The world of unexpressed information that an utterance carries along with it is called background information, which is also referred to as common knowledge or common ground, as it is assumed to be shared by the interlocutors. Besides, as such assumptions involve recursive and mutual embeddings (I know that you know that I know, etc.), the term mutual knowledge is also very often used.

Sometimes, while communicating with each other in an implicit manner, people still manage to understand one another: this is possible due to this very background information, which is considered to be shared both by the speaker and the hearer.

Verschueren (1999) states that, whatever term is used, the implicit meaning it covers is not a fixed entity, but can be shaped and reshaped in the course of linguistic action and interaction. In fact, the impossibility of full explicitness and the need to explain diverse aspects of general background information to achieve a full understanding of any instance of language use are really pervasive and........

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