ABSTRACT
The term communication refers to the transmission of information from a sender to a receiver. According to philosophers of language, successful communication observes certain rules that have been summarized by the cooperativeness principle (Grice, 1975). The joint application of these rules makes sure that the content of a message is true, relevant, informative, and readily understood by its receiver. Notably, the latter aspect implies that a sender has to determine prior to sending a message whether a receiver has the background knowledge necessary to make sense of its content. The outcome of this process, in turn, depends on the perceived common ground; that is, on a sender’s subjective representation of relevant background knowledge shared with a recipient (Schwarz, 1996).
