Publications

Publication details [#52499]

Semin, G.R. and Anna E. Clark. 2008. Receivers' Expectations for Abstract Versus Concrete Construal: Conversational Relevance as a Determinant of Construal Level. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 27 (2) : 155–167.

Publication type

Article in journal

Publication language

English

Keywords

abstractness | common ground | expectation | message structure | saliency

Place, Publisher

SAGE Publications

Journal WWW

www.sagepub.co.uk/ejournals/

Annotation

This paper explores receivers' expectations for abstract versus concrete messages: it is found that salient shared knowledge information determines message construal level, overriding temporal distance. These results confirm conversational relevance's reciprocal nature and language production and reception symmetry.