Lexical_entrainment
Lexical entrainment
When people agree on terminology in a given conversation
Lexical entrainment is the phenomenon in conversational linguistics of the process of the subject adopting the reference terms of their interlocutor. In practice, it acts as a mechanism of the cooperative principle in which both parties to the conversation employ lexical entrainment as a progressive system to develop "conceptual pacts"[1] (a working temporary conversational terminology) to ensure maximum clarity of reference in the communication between the parties; this process is necessary to overcome the ambiguity[2] inherent in the multitude of synonyms that exist in language.
Lexical entrainment arises by two cooperative mechanisms:[3]
- Embedded corrections – a reference to the object implied by the context of the sentence, but with no explicit reference to the change in terminology
- Exposed corrections – an explicit reference to the change in terminology, possibly including a request to assign the referent a common term (e.g., "by 'girl', do you mean 'Jane'?")