Marketing communication: principles and practice

indexical
(i.e.
context gives meaning to our talk), and 
reflexive
(i.e. context depends on
meaning). The context for understanding each other does not automatically
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arise (it is not pre-existent); rather, we are responsible for creating our own
context for understanding. The meaning of a situation comes from the
combination of person, place, time, and so on. Sociolinguistics provides a
way of analysing the manner in which we choose our language use in the
situation in which we believe that we find ourselves. Talk is naturally
ambiguous – we never know all that the other person knows. All language
use is in a context, therefore meaning-making comes through interpretation.
It is not the words of language that are the basis of communication, it is
previous and current interaction that is at the heart of communicating, to
provide understanding. Interaction does the communicating; language use
clarifies. Experience may be past and present.
Misunderstanding arises when the communicators create differing contexts
for understanding. In this context misunderstanding is differing under-
standing. Personal context is a taken-for-granted knowledge. The shared
context necessary for shared understanding is created in interaction. 
What are the implications of the inherent indexicality and reflexivity of
language that are a barrier to shared understanding? First, interactors
(communicators) have a responsibility for creating shared context for
understanding. Second, we need to understand misunderstanding to create
shared understanding founded on shared context through strategic talk.
Third, the service encounter has to be a mutual context-creating interaction
(we jointly create the world we experience).
Misunderstanding is natural but can be avoided through what Heyman
calls ‘strategic talk’, that is a conscious effort to talk in order to create context