Shared and sharing knowledge in British English: a multimodal analysis of identity construction
Résumé
In an interaction, interpersonal communication is not only based on shared knowledge, but also on experiences which are being shared during the interaction. Therefore, the pool of shared knowledge is constantly changing as the interaction is going on. The present study is developed in the framework of multimodal discourse analysis and is based on a video recording of a dialogue between two British speakers. Rather than collecting different interactions involving several speakers, it has seemed relevant to see how identity is being constructed through a whole interaction. Identity construction is visible in code-switching where lexical material is integrated to the prosodic structure of the utterance. Shared knowledge is also regularly addressed by the participants in an implicit way thanks to the use of discourse markers such as 'you know' and adjunctive general extenders such as 'and stuff' or 'and things' with which the participants evoke the knowledge of the other. However, it happens that some knowledge is erroneously considered as shared by the two women who, when they find out some information is new to their audience, try to address the problem. What is important is the avoidance of interactional failure which is achieved through the production of iconic gestures thanks to which several landmarks in space are depicted.