Background knowledge

Our ability to arrive automatically at interpretations of the unwritten and the unsaid must be based on pre-existing know-ledge structures. These structures function like familiar patterns from previous experience that we use to interpret new experiences. The most general term for a pattern of this type is a schema (plural,schemata). A schema is a preexisting knowledge struc-ture in memory.

If there is a fixed, static pattern to the schema, it is sometimes

called a frame. A frame shared by everyone within a social group would be something like a prototypical version. For example, within a frame for an apartment, there will be assumed compon-ents such as kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom. The assumed ele-ments of a frame are generally not stated, as in the advertisement in [5].

[5] Apartment for rent. $500. 763-6683.

A normal (local) interpretation of the small fragment of discourse in [5] will be based on not only an 'apartment' frame as the basis of inference (if X is an apartment, then X has a kitchen, a bath-room, and a bedroom), but also an 'apartment for rent' advertise-ment frame. Only on the basis of such a frame can the advertiser expect the reader to fill in 'per month' and not 'per year' after '$500' here. If a reader of the discourse in [5] expects that it would be 'per week', for example, then that reader clearly has a different frame (i. e. based on a different experience of the cost of apartment rental!). The pragmatic point will nevertheless be the same: the reader uses a pre-existing knowledge structure to create an interpretation of what is not stated in the text.

When more dynamic types of schemata are considered, they are more often described as scripts. A script is a pre-existing know-ledge structure involving event sequences. We use scripts to build interpretations of accounts of what happened. For example, we have scripts for what normally happens in all kinds of events, such as going to a doctor's office, a movie theater, a restaurant, or a grocery store as in [6].

[6] I stopped to get some groceries but there weren't any bas-kets left so by the time I arrived at the check-out counter I must have looked like a juggler having a bad day.

Part of this speaker's normal script for 'getting groceries' ob-viously involves having a basket and going to the check-out counter. Everything else that happened in this event sequence is assumed to be shared background knowledge (for example, she went through a door to get inside the store and she walked around picking up items from shelves).

The concept of a script is simply a way of recognizing some expected sequence of actions in an event. Because most of the details of a script are assumed to be known, they are unlikely to be stated. For members of the same culture, the assumption of shared scripts allows much to be communicated that is not said. However, for members of different cultures, such an assumption can lead to a great deal of miscommunication.

Cultural schemata

Everyone has had the experience of surprise when some assumed component of an event is unexpectedly missing. I remember my first visit to a Moroccan restaurant and the absence of one of my 'restaurant script' requirements—there were no chairs! (The large comfortable cushions were an excellent replacement. ) It is almost inevitable that our background knowledge structures, our schemata for making sense of the world, will be culturally deter-mined. We develop our cultural schemata in the contexts of our basic experiences.

For some obvious differences (for example, cushions instead of chairs), we can readily modify the details of a cultural schema. For many other subtle differences, however, we often don't recog-nize that there may be a misinterpretation based on different schemata. In one reported example, an Australian factory super-visor clearly assumed that other factory workers would know that Easter was close and hence they would all have a holiday. He asked another worker, originally from Vietnam, about her plans, as in [7].

[7] You have five days off. What are you going to do?

The Vietnamese worker immediately interpreted the utterance in terms of being laid off (rather than having a holiday). Something good in one person's schema can sound like something bad in another's.

Date: 2016-01-03; view: 921