Affordances and Common Grounds in Buyer-Seller Interactions

Abstract

This study examines the interactions between buyers and sellers in the market setting using the common ground theoretical framework. From the existing literature, it is observed that no research work has examined the above subject matter in the Igbo language using the above mentioned theoretical framework. This is the lacuna in the literature that this study intends to address. The specific objective is to explore the interactions between presuppositions, stages of understanding an utterance and reception strategies in buyer-seller interactions during haggling. Ten interactions were recorded and three of them were sampled in this study. The data were analyzed using the common ground theory. The findings of the study reveal that both the seller and buyer often have the generic structure of buyer-seller interactions in their subconscious, which they put into practice when they engage in market discourse. Also, the buyers and sellers update their personal or emergent common ground as they negotiate meaning during interactions. Furthermore, as the result of the common ground shared by the buyer and the seller, they interpret every utterance based on the affordances of a speech event in a market setting where a buyer is under no obligation to buy after haggling nor is the seller obligated to sell. It also discovers that presupposition is at the heart of grounding because at every interactive turn, a speaker believes that the addressee understands his/ her intentions. The researcher recommends further research on the pragmatic implications for the use of multiple codes during buyer-seller interactions in Igbo land.