Grounding and information communication in intercultural and intraculturaldyadic discourse

Past research on the theory of grounding indicates that grounding facilitat es human communication in intracultural conversations. This study extends p revious research by examining whether grounding functions in the same way i n both intracultural and intercultural conditions. Participants were 40 Can adians and 40 Chinese who formed 40 dyads in 4 experimental conditions: Can adian/Canadian, Chinese/Chinese, Chinese speaker/Canadian listener, and Can adian speaker/Chinese listener. All conversations were videotaped and micro analyzed. It was found that the more dyads engaged in grounding activities, the better they communicated the information from the speaker to the liste ner in all experimental conditions combined. It was also found that groundi ng and listener recall scores were highly correlated when the Canadians ser ved as listeners, but not when the Chinese served as listeners. This findin g seems to indicate a cultural difference between Chinese and Canadians reg arding the meaning of their grounding activities. Chinese listeners interac t for the sake of interacting (e.g., building rapport), whereas Canadian li steners interact for the sake of transmitting content.