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Anita Fetzer
Reformulations and Common Ground
Theoretical background
This investigation of the connectedness between reformulations and common grounds is
based on an integrated approach to language and communication. In this network-oriented
frame of reference, language is no longer conceived of in an autonomous manner. Rather, the
linguistic system and its subsystems of phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and the
lexicon, and pragmatics are connected with each other and with other cognitive systems, such
as cognition, social cognition, intelligence and social intelligence. Naturally, both are
connected with a social world (Habermas 1987). Against this background, lexical items are
intrinsically connected with the linguistic system and its subsystems, with the cognitive
system and its subsystems, and with a social world, to which they refer and which they
reconstruct. As a necessary consequence of this tripartite connectedness, the linguistic system
and the cognitive system have access to the social-world notion of common ground, and both
contribute to it by adding new information of the world and about the world thereby
reinforcing and restructuring the taken-for-granted information (Fetzer 1999).
Reformulation as a lexical strategy
This network scenario anchored to the linguistic system, cognitive system and the social
world is a necessary prerequisite for the linguistic-surface phenomenon of a lexical item to be
assigned the status of a lexical marker, and for a communicative strategy to be assigned the
status of a lexical strategy. As a necessary condition for these assignments, a lexical item
must be undergoing - or must have undergone - a process of grammaticalization (Brinton
1996) and / or a process of subjectification (Traugott 1995), in which the number of possible
inferences, of possible semantic collocations, of possible morpho-syntactic variations and of
possible syntactic and discursive positions have been constrained. To be more precise, a
lexical marker is more constrained regarding its distribution than a lexical item and therefore
allows less variability. Because of this process in which syntactic and discursive positions,
have been fixed, a lexical marker does not only operate on the semantic level. Rather, it also,
if not primarily, operates on the intersubjective level of meaning thus constructing pragmatic
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and discursive meanings. In spite of its inherent multifunctionality, a lexical marker still
carries parts of its original lexical meaning. In relevance-theoretic terminology (Sperber and
Wilson 1996), it carries both conceptual and procedural meaning. This is reflected in the
prototypical lexical marker of common ground you know, which indexes the domain of
taken-for-granted, shared knowledge. The same line of reasoning is true for lexical strategies.
Unlike communicative strategies, such as the communicative strategy for requesting someone
to pass the salt, which can be realized by numerous linguistic surfaces, lexical strategies, such
as a reformulation, are anchored to a relatively fixed set of lexical items and to a relatively
fixed word order. The communicative meaning of this syntagmatic structure is fairly explicit,
and this is the reason why a reformulation can neither be assigned the status of a routine
formula, nor can it be assigned the status of an idiomatic expression. It is, however, a
prefabricated structure (Erman and Warren 2000), which signifies that the reformulated
communicative contribution is “more in accordance” with the Gricean maxim of manner than
the one which has been reformulated. Against this background, the syntagmatic structure I
mean, which has been considered as an instance of self-reformulation, does not count as a
lexical strategy but only as a communicative strategy. This is due to the fact that it does not
only have the illocutionary goal of introducing reformulated informational content; rather it
also introduces the explication of pragmatic presuppositions which give reason for the
appropriateness of a communicative act.
The canonical form of a reformulation depends on its participant-orientation. A prototypical
self-reformulation, which is speaker-centred, is what I am saying is or I am saying that ...,
and a prototypical other-reformulation, which is hearer-centred, is what you are saying is or
are you saying that ... . Their actual communicative meaning with respect to the interactional
organization of status, power and topic control, is connected with a further distinction,
namely whether they are self-initiated or other-initiated: other-initiated reformulations
support self’s topic control and self’s status- and power management, while self-initiated
reformulation are generally employed in the actual process of negotiating meaning. In order
to be felicitous, a reformulation requires the following constitutive parts:
1.
An explicit reference to a communicative contribution’s informational content which
is being reformulated, for instance the indexical expressions what or that, or the
lexical expressions the point, the position or the issue.
2.
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A reference to the coparticipant who is being reformulated, for instance the indexical
expressions you or I.
3.
A lexicalized verb denoting the activity of doing or saying, such as say, mean, assume
or claim.
Due to the over-arching principle of sociolinguistic variation (Brown 1995), the lexical
strategy of reformulation can employ a repertoire of lexical items denoting the abstract notion
of informational content and the activity of speaking. However, it is not only informational
content, which can be reformulated. Also, the illocutionary force of a communicative act, its
discursive and pragmatic presuppositions of appropriateness, sincerity or truth, and the
speaker-intended meaning can be reformulated. These types of reformulations are
characterized by the employment of domain-specific references which express how the
informational content has been formulated and what has been meant.
The lexical strategy of a reformulation has only one illocutionary goal, namely to have a
communicative contribution formulated in accordance with the Gricean maxim of manner
and thus have a less obscure contribution. Its perlocutionary effects are multidimensional,
however, and generally refer to the social dimensions of language use, namely status- and
power management as well as topic control.
Reformulations and common ground
As regards their status in language use, self- reformulations and other- reformulations are
dialogue concepts par excellence, which occur primarily in spoken language. They are
assigned a key function in the process of negotiating meaning, in which they are conceived of
as a prototypical representative of its joint (or distributed) production and of its joint (or
distributed) interpretation. As both production and interpretation of intersubjective meaning
are cognitive operations, reformulations are intrinsically connected with the domain of social
intelligence, viz. with Brown’s (1995) conception of interactive thinking and with Goody’s
(1995:12) conception of anticipatory interactive planning (AIP), where they are assigned a
particular function: a reformulation signifies that the coparticipants should orient themselves
backwards since a communicative contribution is ratified as not fully consistent with the
constraints and requirements of the Gricean CP, maxims or calculation of implicatures.
Regarding its informational content, illocutionary force or pragmatic and discursive
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presuppositions, one or more of the coparticipants ratifies it as not being
“such as is
required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose of direction of the talk
exchange” (Grice 1975: 45). From a sequential-organization viewpoint, reformulations are
anaphoric devices and only occur when something is about to go wrong or has just gone
wrong. They are not primarily concerned with lexical meaning or default meaning but rather
with context-dependent meaning and with the connectedness between a communicative
contribution and its local contexts. Their communicative meaning depend heavily on the
question of who reformulates whom: other-reformulations negatively frame an event and
signify that its communicative status is seen as inappropriate, untrue or insincere.
Self-reformulations, by contrast, indicate that the speaker is in the process of negotiating
intersubjective meaning and intends to clarify some particular issue. Reformulations are
anchored to the interface between utterance meaning (or saying) and speaker-intended
meaning (or meaning), where they signify that a communicative contribution can not yet be
attributed to the common ground. But what kind of common ground can they not be attributed
to?
Following Levinson (1995:238), “linguistic communication is fundamentally parasitic (...):
no-one says what they mean, and indeed they couldn’t - the specificity and detail of ordinary
communicated contents lies beyond the capabilities of the linguistic channel: speech is a
much too slow and semantically undifferentiated medium to fill that role alone.” Thus,
communication is a context-dependent activity which is not only anchored to the local and
global contexts of an exchange, but also to implicit taken-for-granted common ground.
However, the notion of common ground is far too heterogeneous in order to be assigned the
status of an analytic prime. It has been assigned a context-dependent interpretation by
Thomason (1992) and his concept of conversational record, which refers to dialogue-specific
information and its administration with regard to the coparticipants’ common ground
accumulated in that conversation. Of course, this is connected with the more general notion of
common ground, of which conversational record can be conceived of as a subset. Regarding
the connectedness between a reformulation and common ground, a reformulation specifies
some part of the intersubjective meaning anchored to the conversational record. Put
differently, the lexical strategy of a reformulation has a direct impact on the administration of
a conversational record, which requires to be restructured because of the reformulatory
intervention, and it has an indirect impact on the superordinate set of common ground, which
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might require some modification. Clark’s (1996) differentiation between a personal common
ground and a cultural common ground stresses the cognitive, social and sociocultural
dimensions of language use, and because of this, it can be exploited to further refine the
concept of conversational record. Clark demonstrates that language use is not only anchored
to the transmission of objective information, but also to the transmission of sociocultural,
social and subjective aspects. Regarding the connectedness between a reformulation and
personal and cultural common grounds, a reformulation can index the subjective domain of
personal common ground in order to secure coparticipant’s interpretation of a communicative
contribution not being solely idiosyncratic; or it can index the domain of cultural common
ground in order to secure a particular interpretation being in accordance with particular
sociocultural communicative strategies. These distinctions between the context-independent
notion of common ground and the context-dependent notion of conversational record on the
one hand, and between the subjective notion of personal common ground and the
sociocultural notion of cultural common ground on the other hand is taken up by Fetzer
(2002) who differentiates between an the context-dependent notions of an individual dialogue
common ground and of a collective dialogue common ground, which are both sociocognitive
in nature. This differentiation allows for a more precise account of the process and product of
the negotiation of intersubjective meaning, and the process and product of reformulating
meaning. It shows that there exist (1) dialogical interactions within an individual and their
individual conception of a conversational record or a dialogue common ground, and (2)
dialogical interactions between the coparticipants and their individual and collective
conceptions of a dialogue common ground. Regarding the status of reformulations in this
refined frame of reference, a self-reformulation indexes the domains of the individuals’
dialogue common ground and signifies that the communicative contribution in question can
not yet be attributed to the collective dialogue common ground. An other-reformulation, by
contrast, indicates, that self is not willing to attribute other’s communicative contribution to
the collective dialogue common ground. Naturally, the notions of individual and collective
dialogue common grounds are connected with higher-order types of common ground, such as
knowledge- and domain-specific common grounds or cultural common ground.
These different categories of common ground, which are fuzzy rather than discrete in nature,
are structured hierarchically and they interact permanently with each other by adding new
information, by strengthening or weakening the status of already known information or by
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restructuring already taken-for-granted information.
Reformulations in dialogue
This part examines the communicative functions of a reformulation in dialogue and in the
administration of individual dialogue common ground and collective dialogue common
grounds. Reformulations occur primarily in spoken face-to-face settings. From an
information-exchange perspective to communication, a reformulation is a necessary condition
for securing felicitous communication, while from an interpersonal perspective, it must be
assigned a potentially face-threaten force. As regards a social-control perspective, it can serve
as a means to control the discourse topic thereby enhancing the social status locally and
gaining power globally. Contrary to lexical markers of common ground, such as you know,
the lexical strategy of reformulation signifies that a prior communicative contribution is
assigned only a preliminary communicative status and can not yet be allocated to the
collective dialogue common ground. At the same time, an other-reformulation requests the
coparticipant to clarify the status of some particular information.
In my corpus of political interviews (dyadic setting), self- and other-reformulations
differentiate into
1.
reformulation of other-intended, respectively self-intended meaning in order to
secure common conversational implicature.
In general, the majority of instances, where the implicit which has been taken for granted is
reformulated, occurs initially. There is one instance of medial reformulation and some
instances of final reformulations. The latter might be due to genre-specific constraints and
requirements, where they have the communicative function of a request for clarification.
initial position
(1)
Jonathan Dimbley (IR) and John Gummer (IE)(20.05.1990)
IR
are you saying therefore that erm the meat is safe is not the same as saying I
can absolutely guarantee unequivocally .....
(2)
IE
what I am saying is that I so strongly believe and my scientists and medical
people have made it clear that beef is safe to eat ...
(3)
Jonathan Dimbley (IR) and Michael Heseltine (IE)(13.05.1990)
IR
now does that mean that if in the weeks and months ahead erm conservative
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Mps were to come to you and say Michael we don’t think we can win the next
election without you as our leader you’ve got to run do you politely show them
the door
(4)
IE
oh are you asking a backbencher to accept collective responsibility there’s no
backbencher who does that
(5)
Jonathan Dimbley (IR) and Collin Moynihan (IE)(03.06.1990)
IE
the point I was making at that stage was that I did believe and I still do and
it’s the FA who enters the team and ti’s the FIFA who decide with the italian
authorities where ever they want erm the countries to continue to play .....
(6)
Jonathan Dimbley (IR) and Tony Blair (IE)(27.05.1990)
IE
what I’m saying to you is that the policy behind it is ...
medial position
(7)
Jonathan Dimbley (IR) and Tony Blair (IE)(27.05.1990)
IE
of course they can’t legitimately come out you might as well say at the
moment under the law if employees think they’ve got a primary dispute with
their employer and in fact they’ve got a secondary dispute they come out first
and then they decide afterwards the court decides afterwards whether it was a
primary dispute or not what I’m saying to you is that they cannot come out in
those circumstances .....
final position
(8)
Jonathan Dimbley (IR) and David Trippier (IE)(17.06.1990)
IR
is that the price that would have to be paid to meet the 2000 target is that
what you’re saying
(9)
IR
yes but yes but let me put back to you two of the points that you’ve made first
of all the conditionality of the commitment if says the prime minister other
countries do it now the germans have made their commitment unequivocal are
we saying that we will not unless the americans do it
(10)
IR
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hold have a strike first and a ballot later I’m not saying it’s different I’m
saying that’s what the position will be
2.
reformulation of other-intended, respectively self-intended meaning in order to
secure collective dialogue common ground
In these types of reformulation, the implicit taken-for granted common ground is made
explicit to ensure that the coparticipants’ share the same collective dialogue common ground.
This can be supplemented by (a) an account specifying what part of a coparticipant’s
contribution is being reformulated, (b) an explicit evaluation specifying why a coparticipant’s
contribution is being reformulated.
With account
(11)
Jonathan Dimbley (IR) and David Trippier (IE)(17.06.1990)
IR
(12)
what you are saying as to be clear I don’t want to ask you to
Jonathan Dimbley (IR) and Tony Blair (IE) (27.05.1990)
IR
what you’re saying is what you’re saying is then by way of clarification of
what probably means is that the employer concerned has to say we will
probably do this if it goes that way
(13)
Jonathan Dimbley (IR) and Norman Lamont (IE) (13.05.1990)
IR
when you say you resist those inflationary pay claims what you will in fact be
saying if I understand you correctly even if you take into account some
efficiency savings is that people will have to accept pay increases below the
going rate of inflation otherwise you will be putting more new money into the
economy
with explicit evaluation
(14)
Jonathan Dimbley (IR) and John Gummer (IE)(20.5.1990)
IE
well if I had said that then that would have been perfectly reasonable what I
said was that vegetarian should not say about meat eaters that they were
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wholly unnatural because in fact the human body is made so that it is natural to
eat meat
(15)
Jonathan Dimbley (IR) and John Martin / Danny Finkelstein (IE) (03.06.1990)
IR
are you seriously saying that if david owen goes and leaves you alone that
the SDP will become a more credible force
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reformulation of perlocutionary effect in order to secure common perlocutionary
effect
In this type of reformulation, the perlocutionary effect, which is generally left implicit, is
spelled out in order to secure a common perlocutionary effect. This type of reformulation
must be assigned a strong face-threatening force. It is restricted to escalating, confrontational
sequences, and is, for that reason, not very frequent.
(16)
Jonathan Dimbley (IR) and Michael Heseltine (IE) (13.05.1990)
IE
all you’re doing is to try to hike the issue which is an issue which is an issue
in which I haven’t anything to add so let’s just take the words for what they are
and leave them where they ought to be left
Conclusion
The lexical strategy of reformulation is intrinsically connected with common ground, which
requires to be distinguished with regard to (1) local and global dimensions of discourse, (2)
coparticipant orientation, and (3) context. In order to be felicitous, reformulations require (1)
a lexicalized verb which denotes the activity of saying or doing, (2) a direct reference to self
or other, and (3) a reference to the communicative contribution which is being reformulated.
Their communicative meaning is calculated with regard to the questions of who produces
them and where and when they are produced, and is thus based on the connectedness between
coparticipants, and the connectedness between utterance, individual and collective dialogue
common grounds and social, sociocultural and linguistic contexts.
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