???This is the first post in our Fundamentals of Communication series. (See second, third, and fourth posts.) This series provides a very high-level overview of the key concepts that undergird human communication. These concepts are the building blocks we will use to build a foundation for future learning. They are the moving pieces that make everything else work. They are so basic that we rarely think about them consciously, but they are critically important nonetheless. The power of understanding them comes from recognizing how they interact and each contributes in a given context.
???????????????????????????Whenever we communicate, there are decisions and processes at work that we rarely think about, which can make it seem like things ?just happen? automatically. Investing the time to become familiar with these concepts will pay dividends as we learn about more complex things. The first areas we will look into is the why behind the communication (communicative intent) and one of the ways that we cooperate with each other to make sure it happens successfully (common ground).
Communicative Intent
Communicative intent sounds exactly like what it is: the intended outcome that results from what we say. It?s difficult to think of a situation where there is not some communicative intent behind what is said. Even situations like making small talk with a friend or even a stranger while standing in line can be intended to build rapport or to persuade them that you are smart or funny or friendly. Communication is motivated by an intended outcome.
This expectation of intentionality is so strong that it prompts us to ask ?What?s your point?? or ?Why are you telling me this?? when someone tells us something that seems out of place. Even if we are not able to consciously articulate our ?why? behind a statement, communicative intent nevertheless drives our decisions about what we say, how we organize it, and even things like intonation and gestures.
The key takeaway about communicative intent is to recognize that communication is about far more than just sharing new information between two people. Our intention might be to move someone to action, to establish rapport or goodwill, or to establish our credentials or credibility to speak as an authority. 1 Communication is foundational to sociological phenomena like family and culture, so much more might be accomplished by an utterance than simply conveying a proposition. Telling someone ?I hear you? is more than just an affirmation that their words were audible, the expression more often conveys empathetic solidarity with the person and their situation.
Communicative Intent in the Bible
Specified Intent
Sometimes this intention is overtly mentioned, such as beginning a conversation with, ?I wanted to see if you are available to help out next week.? We find similar statements in Scripture, such as Paul?s ?I want you to know?? statements in 1 Cor 11:3, Phil 1:12, and Col 2:1. We would assume that all of the other things that Paul wrote to people are also what he wants them to know or else he wouldn?t have written it, right? Nevertheless, we do find overt statements that disclose our intentions, but they are rare and generally serve an attention-getting function. The next time someone asks you, ?Can I ask you a question?? respond by saying ?But you just did!? and see how they react. They were not really asking your permission but were announcing what they intended to do. So even when an intent is specified, it is generally doing something in addition.
Unspecified Intent
Much more frequently, however, there will be no such overt statement about the speaker?s intention. Instead, we select and structure what we say in the way that seems most likely to accomplish the intended task, whether it be answering a simple question or asking for a bonus at work.
We find this same kind of unspecified intention in Scripture. In Luke 12:13, a man asks Jesus to settle a dispute about an inheritance. After answering with a rhetorical question in Luke 12:14, Jesus exhorts the crowd to watch and guard against all forms of greed (Luke 12:15) and then proceeds to tell a parable about a foolish rich man storing up treasure he will not live long enough to use in Luke 12:16?21.
Jesus does not say, ?Let me tell you this parable about greed in order to answer your question about how your inheritance should be divided.? The readers themselves must decide about how the exhortations and parables relate to the question that seems to have spawned them. Jesus did not blow an opportunity or let us down, he simply used language way back then in the same kinds of ways we do today: without explicitly stating his intent. While it may feel like this opens the door for confusion or misunderstanding, it also paves the way for more nuanced personal application. The parable has far more potential for application to other situations than Jesus simply commanding him to share with his brother or not to hoard earthly treasure.
Our focus will be on attending to the things that are specified to help narrow down the possibilities. With the speaker?s communicative intent as a starting point, let?s move on to survey another important contextual factor: common ground.
Common Ground
Another unsung hero of communication is our reliance on the knowledge that is shared between the speaker and the hearer, referred to under the broad heading of ?common ground.?
Unmentioned Extras
Consider all the background information that we activate from our mental filing cabinet in order to process the simple statement, ?We went out for gourmet burgers last night.?:
- The pronoun ?we? is in the first person and plural, which means it refers to the speaker and at least one other person. The other might be the hearer in answer to the question, ?Do you remember what we had for dinner last night?? More typically ?we? denotes people other than the hearer that may or may not be present. Pronouns are like empty buckets that are only filled on-site in the given context.
- ?Going out? presupposes a ?from? location such as the speaker?s home, but it could just as easily refer to a hotel room or relative?s house if the speaker is traveling. In the United States, the presupposed means of transport is typically a private vehicle unless otherwise specified (?We got an Uber,? which incidentally does not mean you purchased one but that you hired one for a journey). Alternatively, in cities like New York or Boston, the default expectation might well be that the mass transit system was the means of locomotion unless otherwise specified.
- A ?burger? is a prepared food purchased from a restaurant that is either eaten on-site or taken out to eat somewhere else like at home or in a break room at work. Thus, ?went out for a burger? evokes a different kind of scenario than ?went out for milk.? One does not typically return home and drink all the milk that was purchased unless copious amounts of cookies are involved.
- ?Going out for (food of some kind)? entails travel and a commercial transaction of some kind, whereas ?going out for a walk? only entails the former so long as the travel is on foot.
- Specifying that the burgers were ?gourmet? presupposes cultural knowledge that burgers fall into the category of ?fast food? in the sense that you get what you pay for. Often these burgers are of poor quality both in terms of ingredients and craftsmanship, so specifying that what was eaten was gourmet implies that they cost more and were ostensibly better all the way around than a Whopper or a Big Mac.
More could be said here, but all of these random bits of knowledge are assumed to be shared between speaker and hearer and are activated from our mental file cabinet when needed. Otherwise, the speaker would be expected to supply any missing information in order to successfully accomplish their intended purpose.
We rely upon common ground information first and foremost for efficiency. Imagine how long it would take for me to explain what a restaurant or gourmet burger is every time I wanted to make reference to it. Imagine life without pronouns: ?Bob, Sally, and Steve went out for dinner, then Bob, Sally, and Steve went for dessert.?
But common ground can also be exploited for sociocultural reasons such as condescension. Explaining what a gourmet hamburger is would evoke very different responses from someone who has never heard of or tasted one versus someone like my wife, who loves them. Providing information that is clearly shared generally evokes indignation or confusion (e.g., ?Do you think I?m stupid or something that you are telling me this? Why are you talking to me like I?m a child??).
Summary
One of the keys to better exegesis and better communication more generally is slowing down to think about how and why things work the way they do. This is especially important when it comes to things that we are not even aware we do or rely upon. Next time you are in an emotionally charged situation or working on a paper or sermon, take a step back and observe what you are thinking about. Oftentimes an intent is not so much an idea we want to convey as much as it is an outcome that we want to reach. The other part then is charting the best course to arrive at that outcome, such as an out????????????????????????line or bullet points of an argument that might change someone?s mind. I?d encourage you to get a little self-conscious and try to think more overtly about the why behind what you say.
The other piece that dovetails with communicative intent is common ground. Once we have decided the outcome and plotted a basic course, we next need to decide what resources we have to get there. Do I need to introduce a couple new ideas or is she already familiar with them? Questions are a common way to test these waters (?Have you been downtown recently, since they did the big traffic revision last year??) We also give thought to things like metaphors and illustrations that can help people gain an understanding of or appreciate for things the way we see them. But mostly common-ground decisions are made so effortlessly?like to use a pronoun?that we just plow ahead without appreciating all that is going on under the hood. We will dig into common ground more deeply in the next post.
FOOTNOTES:
1 Mary Breeze, "Hortatory Discourse in Ephesians," Journal of Translation and Textlinguistics 5, no. 4 (1992): 315-16.