TY - JOUR
T1 - Less Is More
T2 - A Minimalist Account of Joint Action in Communication
AU - Shintel, Hadas
AU - Keysar, Boaz
PY - 2009/4
Y1 - 2009/4
N2 - Language use can be viewed as a form of joint activity that requires the coordination of meaning between individuals. Because the linguistic signal is notoriously ambiguous, interlocutors need to draw upon additional sources of information to resolve ambiguity and achieve shared understanding. One way individuals can achieve coordination is by using inferences about the interlocutor's intentions and mental states to adapt their behavior. However, such an inferential process can be demanding in terms of both time and cognitive resources. Here, we suggest that interaction provides interlocutors with many cues that can support coordination of meaning, even when they are neither produced intentionally for that purpose nor interpreted as signaling speakers' intention. In many circumstances, interlocutors can take advantage of these cues to adapt their behavior in ways that promote coordination, bypassing the need to resort to deliberative inferential processes.
AB - Language use can be viewed as a form of joint activity that requires the coordination of meaning between individuals. Because the linguistic signal is notoriously ambiguous, interlocutors need to draw upon additional sources of information to resolve ambiguity and achieve shared understanding. One way individuals can achieve coordination is by using inferences about the interlocutor's intentions and mental states to adapt their behavior. However, such an inferential process can be demanding in terms of both time and cognitive resources. Here, we suggest that interaction provides interlocutors with many cues that can support coordination of meaning, even when they are neither produced intentionally for that purpose nor interpreted as signaling speakers' intention. In many circumstances, interlocutors can take advantage of these cues to adapt their behavior in ways that promote coordination, bypassing the need to resort to deliberative inferential processes.
KW - Audience design
KW - Common ground
KW - Interlocutor-specific effects
KW - Memory associations
KW - Referential communication
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=77949308313&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/j.1756-8765.2009.01018.x
DO - 10.1111/j.1756-8765.2009.01018.x
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C2 - 25164932
AN - SCOPUS:77949308313
SN - 1756-8757
VL - 1
SP - 260
EP - 273
JO - Topics in Cognitive Science
JF - Topics in Cognitive Science
IS - 2
ER -