Speaker and Listener Convergence Based on Shared Contextual Knowledge 47

This sub-section reviews issues of interlocutors’ achieving of communicative convergence on the basis of shared contextual knowledge, and it is structured as follows:

A. what communication is

B. context knowledge, role and effects

C. communicative convergence between interlocutors D. acoustic confirmation of communicative convergence

Communication involves, on the one hand, the transfer of the speaker’s ideas into the listener’s mind, and on the other hand, the interpretation of the listener’s intention by his utterance. This is not a simple, straightforward process. Instead, it is a dynamic negotiating process, in which the stances of both the speaker and the listener are always shifting; a communicative ‘loop’ – a constant feedback, checking and monitoring process (Moore, 2005) is involved, and a ‘collaborative’ contribution (Schober & Clark, 1989) is needed to ensure a maximum convergence between the speaker and the listener within the context in which the conversation occurs.

B. Context knowledge, role and effects

According to Field (2004, pp.76-77), context is widely used to cover any of the following: ‘immediate situation’, ‘meaning representation’, ‘topic’ and ‘co-text’. There are two effects according to the ways in which ‘general features’ (i.e., a blanket term to describe context, used by Nation and Coady, 1988, p.102) are interpreted. One is related to the interpretation of a word or an utterance, and the other is linked to lexical access. Rendering the speaker’s intention involves firstly interpretation of the words used. The main argument made by Field (2003a, p.10) is that a word is a ‘movable unit of meaning’ which cannot be broken down into small individual elements. Understanding a word must be based on its links to its surrounding words, and also depends on the context in which the word is embedded. Three types of schema pointed out by Field (2003a) are involved in conversational interpretation. They are a world knowledge schema, a contextual schema and previous experience schema (p.40). These external factors are generally referred to as context knowledge, which plays an essential role in understanding a communication.

C. Communicative convergence between interlocutors

Convergence, as defined by McCarthy (1998, p.177), ‘is an ideal state where speakers’ minds mesh, where they are on the same wavelength, pursuing the same goals, and each participant sees the same need to co-operate and get to the desired outcome’. In communication, neither the speaker nor the listener has a privileged controlling right to the topic, they must negotiate it. Their participatory role in the dialogue of the interlocutors is constantly shifting. There is a constant flow of interruptions, floor- grabbing, arguments, contention for possession of the floor and securing the floor. This co-operative cohesive achievement of discourse is heavily dependent on real-time adjustments, demonstrated to some extent by speakers’ needs to ‘negotiate meanings’ of the vocabulary used (Carter & McCarthy, 1988, p.xi). Speaker and listener actively accommodate each other and jointly contribute to the convergence by ‘playing the same game’ (Cicourel, 1973, p.87), in which similar lexical patterning, for example prefabricated formulaic expressions (which is outlined later in detail in Sections 2.3.3 and 2.4), is co-presented by both speaker and listener. This approach to the use of formulaicity, as argued by McCarthy (1998), can facilitate fluency, project the learner’s personality and establish appropriate socio-pragmatic, interactional relationships in communication (pp.109-15).

Communicative value is also discussed by Widdowson (2007), in which he points out that communication is not simply about transferring knowledge into agreement, but ‘a degree of convergence’, in which a ‘quite complex negotiation’ process is involved (p.26). Widdowson argues that language is only produced when there is an occasion to use it, and the occasion for language use takes place in the ‘continuous and changing contexts’ of our everyday life (p.19). Communication is heavily shared-knowledge-

based, speaker and listener can understand each other only within a common situation, called context (p.22). According to Widdowson, both speaker and listener have their own schematic structures of knowledge. In communication, new information constantly emerges to fill out the existing schema and enrich the personal frame of reference of the speakers. The less knowledge is shared by speaker and listener, the more pronounced the divergence between the interlocutors, and the greater the need for accommodation and negotiation between the speakers.

Achieving communicative convergence is taken as a kind of ‘communicative competence’ (Campbell & Wales, 1970, p.249), in which a negotiation process for common agreement between the interlocutors is involved. This convergent process, as argued by Widdowson (2007, pp.63-67), is pragmatically oriented by communicative intentions. For an efficient communication, there is a composite process towards convergence between speaker and listener via ‘give and take on both sides’. On the one hand, both speaker and listener have to insist on and protect their own stance – ‘individual reality’, ‘a sense of self’, and ‘a personal territory of identity’. On the other hand, a collaborative relationship has to be established and retained between the interlocutors, which runs a risk of compromising individual identity. These two aspects are termed by Widdowson as ‘territorial imperative’ and ‘co-operative imperative’. It is therefore not only meaning that is negotiated in conversation, but also social and human relationships, for example friendliness, politeness, and individual attitude. Therefore, to some extent, communication is ‘an exercise in control’ – to ‘assert one’s own position’ and to ‘persuade the other to accept it’. Another point made by Widdowson is that convergence can only be achieved indeterminately and partially, which is a very common feature of communication. No matter how well interlocutors know each other,

perfect understanding never occurs. This subjective perceptual opinion conforms to Brown’s (1990) ‘adequate’ understanding as examined in Section 2.2.4.

D. Acoustic confirmation of communicative convergence

Speaker and listener convergence in a single dialogue is also investigated by Kousidis, et al. (2008) within the context of speech recognition. In this study, four acoustic features are investigated between two speakers in a natural, unscripted dialogue – mean pitch, mean intensity, pitch range and speech rate. A direct comparison between time- aligned frames shows a persistent convergence in intensity (see Figure 2 below) and speech rate (see Figure 3 below). This evidence indicates that speakers readily adjust their acoustic behaviour to accommodate each other, which echoes Tatham and Morton’s (2002) collaboration notion between speaker and listener. Another study undertaken by Derwing (1990) shows that, in order to accommodate L2 learners, L1 speakers (10 out of 16 test persons) increase the pause time in their narrations. Even though, as Chaudron (1982) argues, some adjustments may have ‘adverse effects’ on communication, nevertheless, the majority of researchers’ investigations show a general tendency of co-operation and accommodation between interlocutors.

Figure 2: Average normalised intensity for speakers A, C over 10 second frames with 50% overlap

Source: Kousidis, et al., 2008

Figure 3: Average normalised speech rate for speakers A, D over 20 second frames with 50% overlap

Source: Kousidis, et al., 2008