Layers of Joint Commitments in Interpersonal Communication

Layers of Joint Commitments in Interpersonal Communication Antonella Carassa (antonella.carassa@usi.ch) Faculty of Communication Sciences, University of Lugano, Via Giuseppe Buffi 13 6900 Lugano, Switzerland Marco Colombetti (marco.colombetti@polimi.it) Department of Electronics and Information, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 32 20133 Milano, Italy Faculty of Communication Sciences, University of Lugano, Via Giuseppe Buffi 13 6900 Lugano, Switzerland Abstract We propose a theory of communicative interactions based on the idea that it is constitutive of interpersonal communication to create and manage a fragment of social reality. We define such a fragment in terms of joint commitments of the interactants, and analyze how these commitments are made in a conversation. We distinguish between three layers of joint commitments: those that regulate the embedding activity of the conversation; those that constitute the joint meaning of communicative acts; and those that concern the target of the conversation. We argue that joint commitments are created in a concrete situation by producing and negotiating interper- sonal affordances, which allows the interactants to retain suitable freedom of movement. Finally, we analyze some relationships between our conception of communicative acts and illocutionary acts. Keywords: Interpersonal communication; communicative act; interpersonal reality; joint commitment; joint meaning. Introduction Fifty years since the publication of Austin’s How to Do Things with Words (1962), the idea that human communica- tion is to be regarded as a form of action has gained univer- sal acceptance. However, there are reasons to doubt that Speech Act Theory (as developed, among others, by Searle, 1969; Schiffer, 1972; Bach & Harnish, 1979; and Alston, 2000) provides an adequate treatment of real communicative interactions. Reasons for skepticism have been put forward, for example, by Levinson (1981), Clark (1996), and Mey (2001); Mey, in particular, proposes to replace the notions of illocutionary and perlocutionary acts of Speech Act The- ory with that of a pragmatic act, understood as the situated performance of a concrete act of communication. As of today, no situated approach to communication can boast the generality and depth of Speech Act Theory. It may be argued that attaining such a result is an impossible mis- sion, insofar as a situated standpoint is by its very nature sensitive to concrete particulars, which clashes with the quest for generality; nevertheless, we believe that significant results can be achieved by suitably choosing the theory’s ‘field of view.’ In the attempt to move forward in this direc- tion, in this paper we confine our interest to processes of interpersonal communication, aiming to clarify: (i), what concept of a situation is suited for dealing with interpersonal communication; and (ii), what relationships hold between the performance of a single act of interpersonal communica- tion, the interaction process to which the act belongs, and the situation in which such an interaction is couched. Our approach is centered on a normative concept, namely, joint commitment. The importance of normative concepts in general, and of commitment in particular, has been high- lighted in various areas of research related to human com- munication, like dialogue theory (Hamblin, 1970; Walton & Krabbe, 1995), philosophy of language (Brandom, 1994; Alston, 2000; Searle, 2010), and computer-based interaction (Winograd & Flores, 1986). Nevertheless, the foundational role of commitment in theories of communication is still insufficiently appreciated. At least in part this may be due to the fact that, as remarked by Harnish (2005), we still lack a widely accepted treatment of commitment, comparable to the theories of epistemic and volitional mental states, like belief, desire, and intention. We found, however, that a theory of commitment suitable for our goals is offered in the work of Margaret Gilbert (1989, 1996, 2000, 2006). We rely on Gilbert’s concept of joint commitment to define interpersonal reality as a major component of a social situation. In our view interpersonal communication functions as the main source of interper- sonal reality, through the creation and management of suit- able affordances; this approach leads us to propose a novel point of view on several fundamental concepts related to communicative action, like meaning and uptake. The paper is structured as follows. In the next section we introduce a concept of interpersonal communication and present our view of a situation, with particular regard to its interpersonal component, based on the concept of joint commitment. In the following section we give a concise introduction to joint commitment. Subsequently we deline- ate a theory of communicative acts, and then analyze some relationships between communicative acts, and speech acts as conceived in Speech Act Theory. Finally we draw some conclusions and describe directions for further research. The Social Situation We take interpersonal communication to be a form of com- munication between individual selves. By this we mean that interpersonal communication is ‘person-to-person’ (rather than in broadcast, like in the case of mass communication), strongly related to the personal identity of the interactants