CONCEPTUAL PACTS AND LEXICAL CHOICE IN CONVERSATION

When people in conversation refer repeatedly to the same object, they coma to use the same terms. This phenomenon, called lexical entrainmen t, has several possible explanations. A historical accounts appeal onl y to the informativeness and availability of terms and to the current salience of the object's features. Historical accounts appeal in addit ion to the recency and frequency of past references and to partner-spe cific conceptualizations of the object that people achieve interactive ly. Evidence from 3 experiments favors a historical account and sugges ts that when speakers refer to an object, they are proposing a concept ualization of it, a proposal their addressees may or may not agree to. Once they do establish a shared conceptualization, a conceptual pact, they appeal to it in later references even when they could use simple r references. Over time, speakers simplify conceptual pacts and, when necessary, abandon them for new conceptualizations.