

The notion of common ground entails that prior to a conversation, mutually shared knowledge is available to interlocutors by virtue of the situational context or a shared cultural background. Within linguistic pragmatic theories, recipient design is a determining factor for cooperation in interaction. The socio-cognitive approach to communicative interaction acknowledges the importance of cooperation and common ground but maintains that interlocutors tend to adhere to their individual background knowledge and experience for production and comprehension. The shared knowledge base may therefore not be fully available prior to the exchange but, rather, established dynamically and interactively in the course of the conversation. Discussing internet memes, it will be shown that stable core common ground and dynamic emergent common ground are fundamental assets for the description of contemporary and future phenomena in digital communication. I will argue that internet memes represent a kind of communication where emergent common ground is aspired to rather than resorted to as an emergency solution when core common ground is lacking.

Keywords

internet pragmaticsintercultural memeshumoremergent common groundshared common groundcore common groundcultural backgroundpragmatic competence
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Intercultural Pragmatics , pp. 245 - 273
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References

Barr, D. J. and Keysar, B. (2005). Making sense of how we make sense: The paradox of egocentrism in language use. In Colston, Herbert L. and Katz, Albert N., eds., Figurative Language Comprehension: Social and Cultural Influences. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 21–42.Google Scholar
Berger, P. L. and Luckmann, T. (1966). The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books.Google Scholar
Blackmore, S. (1999). The Meme Machine. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Blake, B. J. (1994). Case. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Butler, C. S. (2009). The Lexical Constructional Model: Genesis, strengths and challenges. In Butler, Christopher S. and Arista, Javier Martín, eds., Deconstructing Constructions. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp. 117–151.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Butler, C. S. (2013). Constructions in the lexical constructional model. In Nolan, Brian and Diedrichsen, Elke, eds., Linking Constructions into Functional Linguistics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins, pp. 271–293.Google Scholar
Chafe, W. L. (1976). Givenness, contrastiveness, definiteness, subjects, topics and point of view. In Li, Charles N., ed., Subject and Topic. New York: Academic Press, pp. 25–55.Google Scholar
Clark, E. V. (2015). Common ground. In MacWhinney, Brian and O’Grady, William, eds., The Handbook of Language Emergence. Oxford: Wiley and Sons, pp. 328–353.Google Scholar
Clark, H. H. (1996). Using Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Clark, H. H. and Marshall, C. R. (1981). Definite Reference and Mutual Knowledge. In Joshi, Aravind K., Webber, Bonnie L., and Sag, Ivan A., eds., Elements of Discourse Understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 10–63.Google Scholar
Colston, H. L. (2005). Social and cultural influences on figurative and indirect language. In Colston, Herbert L. and Katz, Albert N., eds., Figurative Language Comprehension: Social and Cultural Influence. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 99–130.Google Scholar
Colston, H. L. (2008). A new look at common ground: Memory, egocentrism, and joint meaning. In Kecskes, Istvan and Mey, Jacob L., eds., Intention, common ground and the egocentric speaker-hearer. Berlin/New York: Mouton De Gruyter, pp. 151–187.Google Scholar
Conte, R. (2000). Memes through (social) minds. In Aunger, Robert, ed., Darwinizing Culture: The Status of Memetics as a Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 83–120.Google Scholar
Coulmas, F. (1981). Conversational Routines: Explorations in Standardized Communication Situations and Prepatterned Speech. The Hague: Mouton De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Croft, W. (2001). Radical Construction Grammar: Syntactic Theory in Typological Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dawkins, R. [1976] (1989). The Selfish Gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Diedrichsen, E. (2006). Ergativität und Diskurs. Berlin: LIT.Google Scholar
Diedrichsen, E. (2013a). Constructions as memes: Interactional function as cultural convention beyond the words. In Liedtke, Frank and Schulze, Cornelia, eds., Beyond Words. Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 283–305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Diedrichsen, E. (2013b). From idioms to sentence structures and beyond: The theoretical scope of the concept “construction.” In Nolan, Brian and Diedrichsen, Elke, eds., Linking Constructions into Functional Linguistics: The Role of Constructions in Grammars. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp. 295–330.Google Scholar
Diedrichsen, E. (2020a). On the interaction of core and emergent common ground in Internet memes. Internet Pragmatics, 3(2), 223–259.Google Scholar
Diedrichsen, E. (2020b). Linguistic expressions as cultural units: How a cultural approach to language can facilitate the description of modern means of communication and expression. International Journal of Language and Culture, 7(1), 121–145.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Diedrichsen, E. (2022). Internet Memes – Funktionen und Motivationen. To appear in Lars Bülow, Konstanze Marx, Simon Meier-Vieracker and Robert Mroczynski (eds.), Digitale Pragmatik (Digitale Linguistik). Stuttgart: Metzler.Google Scholar
Dixon, R. M. W. (1994). Ergativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Du Bois, J. W. (1985). Competing motivations. In Haiman, John, ed., Iconicity in Syntax. Amsterdam: Benjamins, pp. 343–365.Google Scholar
Du Bois, J. W. (1987). The discourse basis of ergativity. Language, 63(4), 805–855.Google Scholar
Dynel, M. (2016). “I has seen image macros!” Advice animal memes as visual-verbal jokes. International Journal of Communication, 10, 660–688.Google Scholar
Eco, U. (1976). A Theory of Semiotics. Bloomington/London: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Edmonds, B. (2005). The revealed poverty of the gene-meme analogy: Why memetics per se has failed to produce substantive results. Journal of Memetics: Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission, 9(1), 1–4.Google Scholar
Enfield, N. J. (2008). Common ground as a resource for social affiliation. In Kecskes, Istvan and Mey, Jacob, eds., Intention, Common Ground and the Egocentric Speaker-Hearer. Berlin/New York: Mouton De Gruyter, pp. 223–254.Google Scholar
Fetzer, A. and Fischer, K. (eds.) (2007). Lexical Markers of Common Ground. Oxford/Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Fretheim, T. and Gundel, J. K. (eds.) (1996). Reference and Referent Accessibility. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Gerrig, R. J. and Horton, W. S. (2005). Contextual expressions and common ground. In Colston, Herbert L. and Katz, Albert N., eds., Figurative Language Comprehension: Social and Cultural Influences. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 43–70.Google Scholar
Gibbs, R. Jr, W.. and Colston, H. L. (2019). The emergence of common ground. In Giora, Rachel and Haugh, Michael, eds., Doing Pragmatics Interculturally: Cognitive, Philosophical, and Sociopragmatic Perspectives. Berlin/Boston: Mouton De Gruyter, pp. 13–29.Google Scholar
Goffman, E. (1974). Frame Analysis. New York: Harper and Row. Repr. (1986), Northeastern University Press edition, York, PA: Maple Press.Google Scholar
Goldberg, A. E. (1995). Constructions: A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument Structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Goldberg, A. E. (2006). Constructions at Work: The Nature of Generalization in Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gonzalves-Garcia, F. and Butler, C. S. (2006). Mapping functional-cognitive space. Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 4, 39–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodwin, C. (1981). Conversational Organization. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Grice, H. P. (1989). Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Gundel, J. K., Hedberg, N., and Zacharski, R. (1993). Cognitive status and the form of referring expressions in discourse. Language, 69, 274–307.Google Scholar
Haftka, B. (1978). Bekanntheit und Neuheit als Kriterium für die Anordnung von Satzgliedern. Deutsch als Fremdsprache, 15, 157–164.Google Scholar
Haspelmath, M. (2005). Argument marking in ditransitive alignment types. Linguistic Discovery, 3(1). Retrieved from https://journals.dartmouth.edu/cgi-bin/WebObjects/Journals.woa/1/xmlpage/1/archive.Google Scholar
Hawkins, J. A. (1978). Definiteness and indefiniteness. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Hawkins, J. A. (1994). A Performance Theory of Order and Constituency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hawkins, J. A. (2004). Efficiency and Complexity in Grammars. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hopper, P. J. (1998). Emergent grammar. In Tomasello, Michael, ed., The New Psychology of Language: Cognitive and Functional Approaches to Linguistic Structure. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 155–176.Google Scholar
Hopper, P. J. (2004). The Openness of Grammatical Constructions. www.researchgate.net/publication/284173158_The_Openness_of_Grammatical_Constructions (retrieved on September 30, 2020).Google Scholar
Hopper, P. J. (2011). Emergent grammar and temporality in interactional linguistics. In Auer, Peter and Pfänder, Stefan, eds., Constructions: Emerging and Emergent. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, pp. 22–44.Google Scholar
Hopper, P. J. (2015). An emergentist approach to grammar. In MacWhinney, Brian and O’Grady, William, eds., The Handbook of Language Emergence. Oxford: Wiley and Sons, pp. 314–327.Google Scholar
Jackendoff, R. (2002). Foundations of Language: Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Jakobson, R. (1960). Linguistics and poetics. In Sebeok, Thomas A., ed., Style in Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 350–377.Google Scholar
Katz, Y. and Shifman, L. (2017). Making sense? The structure and meanings of digital memetic nonsense. Information, Communication and Society, 20(6), 825–842.Google Scholar
Kay, P. and Fillmore, C. J. (1999). Grammatical constructions and linguistic generalizations: The What’s X Doing Y? construction. Language, 75(1), 1–33.Google Scholar
Kecskes, I. (2008). Dueling contexts: A dynamic model of meaning. Journal of Pragmatics, 40, 385–406.Google Scholar
Kecskes, I. (2010). Situation-bound utterances as pragmatic acts. Journal of Pragmatics, 42, 2889–2897.Google Scholar
Kecskes, I. (2014). Intercultural Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kecskes, I. and Zhang, F. (2009). Activating, seeking and creating common ground: A socio-cognitive approach. Pragmatics and Cognition, 17(2), 331–355.Google Scholar
Kecskes, I. and Zhang, F. (2013). On the dynamic relations between common ground and presupposition. In Capone, Alessandro, Piparo, Franco Lo, and Carpapezza, Marco, eds., Perspectives on Linguistic Pragmatics. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 375–395.Google Scholar
Keysar, B. (2008). Egocentric processes in communication and miscommunication. In Kecskes, Istvan and Mey, Jacob L., eds., Intention, Common Ground and the Egocentric Speaker-Hearer. Berlin/New York: Mouton De Gruyter, pp. 277–296.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knobel, M. and Lankshear, C. (2007). Online memes, affinities, and cultural production. In Knobel, Michele and Lankshear, Colin, eds., A New Literacies Sampler. New York: Peter Lang, pp. 199–227.Google Scholar
Lambrecht, K. (1994). Information Structure and Sentence Form. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Levinson, S. C. (2006). On the human “Interaction Engine.” In Enfield, Nicholas J. and Levinson, Stephen C., eds., Roots of Human Sociality. Oxford: Berg Publishers, pp. 39–69.Google Scholar
Lyons, C. (1999). Definiteness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCulloch, G. (2019). Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language. New York: Riverhead Books.Google Scholar
Milner, R. M. (2012). The world made meme: Discourse and identity in participatory media. PhD. dissertation, University of Kansas.Google Scholar
Milner, R. M. (2018). The World Made Meme: Public Conversations and Participatory Media (Information Society Series). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Miltner, K. (2014). “There’s No Place for Lulz on Lolcats”: The role of genre, gender and group identity in the interpretation and enjoyment of an internet meme. First Monday, 19(8), 135–155.Google Scholar
Nissenbaum, A. and Shifman, L. (2017). Internet memes as contested cultural capital: The case of 4chan’s/b/board. New Media and Society, 19(4), 483–501.Google Scholar
Ortaçtepe, D. and Okkalı, S. (2021). Common ground and positioning in teacher-student interactions: Second language socialization in EFL classrooms. Intercultural Pragmatics, 18(1),53–82.Google Scholar
Osterroth, A. (2015). Das Internet-meme als Sprache-Bild-Text. Image, 22, 26–46.Google Scholar
Phillips, W. and Milner, R. M. (2017). The Ambivalent Internet: Mischief, Oddity and Antagonism Online. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Pitzl, M. (2017). Creativity, idioms and metaphorical language in ELF. In Jenkins, Jennifer, Baker, Will, and Dewey, Martin, eds., The Routledge Handbook of English as a Lingua Franca. London/New York: Routledge, pp. 233–243.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prince, E. (1981). Toward a taxonomy of given-new information. In Cole, Peter, ed., Radical Pragmatics. New York: Academic Press, pp. 223–255.Google Scholar
Pullin, P. (2017). Humour in ELF interaction: A powerful, multifunctional resource in relational practice. In Jenkins, Jennifer, Baker, Will, and Dewey, Martin, eds., The Routledge Handbook of English as a Lingua Franca. London/New York: Routledge, pp. 333–344.Google Scholar
Rose, N. (1998). Controversies in meme theory. Journal of Memetics, 2(1), 43–55.Google Scholar
Sacks, H. (1992). Lectures on Conversation. Vols. I and II. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Sanders, R. E. (2019). Overcoming differences and achieving common ground: Why speaker and hearer make the effort and how they go about it. In Giora, Rachel and Haugh, Michael, eds., Doing Pragmatics Interculturally: Cognitive, Philosophical, and Sociopragmatic Perspectives. Berlin/Boston: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 31–54.Google Scholar
Sangiamchit, C. (2017). ELF in electronically mediated intercultural communication. In Jenkins, Jennifer, Baker, Will, and Dewey, Martin, eds., The Routledge Handbook of English as a Lingua Franca. London/New York: Routledge, pp. 345–356.Google Scholar
Sharifian, F. (2017). Cultural Linguistics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Shifman, L. (2014). Memes in Digital Culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Silverstein, M. (1976). Hierarchy of features and ergativity. In Dixon, R. M. W., ed., Grammatical Categories in Australian Languages. Canberra: Australian National University, pp. 112–171.Google Scholar
Silverstein, M. (1981). Case marking and the nature of language. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 1, 227–244.Google Scholar
Sperber, D. (2000). An objection to the memetic approach to culture. In Aunger, Robert, ed., Darwinizing Culture: The Status of Memetics as a Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 163–173.Google Scholar
Stalnaker, R. C. (2002). Common ground. Linguistics and Philosophy, 25, 701–721.Google Scholar
Tannen, D. and Cömert Öztek, P. (1977). Health to our mouths: Formulaic expressions in Turkish and Greek. Proceedings of the 3rd Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 516–534.Google Scholar
Tomasello, M. (2008). Origins of Human Communication. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Van Valin, R. D. (2005). Exploring the Syntax-Semantics Interface. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Varis, P. and Blommaert, J. (2015). Conviviality and collectives on social media: Virality, memes, and new social structures. Multilingual Margins, 2(1), 31–45.Google Scholar
Wittgenstein, L. (1960). Philosophische Untersuchungen. In Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Tractatus logico-philosophicus (=Schriften 1). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. English trans. by G. E. M. Anscombe. Basil Blackwell: Oxford.Google Scholar
Xie, C. and Yus, F. (2018). Introducing internet pragmatics. Internet Pragmatics, 1(1), 1–12.Google Scholar
Yus, F. (2011). Cyberpragmatics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Yus, F. (2018a). Identity-related issues in meme communication. Internet Pragmatics, 1(1): 113–133.Google Scholar
Yus, F. (2018b). Multimodality in memes: A cyberpragmatic approach. In Bou-Franch, Patricia and Blitvich, Pilar Carcés-Conejos, eds., Analyzing Digital Discourse: New Insights and Future Directions. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 105–131.Google Scholar
Yus, F. (2019a). A cognitive pragmatics of the phatic internet. In Lachlan Mackenzie, J. and Alba-Juez, Laura, eds., Emotion in Discourse. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp. 161–188.Google Scholar
Yus, F. (2019b). An outline of some future research issues for internet pragmatics. Internet Pragmatics, 2(1), 1–33.Google Scholar
(retrieved on October 2, 2020)Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×