The One With All The Issues of Establishing Common Ground

Clark (1996) suggests that Common Ground is an essential feature of all human interaction. However, it is argued in this paper that establishing common ground is a potentially perilous activity and that doing so can lead participants towards unwanted outcomes. To investigate this proposition, the TV sitcom Friends is used as a vehicle to highlight where things can go wrong during and after establishing common ground. Aiming to look further than the limited view that 'shared knowledge' is 'mutual information two or more people have', the collateral damage caused by this joint activity is explored drawing attention to the impact it can have on future interactions with others. To do this, extracts from a specific episode, The One Where Everybody Finds Out will be used to track the consequences of what establishing common ground does, including misunderstandings, different beliefs, and gossip. Successful observations made so far are that misunderstandings, for example, can be closely related to the act of establishing common ground. It has been acknowledged that in performing this act, it is not a faultless endeavor. Mistakes are made, albeit unknowingly, innocently and thoughtlessly; however, it is because people do make utterances and can make interpretations based on their own beliefs that these errors are and can be made. This paper concludes that, although establishing or having common ground might be an inevitable aspect of human interaction, understanding that there is a hidden side to this phenomenon engenders the potential to query whether common ground is inherently flawed and to also open other new analytical avenues.