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RESUME Plusieurs études ont souligné l’importance du partage d’informations contextuelles lors de tâches coopératives. S’inspirant de la notion de contexte partagé, notre étude visait à préciser le partage d’informations contextuelles dans deux formes d’interaction en tennis de table : une coopérative et une concurrentielle. Afin de reconstruire le partage d’informations contextuelles du point de vue des acteurs, cette étude a été menée en référence au cadre théorique et méthodologique du cours d’action (Theureau, 1992). Elle a permis : a)  d’identifier trois formes typiques de partage des informations contextuelles ; et b)  de préciser les processus régulant le partage de ces informations et les processus de vérification de ce partage. La discussion s’organise autour de : a)  l’indétermination, la complexité et la coconstruction de l’intelligibilité mutuelle dans les deux formes d’interaction sportives ; et b)  la relation de codéfinition existante, en tennis de table, entre l’efficacité relative des deux joueurs et le partage d’informations contextuelles.

ANALYSIS OF CONTEXTUAL INFORMATION SHARING IN TWO TYPES OF SPORTS INTERACTION : COOPERATIVE AND COMPETITIVE Numerous studies have underlined the importance of contextual information sharing during the performance of cooperative tasks. Our study was based on the notion of shared context (Salembier & Zouinar, 2004) and analyzed the forms of contextual information sharing that occur during two types of sports interaction : cooperation and competition. We worked within the theoretical and methodological framework of the « course of action » (Theureau, 1992), according to the main assumptions of the situated cognition paradigm. Four national-level table tennis players volunteered to participate in the study. We studied the collective activity of two partners in a doubles table tennis match (cooperative interaction) and two opponents during a singles match (competitive interaction) during a national competition. The matches were videotaped, and the players’ verbalizations as they viewed the tapes were collected a posteriori. The data were processed by (a) transcribing the players’actions and verbalizations (b) determining the meaningful structures in each player’s course of action, and (c) analyzing how contextual information was shared by reconstructing the collective interaction of the two players’courses of action. Our results characterized what kind of information was shared by the players, and revealed three typical forms of contextual information sharing that alternated during both types of interaction : symmetrical sharing, asymmetrical sharing, and no sharing. These three typical forms of sharing appeared in different situations according to the type of interaction, and the players regulated the forms of sharing by implementing different processes. Our results also showed that the players implemented a verification process to determine whether the interpretations they had constructed on the basis of shared contextual information were plausible. Our results confirmed that sharing contextual information is an activity that emerges from the accomplishment of action and joint access to the resources present in the context. They point to the importance of interpretive activity in the construction of mutual intelligibility and suggest the undetermined and complex character of this intelligibility. In both cooperative and competitive interactions, mutual intelligibility is achieved by a permanent co-construction that operates with the aid of several processes (exploration, monitoring, display of certain aspects of one’s activity, focusing, and masking).