Fro Hemet Cla, 1995 amaroge Unive rest 4| Common ground Halon couldtak wa could not understand nim Ludwig Witlgenstein,Phulsophica ver alone Evecything we dois rooted in information we have about our surround ings, activities, perceptions, emotions, plans, interests. Everything we do jointly ith others ie alo rooted inthis information, but only in that pert we think they share wich us, ‘The notion needed ber ie common, round Common round is a sie que non for everything we do. with others from the brosdest joint activities (Chapter 2 tothe smallesjint actions that comprise them (Chapter 3). For my son and me ro act jointly heand Ihave t coordinate what wedo and when wedait Ando coordinate, we have 10 appeal, ultimately, ro our current common around, Ac the sume time, with every joint setion he and { perform, we 1d to our common ground. This is how joint sctvities, from chess games to business rensactions, progress (Chapter 2). When my son and J enter a conversation, we presuppose certain common ground, and with cach ointaction~ each utterance, for example we try to addtait, Todo that, we need to keep tick of cur common ground as it accumulates increment by incsement. ‘Common ground is important to any account of language use that sppeals to “context.” Moat accounts don't say what context i, but rely ‘om our intuitions about the circumstances of each utterance. These appeals ate no berter than a psychic’s visions of next year's stock prices~and ess predictive. With an undefined notion of context, a with anindefinic fucure, anything is possible. Whar these approaches need is “aproper theory of common groune. What, then, is common ground? What forms doce it take? What information does i epresent? How ist created, maintained, nd sncremenced? Whenever I meet other humans ~ adults from anywhere in the world 1 assume as common ground that they and I think in the same way about ‘many things. I may be wrong, but I would still draw the inferences, and ‘these would inform my actionsas we tried to coordinate with each other. | possess a folk psychology about people in general ~ about human nature~and, right or wrong, itallows me to get started. All of us take as common ground, | assume, that people normally have the same senses, sense organs, and types of sensations. [fasound isaudible ‘tome, it would normally be audible to others in the same circumstances. People also perceive motion, perceptual depth, pitches, and rhythms, and assume these ways of perceiving to be common ground. Less obvie ‘ously, people are limited in what they ean attend to at once, and the raw perceptual experiences that grab my attention ~ loud noises or sudden ‘movements —will grab yours too. Certain varieties of perceptual salience are common ground to usallCOMMON GROUND| 107 Weal take it as common ground, also, that everyone knows the basic facts and laws of nature. People universally assume that they live in a world populated by animate and inanimate objects that are subject to gravity, Newton-like laws of motion, and laws of cause and effect. They take certain facts of biology for granted for example, that animate things are born, take in food and water to live, then cease to function. They suppose that everyone assumes certain social facts—that people generally possess and use language, live together in groups, exchange goods and services, hard to ‘exaggerate the number and variety of basic concepts we take as common, ground to everyone. have names, play roles in various institutions, and so on. I COMMUNAL LEXICONS. ‘Many inferences are based more narrowly on the language communi- ties we know someone belongs to. If Soonja is a Korean speaker, assume she takes as common ground to Korean speakers ll the conven- tional features of Korean — its phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. This follows from Lewis’ characterization of conventions as common knowledge within a community of speakers ns are represented is a fundamental question for students of language, and there are diverse (Chapter 3). Precisely how these convent proposals on the table. I also assume Soonja takes for granted certain facts about how Korean speakers speak and understand that they need more time and effort to deal with some aspects of Korean than others. Alll this is outside information that I cake as common ground about using any language. In Lewis’ account, conventional word meanings hold not for a word simpliciter, but for aword ina particular community. Youcan'ttalkabout conventional word meaning without saying what community i conventional in. Word knowledge, properly viewed, divides into what [ ill call communal lexicons, by which I mean sets of word conventions in individual communities. When I meet Ann, she and I must establish as common ground which communities we both belong to simply in order to know what English words we ean use with what meaning. Can I use fermata? Not without establishing that we are both music enthusiasts, Can I use rbi? Not without establishing that we are both baseball fans. Every community has a speci: ed lexicon. We recognize these Jexicons in the terms we have for them in English:108 | FOUNDATIONS Residence regional or local dialects, patois, provincialisms, localisms, regionalisms, colloquialisms, idiom, Americanisms, ete. ‘Occupation jargon, shoptalk, parlance, nomenclature, technical terminology, academese, legalese, medicalese, Wall Streetese, etc. Subculture slang, argot, lingo, cant, vernacular, code, etc Most regions have their own dialect, patois, idiom, or regionalisms, with distinctive terms for everything from food to geographical features. Most occupations and hobbies, from physics to philately, have a technical jargon or terminology. So do most subcultures, from drug addicts to high school cliques. ‘When we think of jargon, slang, and regionalisms, we tend to focus on the words unique to a communal lexicon. Meson, pion, and quark are terms only a physicist could love. But most common word forms belong to many communal lexicons ~ though with different conventional mean- ings. In Britain, biscuits can be sweet or savory, but in America, they are always savory. In common parlance, fruit denotes aclass of edible, sweet, fleshy agricultural products; among botanists, it denotes the ripened ovary or ovaries of seed-bearing plants, whether or not they are edible, sweet, and fleshy. Two botanists in conversation would have to establish which lexicon they were drawing on. You and I would be forced to stay with common parlance. Itis essential to identify the cultural communities, ourinterlocutors do and don’t belong to just to know what vocabulary we can use.