The interdependence of common ground and context

The aim of this essay is to argue that common ground is context shared between S (speaker, writer, signer) and H (audience) under the following conditions: S utters υ, evoking context C1 (the ‘world and time spoken of’) so as to bring about in C3 (the ‘situation of interpretation’ from H’s point of view) H’s understanding υ in terms of the relevant beliefs that S holds or purports to hold in respect of uttering υ (i.e. speaking of C1) in C2 - the ‘world and time spoken in’ - which is the situation of utterance from S’s point of view. If C3 is very different from C2 such that H does not share some of S’s system of beliefs and assumptions, H may be well able to understand what S intended to mean; nevertheless, υ can have reduced comprehensibility and its psycho-social appropriateness may be differently evaluated from the way S expected to be understood: examples would be when a 21st century H reads a sonnet by William Shakespeare or, for another instance, reacts to Jeannie Gunn referring in 1908 to Indigenous Australians as niggers (despite her showing greater respect for their culture and land rights than most of her white contemporaries).