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5 - The Cultural, Contextual, and Computational Dimensions of Common Ground

from Part II - Key Issues in Intercultural Pragmatics Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 September 2022

By
Brian Nolan
Edited by
Istvan Kecskes
Istvan Kecskes
Affiliation:
State University of New York, Albany
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Summary

The theory of common ground is an important analytical tool in linguistics and intercultural pragmatics. Common ground has applicability in the characterization of speech acts and allows for distinguishing, for example, between an assertive, which requires a dynamic common ground, and a declarative that depends more on appropriate contextual factors for a successful realization. The theory of common ground is intrinsically linked to how knowledge relates to language and how a discourse advances between interlocutors. As such, the creation and maintenance of common ground has consequences for our stance on knowledge and what we KNOW, BELIEVE, DESIRE, and our INTENTIONS for action. There are many kinds of knowledge and a relevant portion of these are framed within a discourse situation, with common ground. We discuss the interfaces and relationship between situation, context, common ground, and knowledge including cultural knowledge, drawing on the thinking of Malinowski and Firth, and others. The challenges addressed are: (a) how do we ground the notions of context and common ground and their contents, with the appropriate level of specificity? (b) how do we represent them in such a way to become operationally useful in linguistic analysis? and (c) how do we show how context and common ground contribute to utterance meaning?

Keywords

discourseknowledge constructiondeclarativeexpressionscommon groundcultural knowledgemeaning computation
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Intercultural Pragmatics , pp. 107 - 138
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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