In classic pragmatic models interlocutors can successfully communicate intended meanings by taking common ground into account. This common ground in interactions is typically taken to be a body of information that is in a sense assumed to be shared between participants.Duranti (1997) argued that even comparatively simple exchanges such as greeting are organized according to complex socio-historic cultural knowledge and are dependent for their interactional accomplishment on participants “sharing” that knowledge, having it as part of common ground. Where this knowledge is not shared, one might expect breaches to these taken for granted linguistic forms, with all kinds of interactional consequences. The more common ground we share with another person, the less effort and time we need to convey and interpret information. Enfield (2008: 223) uses the term, “economy of expression” for this phenomenon.
In recent years the traditional approach to common ground (e.g.Stalnaker 1978,2002;Clark and Brennan 1991;Clark 1996) has been challenged from different perspectives. Taking into account not only L1 but also intercultural interactions and attempting to bring together the traditional view with the egocentrism-based view of cognitive psychologists (Barr 2004; Barr and Keysar 2005; Colston and Katz 2005), Kecskes and Zhang (2009) argued that construction of common ground is a flexible and dynamic process. It is the convergence of the mental representation of shared knowledge that we activate, assumed mutual knowledge that we seek, and rapport as well as knowledge that we co-construct in the communicative process. Based on this approach Kecskes and Zhang (2009) made a difference between core common ground and emergent common ground. The former is knowledge we assume to share at the time of conversation and the later is knowledge that is generated and shared in the process of interaction.
People usually infer this “core common ground” from their past conversations, their immediate surroundings, and their shared cultural background and experience. We can distinguish between three components of core common ground: information that the participants share, understanding the situational context, and relationships between the participants – knowledge about each other and trust and their mutual experience of the interaction. According to current research if people have common or similar prior experience, participate in similar actions and events, they know each other and have been in similar situations before, all that will result in core common ground. Similar prior contexts, prior experience and similar understanding of the actual situational context will build common ground. This is all the result of a longer, diachronic p
