Naming and Describing in Social Communication

Abstract

Naming and describing provide referential labels for entities. They seem to have much in common, but they also seem to be distinct. The social communication task developed by Robert M. Krauss (Krauss, Garlock, Bricker and McMahon, 1977; Krauss and Blucksberg, 1977; Krauss and Weinheimer, 1964, 1966) provides a functional model of how naming and describing are related and yet distinct modes of reference. Eighteen of Krauss's original dialogue transcripts were reanalyzed in order to characterize both the sequential relation between naming and describing (i.e., how a referential description is shortened into a name through use) and the structural relation between the two reference types (i.e., what parts of antecedent descriptive phrases are abbreviated and composed to form the consequent name).