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Shared knowledge
Task B – Our answer
We would expect the flat to have a number of rooms: a living room, a
bedroom, a kitchen (or possibly a kitchen area within the living room)
and a bathroom. There are possible variations on this pattern, depending
on the size and opulence of the flat (it might have a hall, a toilet separate
from the bathroom, more than one bedroom), but we would expect it to have
at least the rooms we specified. On the other hand, we would be very surprised
if it had a gymnasium, a swimming pool or a laboratory.
We would predict that the young couple will probably end up in the bedroom,
in bed, making love (that is what we expect to happen in fictional romance).
They might well spend some time first in the living room, perhaps having
a drink or kissing. They are much less likely to go to the kitchen and
cook themselves a meal (people don’t normally eat two meals within
a short time of one another), or play Scrabble or Monopoly for the rest
of the evening (young lovers usually have other things to fill their time
with).
From this we can see that we can use our shared knowledge to make informed
predictions. If a play contains objects or events which go against our
shared knowledge assumptions, we will expect them to be dramatically important
and to be explained by the time the play ends.
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