Article published In:
Pragmatics & CognitionVol. 17:2 (2009) ► pp.331–355
Activating, seeking, and creating common ground
A socio-cognitive approach
This paper argues that current pragmatic theories fail to describe common ground in its complexity because they usually retain a communication-as-transfer-between-minds view of language, and disregard the fact that disagreement and egocentrism of speaker-hearers are as fundamental parts of communication as agreement and cooperation. On the other hand, current cognitive research has overestimated the egocentric behavior of the dyads and argued for the dynamic emergent property of common ground while devaluing the overall significance of cooperation in the process of verbal communication. The paper attempts to eliminate this conflict and proposes to combine the two views into an integrated concept of common ground, in which both core common ground (assumed shared knowledge, a priori mental representation) and emergent common ground (emergent participant resource, a post facto emergence through use) converge to construct a dialectical socio-cultural background for communication. Both cognitive and pragmatic considerations are central to this issue. While attention (through salience, which is the cause for interlocutors’ egocentrism) explains why emergent property unfolds, intention (through relevance, which is expressed in cooperation) explains why presumed shared knowledge is needed. Based on this, common ground is perceived as an effort to converge the mental representation of shared knowledge present as memory that we can activate, shared knowledge that we can seek, and rapport, as well as knowledge that we can create in the communicative process. The socio-cognitive approach emphasizes that common ground is a dynamic construct that is mutually constructed by interlocutors throughout the communicative process. The core and emergent components join in the construction of common ground in all stages, although they may contribute to the construction process in different ways, to different extents, and in different phases of the communicative process.
Cited by
Cited by 111 other publications
Alduais, Ahmed, Issa Al-Qaderi & Hind Alfadda
2022. Pragmatic Language Development: Analysis of Mapping Knowledge Domains on How Infants and Children Become Pragmatically Competent. Children 9:9 ► pp. 1407 ff. 
Allan, Keith
2013. What is Common Ground?. In Perspectives on Linguistic Pragmatics [Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, 2], ► pp. 285 ff.
Allan, Keith
Babcock, Meghan J., Vivian P. Ta & William Ickes
2014. Latent Semantic Similarity and Language Style Matching in Initial Dyadic Interactions. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 33:1 ► pp. 78 ff.
Baider, Fabienne
2019. Double speech act: Negotiating inter-cultural beliefs and intra-cultural hate speech. Journal of Pragmatics 151 ► pp. 155 ff.
Baider, Fabienne H. & Maria Constantinou
2017. Chapter 4. “Burn the antifa traitors at the stake…”. In Current Issues in Intercultural Pragmatics [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 274], ► pp. 75 ff.
Bayram, A. Burcu & Vivian P. Ta
2019. Diplomatic Chameleons: Language Style Matching and Agreement in International Diplomatic Negotiations. Negotiation and Conflict Management Research 12:1 ► pp. 23 ff.
Bazzanella, Carla
2019. The Complex Process of Mis/Understanding Spatial Deixis in Face-To-Face Interaction
. Pragmática Sociocultural / Sociocultural Pragmatics 7:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
Bigi, Sarah
2018. The role of argumentative strategies in the construction of emergent common ground in a patient-centered approach to
the medical encounter. Journal of Argumentation in Context 7:2 ► pp. 141 ff.
Bigi, Sarah & Maria Grazia Rossi
2020. Considering Mono- and Multilingual Interactions on a Continuum: An Analysis of Interactions in Medical Settings. In Multilingual Healthcare [FOM-Edition, ], ► pp. 11 ff.
Capone, Alessandro
2017. Presuppositions as conversational phenomena. Lingua 198 ► pp. 22 ff.
Capone, Alessandro
2019. Pragmatics and Philosophy (and the Semantics/Pragmatics Debate). In Pragmatics and Philosophy. Connections and Ramifications [Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, 22], ► pp. 1 ff.
Capone, Alessandro
2019. The Clitic ‘lo’ in Italian, Propositional Attitudes and Presuppositions. In Pragmatics and Philosophy. Connections and Ramifications [Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, 22], ► pp. 289 ff.
Diedrichsen, Elke
2020. Linguistic expressions as cultural units. International Journal of Language and Culture 7:1 ► pp. 121 ff.
Diedrichsen, Elke
2020. On the interaction of core and emergent common ground in Internet memes. Internet Pragmatics 3:2 ► pp. 223 ff.
Diedrichsen, Elke
2022. On the interaction of core and emergent common ground in Internet memes. In The Pragmatics of Internet Memes [Benjamins Current Topics, 120], ► pp. 85 ff.
Diedrichsen, Elke
2023. Internet Memes – Funktionen und Motivationen. In Digitale Pragmatik [Digitale Linguistik, 1], ► pp. 153 ff.
Dinh, Hanh
2019. The use of indexicals to co-construct common ground on the continuum of intra- and intercultural communicative contexts. Pragmatics & Cognition 26:1 ► pp. 135 ff.
Dinh, Hanh
2022. Synergic Concepts, Lexical Idiosyncrasies, and Lexical Complexities in Bilingual Students’ Translated Texts as Efforts to Resolve Conceptual Inequivalences. Languages 7:2 ► pp. 94 ff.
Dombi, Judit, Tetyana Sydorenko & Veronika Timpe-Laughlin
2022. Common ground, cooperation, and recipient design in human-computer interactions. Journal of Pragmatics 193 ► pp. 4 ff.
Elekes, Fruzsina & Ildikó Király
2021. Attention in naïve psychology. Cognition 206 ► pp. 104480 ff.
Gil, José María
2019. A relational account of communication on the basis of slips of the tongue. Intercultural Pragmatics 16:2 ► pp. 153 ff.
Graci, Roberto
2023. Towards an extended notion of Common Ground in aphasiology. Intercultural Pragmatics 20:1 ► pp. 29 ff.
Haugh, Michael
2015. Review of Intercultural Pragmatics. Journal of Pragmatics 79 ► pp. 40 ff.
Hohenstein, Christiane & Magdalène Lévy-Tödter
2020. Introduction. In Multilingual Healthcare [FOM-Edition, ], ► pp. 1 ff.
Inya, Onwu
2023. ‘I Cannot Overreach the Senate’: Orienting to the Macro-Context of Legislative Debates of the Nigerian Senate. Journal of Asian and African Studies ► pp. 002190962311680 ff.
Jaszczolt, Kasia M.
2013. First-person reference in discourse: Aims and strategies. Journal of Pragmatics 48:1 ► pp. 57 ff.
Kaufman, David R., Joanna Abraham & Lena Mamykina
2014. Communication and Complexity: Negotiating Transitions in Critical Care. In Cognitive Informatics in Health and Biomedicine [Health Informatics, ], ► pp. 235 ff.
Kecskes, Istvan
2010. Situation-bound utterances as pragmatic acts. Journal of Pragmatics 42:11 ► pp. 2889 ff.
Kecskes, Istvan
2011. Chapter 5. Salience in language production. In Salience and Defaults in Utterance Processing, ► pp. 81 ff.
Kecskes, Istvan
2013. Why do we say what we say the way we say it?. Journal of Pragmatics 48:1 ► pp. 71 ff.
Kecskes, Istvan
2013. Focus on the speaker: An introduction. Journal of Pragmatics 48:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
Kecskes, Istvan
2014. The evaluative function of situation-bound utterances in intercultural interaction. In Evaluation in Context [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 242], ► pp. 137 ff.
Kecskes, Istvan
2016. Can Intercultural Pragmatics Bring Some New Insight into Pragmatic Theories?. In Interdisciplinary Studies in Pragmatics, Culture and Society [Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, 4], ► pp. 43 ff.
Kecskes, Istvan
2017. Sequential Structure of Discourse Segments Shaped by the Interplay of Recipient Design or Salience. In Formal Models in the Study of Language, ► pp. 243 ff.
Kecskes, Istvan
2018. Intercultural Pragmatics. In Handbuch Pragmatik, ► pp. 140 ff.
KECSKES, Istvan
2018. How Does Intercultural Communication Differ from Intracultural Communication?. In Intercultural Communication in Asia: Education, Language and Values [Multilingual Education, 24], ► pp. 115 ff.
Kecskes, Istvan
2019. Editorial to the special issue “Current developments in intercultural pragmatics”. Journal of Pragmatics 151 ► pp. 74 ff.
Kecskes, Istvan
2019. English as a Lingua Franca,
Kecskes, Istvan
2019. The interplay of prior experience and actual situational context in intercultural first encounters. Pragmatics & Cognition 26:1 ► pp. 112 ff.
Kecskes, Istvan
2021. Sociocognitive Pragmatics. In The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics, ► pp. 592 ff.
Kecskes, Istvan
2021. Processing implicatures in English as a Lingua Franca communication. Lingua 256 ► pp. 103067 ff.
Kecskes, Istvan & Stavros Assimakopoulos
2017. Introduction. In Current Issues in Intercultural Pragmatics [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 274], ► pp. 1 ff.
Kecskes, Istvan, Olga Obdalova, Ludmila Minakova & Aleksandra Soboleva
2018. A study of the perception of situation-bound utterances as culture-specific pragmatic units by Russian learners of English. System 76 ► pp. 219 ff.
Kecskes, Istvan & Fenghui Zhang
2013. On the Dynamic Relations Between Common Ground and Presupposition. In Perspectives on Linguistic Pragmatics [Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, 2], ► pp. 375 ff.
Khatib, Mohammad & Nima Shakouri
2013. On Situating the Stance of Socio-cognitive Approach to Language Acquisition. Theory and Practice in Language Studies 3:9
Kirner-Ludwig, Monika & Rana Fadhil Alsaedi
2021. A Pragmatics-based Appeal to Saving Face so as to Save Lives: On Intercultural Pragmatic Awareness (or rather: Lack thereof) in a Handbook for US Soldiers Deployed for Iraq. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research 50:3 ► pp. 225 ff.
Lamiani, Giulia, Sarah Bigi, Maria Elisa Mancuso, Antonio Coppola & Elena Vegni
2017. Applying a deliberation model to the analysis of consultations in haemophilia: Implications for doctor-patient communication. Patient Education and Counseling 100:4 ► pp. 690 ff.
Larina, Tatiana & Douglas Mark Ponton
2020. Tact or frankness in English and Russian blind peer reviews. Intercultural Pragmatics 17:4 ► pp. 471 ff.
Leskelä, Leealaura, Arto Mustajoki & Aino Piehl
2022. Easy and plain languages as special cases of linguistic tailoring and standard language varieties. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 45:2 ► pp. 194 ff.
Li, Chengtuan
2022. A study of linguistic manipulations of activating, seeking and creating common ground in intercultural business communication. Pragmatics and Society 13:2 ► pp. 169 ff.
Li, Chengtuan
2022. A study of emotion management and identity construction in Chinese medical treatment discussions. Discourse Studies 24:6 ► pp. 741 ff.
Liu, Huiying & Ping Liu
2019. Common ground and metapragmatic expressions in BELF meetings: A response to Zhang and Wu. Journal of Pragmatics 148 ► pp. 118 ff.
Liu, Ping & Huiying Liu
2017. Creating common ground: The role of metapragmatic expressions in BELF meeting interactions. Journal of Pragmatics 107 ► pp. 1 ff.
Liu, Ping & Huiying Liu
Liu, Ping & Huiying Liu
2022. Pragmatic manipulation of metapragmatic expressions in BELF meetings. Applied Pragmatics 4:1 ► pp. 92 ff.
Liu, Ping & Yongping Ran
2016. Creating meso-contexts: The functions of metapragmatic expressions in argumentative TV talk shows. Intercultural Pragmatics 13:2
Liu, Ping & Xiaoye You
2019. Metapragmatic comments in web-based intercultural peer evaluation. Intercultural Pragmatics 16:1 ► pp. 57 ff.
Lu, Jiafang
2019. Reciprocal Gain Spirals: The Relationship of Sleep Quality, Work Enjoyment, Cooperative Interaction, and Work Passion Among Teacher Leaders. The Asia-Pacific Education Researcher 28:4 ► pp. 353 ff.
Macagno, Fabrizio
2017. Evidence and presumptions for analyzing and detecting misunderstandings. Pragmatics & Cognition 24:2 ► pp. 263 ff.
Macagno, Fabrizio
2017. Defaults and inferences in interpretation. Journal of Pragmatics 117 ► pp. 280 ff.
Macagno, Fabrizio
2018. A dialectical approach to presupposition. Intercultural Pragmatics 15:2 ► pp. 291 ff.
Macagno, Fabrizio
2018. Assessing relevance. Lingua 210-211 ► pp. 42 ff.
Macagno, Fabrizio
2020. How can metaphors communicate arguments?. Intercultural Pragmatics 17:3 ► pp. 335 ff.
Macagno, Fabrizio
2022. Ignoring Qualifications as a Pragmatic Fallacy: Enrichments and Their Use for Manipulating Commitments. Languages 7:1 ► pp. 13 ff.
Macagno, Fabrizio
2022. Coding relevance. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction 36 ► pp. 100349 ff.
Macagno, Fabrizio & Sarah Bigi
2017. Understanding misunderstandings. Presuppositions and presumptions in doctor-patient chronic care consultations. Intercultural Pragmatics 14:1
Macagno, Fabrizio & Sarah Bigi
2018. Types of Dialogue and Pragmatic Ambiguity. In Argumentation and Language — Linguistic, Cognitive and Discursive Explorations [Argumentation Library, 32], ► pp. 191 ff.
Macagno, Fabrizio & Sarah Bigi
2020. Analyzing dialogue moves in chronic care communication. Journal of Argumentation in Context 9:2 ► pp. 167 ff.
Macagno, Fabrizio & Rosalice Botelho Wakim Souza Pinto
2021. Reconstructing Multimodal Arguments in Advertisements: Combining Pragmatics and Argumentation Theory. Argumentation 35:1 ► pp. 141 ff.
Macagno, Fabrizio & Alessandro Capone
2016. Presuppositions as Cancellable Inferences. In Pragmemes and Theories of Language Use [Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, 9], ► pp. 45 ff.
Macagno, Fabrizio & Alessandro Capone
2016. Uncommon ground. Intercultural Pragmatics 13:2
Macagno, Fabrizio & Giovanni Damele
Macagno, Fabrizio, Chrysi Rapanta, Elisabeth Mayweg-Paus & Mercè Garcia-Milà
2022. Coding empathy in dialogue. Journal of Pragmatics 192 ► pp. 116 ff.
Macagno, Fabrizio & Maria Grazia Rossi
2019. Metaphors and problematic understanding in chronic care communication. Journal of Pragmatics 151 ► pp. 103 ff.
Macagno, Fabrizio & Maria Grazia Rossi
2021. Inferential Patterns of Emotive Meaning. In Inquiries in Philosophical Pragmatics [Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, 28], ► pp. 83 ff.
Macagno, Fabrizio & Douglas Walton
2017. Communicative Intentions and Commitments. In Interpreting Straw Man Argumentation [Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, 14], ► pp. 35 ff.
Macagno, Fabrizio & Douglas Walton
2017. Establishing Commitments Between Ambiguity and Misquotation. In Interpreting Straw Man Argumentation [Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, 14], ► pp. 65 ff.
Macagno, Fabrizio, Douglas Walton & Giovanni Sartor
2018. Pragmatic Maxims and Presumptions in Legal Interpretation. Law and Philosophy 37:1 ► pp. 69 ff.
Martins, Marina & Fabrizio Macagno
2022. An analytical instrument for coding and assessing argumentative dialogues in science teaching contexts. Science Education 106:3 ► pp. 573 ff.
McCabe, Anne
2015. Review of Gómez González, de Mendoza Ibáñez, Gonzálvez García & Downing (2014): The functional perspective on language and discourse. Functions of Language 22:3 ► pp. 408 ff.
McDonald, Lucy
2022. Reimagining Illocutionary Force. The Philosophical Quarterly 72:4 ► pp. 918 ff.
Messerli, Thomas C.
2020. Subtitled artefacts as communication – the case ofOcean’s ElevenScene 12. Perspectives 28:6 ► pp. 851 ff.
Mustajoki, Arto & Alla Baikulova
Obdalova, Olga A., Ludmila Yu. Minakova, Aleksandra V. Soboleva & Evgeniya V. Tikhonova
2019. Modes of Wording Direct into Indirect Speech in Intercultural Communication. In Going Global through Social Sciences and Humanities: A Systems and ICT Perspective [Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 907], ► pp. 183 ff.
Ortaçtepe Hart, Deniz & Seçil Okkalı
2021. Common ground and positioning in teacher-student interactions: Second language socialization in EFL classrooms. Intercultural Pragmatics 18:1 ► pp. 53 ff.
Padilla Cruz, Manuel
2017. Interlocutors-Related and Hearer-Specific Causes of Misunderstanding: Processing Strategy, Confirmation Bias and Weak Vigilance. Research in Language 15:1 ► pp. 11 ff.
Park, Kyu Hyun & Billy Clark
2022. A relevance-focused production heuristic. Journal of Pragmatics 187 ► pp. 176 ff.
Pedó, B, L Koskela, P Tzortzopoulos, A Tezel & S Robinson
2022. Visual Management (VM) supporting collaborative practices in infrastructure engineering design. IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science 1101:5 ► pp. 052012 ff.
Romero Trillo, Jesús
2014. ‘Pragmatic punting’ and prosody: Evidence from corpora. In The Functional Perspective on Language and Discourse [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 247], ► pp. 209 ff.
Romero-Trillo, Jesús
2015. ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged’…, you know?. Pragmatics and Society 6:1 ► pp. 117 ff.
Romero-Trillo, Jesús & Jessica Newell
2012. Prosody and Feedback in Native and Non-native Speakers of English. In Pragmatics and Prosody in English Language Teaching [Educational Linguistics, 15], ► pp. 117 ff.
Rossi, Maria Grazia
2021. Metaphors and Persuasion in Healthcare Communication. Langages N° 222:2 ► pp. 59 ff.
Scibetta, Andrea
2016. Chinese University Students’ Development of Pragmatic Skills in L2 Italian: A Corpus-Based Study. In Yearbook of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics 2016 [Yearbook of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics, ], ► pp. 243 ff.
Senkbeil, Karsten
2020. Idioms in intercultural communication. International Journal of Language and Culture 7:1 ► pp. 38 ff.
Shie, Jian-Shiung
2016. Contextual accommodation of formulaic intertexts in English press stories. Text & Talk 36:1
SUSSEX, Roland
2018. Intercultural Communication About Pain. In Intercultural Communication in Asia: Education, Language and Values [Multilingual Education, 24], ► pp. 181 ff.
Sánchez-López, Elena
2023. Meaning, degrees of abstraction and shared knowledge. In Verb and Context [IVITRA Research in Linguistics and Literature, 34], ► pp. 307 ff.
Ta, Vivian P., Meghan J. Babcock & William Ickes
2017. Developing Latent Semantic Similarity in Initial, Unstructured Interactions. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 36:2 ► pp. 143 ff.
Ta, Vivian P. & William Ickes
2020. Latent Semantic Similarity in Initial Computer-Mediated Interactions. International Journal of Interactive Communication Systems and Technologies 10:1 ► pp. 51 ff.
Tantucci, Vittorio
2016. Textual factualization: The phenomenology of assertive reformulation and presupposition during a speech event. Journal of Pragmatics 101 ► pp. 155 ff.
Trbojević Milošević, Ivana
2019. Skidding on common ground: A socio-cognitive approach to problems in intercultural communicative situations. Journal of Pragmatics 151 ► pp. 118 ff.
Tsuchiya, Keiko, Frank Coffey, Kyota Nakamura, Andrew Mackenzie, Sarah Atkins, Małgorzata Chałupnik, Alison Whitfield, Takuma Sakai, Stephen Timmons, Takeru Abe, Takeshi Saitoh, Akira Taneichi, Mike Vernon, David Crundall & Miharu Fuyuno
2022. Action request episodes in trauma team interactions in Japan and the UK - A multimodal analysis of joint actions in medical simulation. Journal of Pragmatics 194 ► pp. 101 ff.
Van Dyke, Angelina & William R. Acton
2022. Spontaneous classroom engagement facilitating development of L2 pragmatic competence. Pedagogical Linguistics 3:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
Vergis, Nikos
2019. How to put yourself in someone else’s shoes: The role of point-of-view in the interpretation of mixed messages. Intercultural Pragmatics 16:2 ► pp. 219 ff.
Walton, Douglas, Giovanni Sartor & Fabrizio Macagno
2018. Statutory Interpretation as Argumentation. In Handbook of Legal Reasoning and Argumentation, ► pp. 519 ff.
Wang, Xiaowen, Kathleen Ahrens & Chu-Ren Huang
2022. The distance between illocution and perlocution: A tale of different pragmemes to call for social distancing in two cities. Intercultural Pragmatics 19:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
Zhang, Huiyu & Yicheng Wu
2019. (Core) common ground once more: Response to Liu and Liu. Journal of Pragmatics 148 ► pp. 122 ff.
Zhang, Huiyu & Yicheng Wu
2019. (Core) common ground and the role of metapragmatic expressions: A comment on Liu and Liu (2017). Journal of Pragmatics 148 ► pp. 111 ff.
[no author supplied]
2021. Pragmatic Maxims and Presumptions in Legal Interpretation. In Statutory Interpretation, ► pp. 157 ff.
[no author supplied]
2021. Approaches and Methods in Sociopragmatics. In The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics, ► pp. 567 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 27 may 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.