Avoidance of cognitive efforts as a risk factor in interaction

Discourse Studies. 2022. Vol. 24. No. 3. P. 269–290.

Mustajoki A., Baikulova A.

In an ordinary interaction, communicants have various, mostly unconscious goals which reflect
their interactional, social and personal needs. In these interactions, people’s minds try to find a
balance between reaching these goals and consuming cognitive energy. If a speaker puts too little
effort into speech production, she risks not achieving her communicative goals. This is especially
typical when the atmosphere is relaxed, a good example of which is family discourse. An analysis
of recorded conversations shows that there are certain regular manifestations of risk-taking
in family discourse, such as expressing immature thoughts, raising a large variety of topics and
overguessing. A substantial amount of risk-taking in family discourse is in one way or another
connected with false confidence in the interlocutors’ common ground. Family members know
each other well, which results in an overestimation of the similarity of their understanding of
words and objects. This attitude leads them to use cryptic, hard-to-comprehend speech. Quick,
everyday interactions are mostly automated, and the speakers do not recognise that their speech
is full of implicitness and underdeterminacy.

Keywords: interaction, risk-taking, family discourse, common ground fallacy, recipient design, Cognitive energy, cryptic speech, implicitness, underdeterminacy

Publication based on the results of: Constants and variables in oral and written discourse (2022)