Lexical entrainment

Lexical entrainment is the phenomenon in conversational linguistics of the process of the subject adopting the reference terms of their interlocutor. In practice, it acts as a mechanism of the cooperative principle in which both parties to the conversation employ lexical entrainment as a progressive system to develop "conceptual pacts"[1] (a working temporary conversational terminology) to ensure maximum clarity of reference in the communication between the parties; this process is necessary to overcome the ambiguity[2] inherent in the multitude of synonyms that exist in language.

Lexical entrainment arises by two cooperative mechanisms:[3]

  • Embedded corrections – a reference to the object implied by the context of the sentence, but with no explicit reference to the change in terminology
  • Exposed corrections – an explicit reference to the change in terminology, possibly including a request to assign the referent a common term (e.g., "by 'girl', do you mean 'Jane'?")
  1. ^ Brennan, Susan (1996). "Lexical entrainment in spontaneous dialog". Proceedings, 1996 International Symposium on Spoken Dialogue (96): 41–44.
  2. ^ Deutsch, Werner; Pechmann, Thomas (1982). "Social interaction and the development of definite descriptions". Cognition. 11 (2): 159–184. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(82)90024-5. PMID 6976880.
  3. ^ Garrod, Simon; Anderson, Anthony (1987). "Saying what you mean in dialogue: A study in conceptual and semantic co-ordination". Cognition. 27 (2): 181–218. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.476.1791. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(87)90018-7. PMID 3691025.