Summary
Persuasion and (dis)agreement
Topics of the courses:
1. Interpersonal communication (discussion)
2. Interpersonal persuasion (persuasion)
3. Interpersonal disagreement (debate/conflict)
, Lecture 1: Interpersonal Communication I
Social cognition studies
= The mental processes that are involved in perceiving, remembering, thinking about, and
attending to others. It are the reasons we attend to certain information about the social world,
how this information is stored in memory, and how it is then used to interact and
communicate with others.
It develops during childhood and adolescents (e.g. ToM).
There are cultural differences in social cognition.
Human beings are mind readers (= perspective taking). We tend to constantly assess whether
we understand each other or not.
Communication as transaction: a message may concern a mix of information/knowledge,
beliefs, values, attitudes and emotions.
Theory of Mind (ToM)
= Predict how people will behave and what their mental states are (by looking at verbal
behaviour).
For children this is very hard (they will fall back on egocentrism), e.g. Sally and Anne ball
in the basket story.
Cognitive precursors
= Skills whose development starts prior to reading and which are functionally related to later
reading skills, e.g. joint attention, intentionality, imitation, emotion recognition (empathy),
pretending and differences in desires and beliefs.
Conversation
= A joint activity (intention-directed) that requires two or more people to closely coordinate
their individual behaviours for some common purpose. Crucial concept: common ground.
Common ground
= Mutually shared knowledge, the things we both know we know.
Two components of common ground:
- Core common ground
Common sense: generalised knowledge about the world.
Cultural sense: generalised knowledge about cultural norms, beliefs and values.
Formal sense: generalised knowledge about the language system that we use.
2
, - Emergent common ground
Shared sense: knowledge about personal experiences that interlocutors share.
Current sense: the emergent perception of the current situation.
Privileged ground
= Information not available to the other persons (e.g. feelings, thoughts or experiences).
There are three different views on common ground:
1. Audience design (Grice)
2. Egocentric anchoring (Keysar)
3. Dynamic model of meaning (Keckes & Zhang)
View 1: Audience design
People have the social intention to be cooperative and thus restrict themselves to using
common ground information and to adhere to the four maxims of the cooperative principle
when conversing.
Cooperative principle
= Make your contribution such as is required.
This explains why communication succeeds.
The cooperative principle consists of four maxims:
- Maxim of quantity: informative, but not too much.
Often used apology: to cut a long story short…
- Maxim of quality: honest, only say things that are true.
Often used apology: as far as I know…
- Maxim of relation: be relevant.
Often used apology: I know this is off-topic, but…
- Maxim of manner: be clear and orderly.
Often used apology: I hate to keep harping on this, but I want to make sure you
understand what I am saying.
When a maxim is violated you are not communicating cooperatively. When the violation was
intended to be recognised and has an underlying message this is called flouting.
Implicature
= Something the speaker suggests or implies with an utterance, even though it is not literally
expressed.
3
Persuasion and (dis)agreement
Topics of the courses:
1. Interpersonal communication (discussion)
2. Interpersonal persuasion (persuasion)
3. Interpersonal disagreement (debate/conflict)
, Lecture 1: Interpersonal Communication I
Social cognition studies
= The mental processes that are involved in perceiving, remembering, thinking about, and
attending to others. It are the reasons we attend to certain information about the social world,
how this information is stored in memory, and how it is then used to interact and
communicate with others.
It develops during childhood and adolescents (e.g. ToM).
There are cultural differences in social cognition.
Human beings are mind readers (= perspective taking). We tend to constantly assess whether
we understand each other or not.
Communication as transaction: a message may concern a mix of information/knowledge,
beliefs, values, attitudes and emotions.
Theory of Mind (ToM)
= Predict how people will behave and what their mental states are (by looking at verbal
behaviour).
For children this is very hard (they will fall back on egocentrism), e.g. Sally and Anne ball
in the basket story.
Cognitive precursors
= Skills whose development starts prior to reading and which are functionally related to later
reading skills, e.g. joint attention, intentionality, imitation, emotion recognition (empathy),
pretending and differences in desires and beliefs.
Conversation
= A joint activity (intention-directed) that requires two or more people to closely coordinate
their individual behaviours for some common purpose. Crucial concept: common ground.
Common ground
= Mutually shared knowledge, the things we both know we know.
Two components of common ground:
- Core common ground
Common sense: generalised knowledge about the world.
Cultural sense: generalised knowledge about cultural norms, beliefs and values.
Formal sense: generalised knowledge about the language system that we use.
2
, - Emergent common ground
Shared sense: knowledge about personal experiences that interlocutors share.
Current sense: the emergent perception of the current situation.
Privileged ground
= Information not available to the other persons (e.g. feelings, thoughts or experiences).
There are three different views on common ground:
1. Audience design (Grice)
2. Egocentric anchoring (Keysar)
3. Dynamic model of meaning (Keckes & Zhang)
View 1: Audience design
People have the social intention to be cooperative and thus restrict themselves to using
common ground information and to adhere to the four maxims of the cooperative principle
when conversing.
Cooperative principle
= Make your contribution such as is required.
This explains why communication succeeds.
The cooperative principle consists of four maxims:
- Maxim of quantity: informative, but not too much.
Often used apology: to cut a long story short…
- Maxim of quality: honest, only say things that are true.
Often used apology: as far as I know…
- Maxim of relation: be relevant.
Often used apology: I know this is off-topic, but…
- Maxim of manner: be clear and orderly.
Often used apology: I hate to keep harping on this, but I want to make sure you
understand what I am saying.
When a maxim is violated you are not communicating cooperatively. When the violation was
intended to be recognised and has an underlying message this is called flouting.
Implicature
= Something the speaker suggests or implies with an utterance, even though it is not literally
expressed.
3
