Grounding in communication is a concept proposed by Herbert H. Clark and Susan E. Brennan. It comprises the collection of "mutual knowledge, mutual beliefs, and mutual assumptions" that is essential for communication between two people. Successful grounding in communication requires parties "to coordinate both the content and process". The concept is also common in philosophy of language.
Elements of theory
Grounding in conversation Grounding in communication theory has described conversation as a form of collaborative action. While grounding in communication theory has been applied to mediated communication, the theory primarily addresses face-to-face conversation. Groups working together will ground their conversations by coming up with common ground or mutual knowledge. The members will utilize this knowledge in order to contribute to a more efficient dialogue. Grounding criterion is the mutual belief between conversational partners that everyone involved has a clear enough understanding of the concept to move forward.
Clark and Schaefer (1989) found that, to reach this state of grounding criterion, groups use three methods of reaching an understanding that they can move forward. New contribution: A partner moves forward with a new idea, and waits to see if their partner expresses confusion. Assertion of acceptance: The partner receiving the information asserts that he understands by smiling, nodding, or verbally confirming the other partner. They may also assert their understanding by remaining silent. Request for clarification: The partner receiving the information asks for clarification.
Phases in grounding The parties engaging in grounding exchange information over what they do or do not understand over the course of a communication and they will continue to clarify concepts until they have agreed on grounding criterion. There are generally two phases in grounding. Presenting utterance – speaker presents utterance to addressee Accepting utterance – addressee accepts utterance by providing evidence of understanding
According to this theory, mere utterance qualifies as presentation in conversation whereas contribution to conversation demands both utterance and assurance of mutual understanding.
The presentation phase can become complex when meanings are embedded or repairs are made to utterances. An example of a repair is "Do you and your husband have a car," but rather the messier, "now, – um do you and your husband have a j-car".
The acceptance phase often clarifies any ambiguities with grounding. For example: Presentation phase: Alan: Now, – um do you and your husband have a j-car Acceptance phase: Barbara: – have a car? Alan: Yeah Barbara: No
The acceptance phase is completed once Barbara indicates that the answer is "no" and Alan accepts it as a valid answer.
Evidence in conversation Grounding theory identifies three common types of evidence in conversation: 'acknowledgements, relevant next turn, and continued attention.
Acknowledgements refer to back channel modes of communication that affirm and validate the messages being communicated. Some examples of these include, "uh huh," "yeah," "really," and head nods that act as continuers. They are used to signal that a phrase has been understood and that the conversation can move on.
Relevant next turn refers to the initiation or invitation to respond between speakers, including verbal and nonverbal prompts for turn-taking in conversation. Questions and answers act as adjacency pairs,Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. A., & Jefferson, G. (1974). "A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation." Language, 50, 696-735. the first part of the conversation is relevant to the second part. Meaning that a relevant utterance needs to be made in response to the question in order for it to be accepted. For example: Miss Dimple: Where can I get a hold of you? Chico: I don't know, lady. You see, I'm very ticklish. Miss Dimple: I mean, where do you live? Chico: I live with my brother. Chico is revealing that he did not understand Miss Dimple's first question. She then corrects her phrase after realizing Chico's utterance wasn't an appropriate response and they continue to communicate with adjacent pairs.
Continued attention is the "mutual belief that addressees have correctly identified a referent." Partners involved in a conversation usually demonstrate this through eye gaze. One can capture their partner's gaze and attention by beginning an utterance. Attention that is undisturbed and not interrupted is an example of positive evidence of understanding. However, if one of the partners turns away or looks puzzled, these are signs that indicate there is no longer continued attention.
More evidence for grounding comes from a study done in 2014, in which dialogue between humans and robots was studied. The complexity of human-robot dialogue arises from the difference between the human's idea of what the robot has internalized versus the robot's actual internal representation of the real world. By going through the grounding process, this study concluded that human-robot grounding can be strengthened by the robot providing information to its partner about how it has internalized the information it has received.
Anticipation of what a partner knows There are three main factors that allow speakers to anticipate what a partner knows.Clark & Marshall (1981) Community co-membership: Members of a group with knowledge in a particular field could use technical jargon when communicating within the group, whereas communicating outside of the group would require them to use layman terms. Linguistic co-presence: A party in a conversation can use a pronoun to refer to someone previously mentioned in the conversation. Physical co-presence: If the other parties are also present physically, one could point to an object within their physical environment.
Shared visual information also aids anticipation of what a partner knows. For example, when responding to an instruction, performing the correct action without any verbal communication provides an indication of understanding, while performing the wrong action, or even failing to act, can signal misunderstanding.(Gergle, Kraut, & Fussell, 2004a) Findings from the paper (Using Visual Information for Grounding and Awareness in Collaborative Tasks),Darren Gergle, Robert E. Kraut, Susan R. Fussell, Using Visual Information for Grounding and Awareness in Collaborative Tasks. http://kraut.hciresearch.org/sites/kraut.hciresearch.org/files/protected/GergleEtAl_UsingVisInfoForGroundingAndAwareness_HCIJ_Revision.pdf. supports previous experiments and show evidence that collaborative pairs perform quicker and more accurately when they share a common view of a workspace.Clark & Krych, 2004; Gergle, Kraut, et al., 2004b; Gergle, et al., 2006; Kraut, Gergle, et al., 2002 The results from the experiment showed that the pairs completed the task 30–40% faster when they were given shared visual information. The value of this information, however, depended on the features of the task. Its value increased when the task objects were linguistically complex and not part of the pairs‟ shared lexicon. However, even a small delay to the transmission of the visual information severely disrupted its value. Also, the ones accepting the instructions were seen to increase their spoken contribution when those giving the instructions do not have shared visual information. This increase in activity is due to the fact that it is easier for the former to produce the information rather than for the ones giving the instruction to continuously ask questions to anticipate their partners' understanding. Such a phenomenon is predicted by the grounding theory, where it is said that since communication costs are distributed among the partners, the result should shift to the method that would be the most efficient for the pair.
Least collaborative effort The theory of least collaborative effort asserts that participants in a contribution try to minimize the total effort spent on that contribution – in both the presentation and acceptance phases.Clark and Schaefer, 1989; Contributing to Discourse p 269 In exact, every participant in a conversation tries to minimize the total effort spent in that interactional encounter.Bethan L. Davies, Least Collaborative Effort or Least Individual Effort: Examining the Evidence The ideal utterances are informative and brief.
Participants in conversation refashion referring expressions and decrease conversation length. When interactants are trying to pick out difficult to describe shapes from a set of similar items, they produce and agree on an expression which is understood and accepted by both and this process is termed refashioning. The following is an example from Clark & Wilkes-Gibbs,Clark & Wilkes-Gibbs, Referring as a collaborative process A: Um, third one is the guy reading with, holding his book to the left B: Okay, kind of standing up? A: Yeah. B: Okay.
offers a conceptualisation which is refashioned slightly by the B before it is agreed on by both. In later repetitions of the task, the expression employed to re-use the agreed conceptualisation progressively became shorter. For example, "the next one looks like a person who's ice skating, except they're sticking out two arms in front" (trial 1) was gradually shortened to "The next one's the ice skater" (trial 4) and eventually became just "The ice skater" in trial 6.
Clark & Wilkes-Gibbs argue that there are two indicators of least collaborative effort in the above example. First, the process of refashioning itself involves less work than A having to produce a 'perfect' referring expression first time, because of the degree of effort which would be needed to achieve that. Second, the decrease in length of the referring expressions and the concomitant reduction in conversation length over the trials showed that the participants were exploiting their increased common ground to decrease the amount of talk needed, and thus their collaborative effort.
Time pressures: Parties will select more effortful means of communication when mutual understanding must occur within a fixed amount of time. Errors: Parties will select more effortful means of communication when the chance for error is high or previous low effort communications have resulted in error. Ignorance: Parties will engage in more effortful communication when a lack of shared knowledge is notable. Time pressures, errors, and ignorance are problems that are best remedied by mutual understanding, thus the theory of grounding in communication dispels the theory of least collaborative effort in instances where grounding is the solution to a communication problem.
Costs to grounding change
The lack of one of these characteristics generally forces participants to use alternative grounding techniques, because the costs associated with grounding change. There is often a trade-off between the costs- one cost will increase as another decreases. There is also often a correlation between the costs. The following table highlights several of the costs that can change as the medium of communication changes.