Chapter in: Kecskes, I., & May, J. Ed. (2008). Intention, Common Ground and the Egocentric Speaker-Hearer. Mouton De Gruyter.
Egocentric processes in communication and miscommunication1 Boaz Keysar The university of Chicago 1. Introduction Newly married, my wife and I visited my family for Passover. We were browsing through an English language bookstore in downtown Jerusalem, when my wife pointed to a table that had a variety of Hagadas, the text used during the Seder (the traditional Passover meal), and said “So, the Seder is going to be all in Hebrew?” “Of course” I replied and proceeded to look around. She didn’t talk to me for a couple of days. Eventually, I understood why. What she meant was “let’s buy a Hagada in English,” because it was clear to both of us that she didn’t know Hebrew. I understood her question as a request for information. In fact, she thought that her intention to get the book in English was so obvious, that I must have understood it. Given that, my response was plainly rude. In this paper I argue that my wife and I are not alone, and that this miscommunication is rooted in the systematic way we process language. To explain our behavior, I will show that communication in 1
This paper is an updated version of: Keysar, Boaz. 2007. Communication and miscommunication: The role of egocentric processes. Intercultural Pragmatics 4; 1: 71-84. The writing of this paper benefited from the support of PHS grant R01 MH49685-06A1.
general proceeds in a relatively egocentric manner, with addressees routinely interpreting what speakers say from their own perspective, and speakers disambiguating their utterances with little consideration to the mental states of their addressees. Speakers also tend to overestimate how effectively they communicate, believing that their message is understood more often than it really is. I will present findings from my laboratory and from the literature that suggest such systematic causes for miscommunication. 2. Communication and cooperation Most people, most of the time, think that what they say is pretty clear. Ambiguity is not routinely noted when people normally communicate. In contrast, linguists and psychologists who study the use of language notice potential ambiguity everywhere. The newspaper is a goldmine for unintended meanings, as in this recent classified ad: “Bedroom furniture – Triple dresser with mirror, armoire, one night stand.” But students of language also know that even if it said “one nightstand,” the text cannot be devoid of ambiguity because every text can have more than one meaning. Even a simple statement such as “this chocolate is wonderful” is ambiguous because it could be a statement of fact, an offer, a request for more, and so on. Despite such ubiquitous ambiguity, there are two reasons why people may not be confused. They use context for disambiguation, and they assume that the writer or speaker is a cooperative agent (Grice 1975). With both powerful tools, language users take a linguistic system that has a huge potential to fail, and use it successfully. The cooperative principle explains why communication succeeds. Language users