58 A Grammar of Spoken English Discourse
Sperber and Wilson’s proposal neatly solves the problem of solipsism implicit
in accounts that require speakers to ensure they hold mutual or shared beliefs.
Speakers engaged in successful communication are not required to hold any
opinions as to whether or not they hold mutual or shared beliefs. Instead
they form assessments based on their own perceptual abilities; their previous
experiences and memories of deriving information from the environment.
Sperber and Wilson recognize that communication is risky and that there is
no guarantee that it always succeeds. Yet communication between people
who share community membership; speak the same language, have similar
memories of dealing with a common environment; and share basic percep-
tual abilities almost always succeeds. A similar view is expressed by Hasan
(1996: 37–8) who partly defi nes the context of situation in which speakers’
operate as ‘fi ltered reality’: the context is the part of the outside world which
is fi ltered through the speaker’s focus upon some part of his/her external
environment. Hasan argues that the context of situation is not exclusively
subjective but is also shaped by the semiotic codes prevalent in a community
which mediate the environment in which its members live.
As speakers’ perceptions of the extent of hearers’ communicative needs
are necessarily subjective, Hasan’s views appear to differ from those of
Sperber and Wilson as regards the social role of language. Sperber and
Wilson regard communication as an almost exclusively psychological pro-
cess: though their mention of shared community membership acknowledges
indirectly that social factors impinge on the communicative process. Hasan
argues strongly that, in the analysis of communication, scholars must pay
heed to the way language shapes and is itself shaped by societal institutions.
Yet she concedes that
the sharp distinction between the individual and the social, the unique and
the conventional, is perhaps only an artefact of our analysis. (ibid. 38)After all, everyone has been shaped by the interaction between the physical
world, their language and the relevant societal institutions. Sperber (1996: 1)
claims that culture is formed from the circulation of linguistically encoded
ideas. The more the ideas are repeated, the more conventional they become.
The use of language to encode ideas, according to this view, accounts for
differences between human cultures. Shared community membership is
itself shaped by language use. To conclude, the differences between Hasan,
and Sperber and Wilson seem to be more apparent than real.
To sum up, it is a truism that when individuals communicate they, in some
sense, share information and that unless there is some common ground