Common Ground

In my anthropology class we have been learning about the origins and evolutions of human communication. In our small discussion group, I always found that there was such a great ease to our conversations on facial discussions and gestures. Without really knowing each other, we all shared common knowledge about the ways we communicate, and especially through networking sites, we found that we communicate in similar ways. In this class, we learned about the definition of common ground, in which we share ideas about the norms of people's behaviors and appearances. Societal common ground might involve holding a door open for someone, and rather than question why someone would hold a door open for us, shared common ground teaches us that this is a polite gesture, and normative to our society. Common ground can even be personal, something shared between two people or more that are close you. For instance, if I guided my friends attention to my textbook through a pointing gesture, through shared experiences that friend could easily interpret my meaning. For that close friend we could have already complained about the length of our reading, and so with a simple point they would interpret that easily. While if one was to point to that book without having a shared experience with another person, it can be interpreted in multiple ways, and the person might have to guess if you were discussing maybe needing that book, not liking it, or anything else. 

I started to think deeper about common ground, and how much more it is effective when considering rhetoric and the art of persuasion. Then I recognized rhetoric under this manner in social networking sites like twitter. Often we re-tweet comments that are interesting and cool, and personally I re-tweet things that I have a shared experiences on. One of my favorite tweeter to follow is @autocorrects, in which through rhetoric i am persuaded to check and follow its tweets because of its ability to tweet things that I feel are common to me. A lot of time I barely recognize daily habits that I have and share with others, but when people tweet about things I've experienced, I feel a closer connection to that person, and an even bigger assimilation to the people of my society. One of my favorite hash tags on tweeter are "#thatawkwardmomentwhen..." and it goes on to describe a couple of these moments. Most times I laugh at how much I realize I share in those awkward experiences, and it all falls into that common ground we hold as humans, and individuals in our particular societies and cultures.