In this post, we look at what makes people understand each other during a dialogue or discussion. What makes communication successful and seamless? For that, let’s look at the concept of grounding in communication, as described for example by Herbert H. Clark and Susan E. Brennan in their paper (here is a link to the paper) titled “Grounding in Communication” in 1991. One of the main problems in a discussion is that we (can) never really say everything we would need to say to be perfectly understood by everybody. Yet we are productive (hopefully), so there definitely is common understanding. Clark and Brennan look at the mechanics of how this happens, and why it is so difficult. At the end, we look at the mechanics we implement with Imaranda to make understanding happen in online settings.