Communication Accommodation Theory

6 Key excerpts on "Communication Accommodation Theory"

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  eBook - ePub

  Language, Communication, and Intergroup Relations

  A Celebration of the Scholarship of Howard Giles

  • Jake Harwood, Jessica Gasiorek, Herbert D. Pierson, Jon F. Nussbaum, Cynthia Gallois(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  accommodation , and consists of individuals’ ability and willingness to adjust, modify, or regulate language use and communication behaviors in response to the unfolding interaction. In interpersonal contexts, communication adjustment happens so frequently that it is a fundamental part of how we “do” relationships and identity in everyday interaction. CAT has provided a cornerstone theoretical framework for understanding when, how, and why we, as speakers, accommodate to each other’s styles of communication. CAT helps us understand how and why interactants make specific linguistic and paralinguistic moves. It also helps us to explain and predict the outcomes of accommodative moves, including comprehension, as well as broader social, relational, and identity outcomes.

  Accommodation theory has developed into a major systematic theory of communication since its inception in the 1970s. Its theoretical scope and utility have been demonstrated in the numerous chapters (e.g., Giles, 2008; Giles, Coupland, & Coupland, 1991b), books (Giles, 2016; Giles, Coupland, & Coupland, 1991a), and conceptual, narrative, and empirical work published within a variety of academic journals (by our count 67 different journals) using samples both multilingual (60% non-English-speaking) and multicultural (from 35 different countries: Soliz & Giles, 2014). Recent entries in encyclopedias and dictionaries (e.g., Abeyta & Giles, 2017; Dragojevic, Gasiorek, & Giles, 2016b; Zhang & Giles, 2018; Zhang & Imamura, 2018) and empirical studies published in flagship journals (e.g., Gasiorek & Dragojevic, 2017, 2018; Gasiorek & Giles, 2012) further attest to CAT’s heuristic value. Indeed, CAT has demonstrated its utility in helping scholars to predict and understand the complexities of relational, identity, and communication dynamics in interpersonal interaction. We now turn to CAT’s history and development by focusing on its turning points, context shifts, and key constructs.

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  Exploring Communication Theory

  Making Sense of Us

  • Kory Floyd, Paul Schrodt, Larry A. Erbert, Kristina M. Scharp(Authors)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  For example, when communicating with someone with a different social or cultural background, we are more likely to question his motives for convergence than we are to question a member of our own culture or social group. We may possess unfavorable stereotypes about out-group members, believing that their intentions are devious or their cooperation has an ulterior motive. In contrast, communicating with in-group members strengthens our social identity by making us feel distinctive or unique compared to others. 67 CAT is a complex theory that pays attention to convergence and divergence in communication and considers the psychological characteristics of communicators (linguistic and psychological accommodations, motives, intentions, and dispositional qualities). Assumptions of Communication Accommodation Theory The important question in CAT is not, “Do individuals converge or diverge in an interaction?” Rather, it is, “To what extent do they converge or diverge?” According to Giles, the goal of CAT is to develop evidence-based communication practices that focus on both interpersonal and intergroup contexts. 68 Next we identify three assumptions of CAT that help us understand its foundations. Assumption 1: Communication accommodation comprises the range of strategies wherein speakers “attune” their talk to the characteristics of the other. 69 Attuning, or adapting to interaction styles, can be achieved through strategies of discourse management (talk in everyday interaction) and interpersonal control (anticipating and responding to a partner’s conversational needs). 70 Assumption 2: Communication is influenced by people’s orientations to interactions and the sociohistorical contexts in which they are embedded. 71 One’s degree of convergence and management of social distance are determined not only by a specific conversation but also by the social and historical. context governing appropriate social behavior, including the person’s cultural norms and ideologies

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  Introducing Language and Intercultural Communication

  • Jane Jackson(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  While studying speech styles in the U.S., Tannen (1995, 1996, 2001) concluded that gender differences are built into language: ‘because boys and girls grow up in what are essentially different cultures … talk between women and men is cross-cultural communication’ (Tannen 2001: 18). In her work, she attributed linguistic variations to the primary socialization process and culturally embedded notions of gender. ‘Each person’s life is a series of conversations, and simply by understanding and using the words of our language, we all absorb and pass on different, asymmetrical assumptions about men and women’ (ibid: 243).

  Tannen’s publications drew attention to gender variations in linguistic styles in interpersonal communication and their potential impact on gender relations, power relations, and intercultural relationships. Shi and Langman (2012: 169), however, caution that

  all research that examines “women” and “men” as members of groups will invariably lead to stereotyping of behavior and essentializing of the categories of “men” and “women” in ways that assume that there are no differences among women as a whole, and men as a whole, and, in contrast, vast differences between women and men.

  (Gender, identity, and stereotyping are discussed further in Chapters 5 and 6 )

  Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT)

  Language and social psychologists are also interested in the relationship between language, speech behaviors, and culture. Howard Giles and his associates have developed the Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT) to describe and explain why individuals may modify their speech communication practices depending on who they are talking to. More specifically, this framework explores the reasons for, and consequences arising from, speakers converging toward and diverging away from each other (Giles et al. 2012; Zhang & Giles 2018). CAT has received empirical support when examined in diverse languages and cultures, as well as in applied intercultural settings and electronic interaction.

  To win approval, speakers often accommodate their speech to that of their addressee through the act of convergence. More specifically, individuals sometimes shift their style of speech (e.g., adjust their speech rate, accent, content) to become more similar to that of their addressees to emphasize solidarity and reduce social distance (the degree of closeness or separation between groups) (Giles et al

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  Introducing Sociolinguistics

  • Miriam Meyerhoff(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  This was especially clear in Bell’s audience design framework. As we saw in the previous chapter, he attributed some style-shifting to the effects of more personal relationships (i.e., design for an addressee) and some style-shifting to the effects of groups (i.e., design for what Bell called reference groups). In addition, as we have already noted, the mechanisms of audience design are presumed to operate with individuals standing in for a group.

  It will be less clear at present how Labov’s attention to speech framework also relates the group to the individual. However, this connection should become clearer in Chapter 8 when we consider parallels between the frequency of specific variants in different styles and the frequency of those variants in speakers from different social classes.

  Accommodation theory

  Accommodation theory has much in common with the tradition of social identity theory: accommodation theory is a bundle of principles that are intended to characterise the strategies speakers use to establish, contest or maintain relationships through talk. The original statement of the theory by Howard Giles (1973) focused on speech behaviours alone, but developments following in Giles’s footsteps have expanded the scope of the research so as to include strategies in non-verbal communication behaviours as well. The field is, therefore, sometimes referred to as speech accommodation theory and sometimes as communication accommodation theory.

  Accommodation theory

  The process by which speakers attune or adapt their linguistic behaviour in light of their interlocutors’ behaviour and their attitudes towards their interlocutors (may be a conscious or unconscious process). Encompasses both convergence with or divergence from interlocutors’ norms. (See also Social identity theory.)

  Communication accommodation

  The full term for accommodation in which accommodation between individuals’ linguistic behaviour is seen as only one way in which individuals may converge or diverge from each other.

  Attunement

  A term sometimes preferred over accommodation because of the strong (but incorrect) association of the specific strategy convergence with the more general phenomenon of accommodation

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  Family Communication

  Cohesion and Change

  • Kathleen M. Galvin, Dawn O. Braithwaite, Paul Schrodt, Carma L. Bylund(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 3 , we introduce you to five additional theories that influence research and will be helpful for you to develop your own framework for understanding and analyzing interactions in family systems: (a) Communication Accommodation Theory, (b) communication privacy management theory, (c) narrative theory, (d) narrative performance theory, and (e) relational dialectics theory.

  Communication Accommodation Theory

  You have likely encountered many situations in which you need to adapt your communication to a particular family member. For example, you may talk more loudly with an older grandparent, use simple words so that a young cousin can understand you, explain a longstanding family joke to a brother-in-law who has just joined the family, or avoid using slang with a family member who does not speak your native language. All of these adjustments are addressed in Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT), which helps us understand how family members attempt to construct a shared family identity via modifying their communication. The theory focuses on how, when, and why we make communication adjustments, how others perceive these changes, and what the outcomes are of making adjustments.4 Sometimes, you make these adjustments almost without thinking, while other times, you may give it a lot of thought and planning.

  Communication scholar Howard Giles first started studying the way people make communicative adjustments in the 1970s. He focused on issues like how we switch our language, accent, or dialect when talking with others. For example, you likely use current slang with your friends and adapt your language when you talk with a parent or grandparent. Over time, Giles developed a theory that he and other scholars applied to families, especially when trying to understand various aspects of a family’s social identity, how we create our social identities based on the social groups to which we belong, and how we adapt our attitudes, behaviors, and communication.5

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  Recent Advances in Language, Communication, and Social Psychology

  • Howard Giles, Robert N. St. Clair, Howard Giles, Robert N. St. Clair(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The person-salient/group-salient continuum is relevant to speech in social encounters because speech variants often function as valued dimensions of intergroup comparison in the formation of social identity (Giles & Johnson, 1981; Taylor, Bassili, & Aboud, 1973). Social identity is defined by Tajfel and Turner (1979) as consisting of “those aspects of an individual’s self-image that derive from the social categories to which he perceives himself as belonging” [p. 40], and it may be favourable or unfavourable, according to the individual’s evaluation of the ingroup-outgroup differences which he perceives. Speech, unlike some dimensions of social identity (e.g., skin pigmentation), is under considerable voluntary control, making it easy for speakers to accentuate or attentuate group differences in speech at will, in order either to serve the interests of favourable social identity or for other purposes.

  Speech Accommodation Theory

  In a number of theoretical publications, Giles and colleagues (e.g., Giles, 1984; Giles & Powesland, 1975; Thakerar, Giles & Cheshire, 1982) have been developing speech accommodation theory. This approach deals with changes in speech style as they relate to interacting individuals of the same or different groups and to their relations, both actual and desired. According to existing speech accommodation theory, style-shifts which increase perceived linguistic similarity between speaker and interlocutor are known as convergence and occur when the speaker seeks communicational efficiency or the other’s social approval. Style-shifts which linguistically differentiate the speaker from his or her partner are known as divergence3 and occur when the speaker either defines the encounter in group-salient terms and seeks positive ingroup identity, or else wishes to dissociate personally from the other in an encounter defined as person-salient (Thakerar et al., 1982). However, there is a slight asymmetry about this, since conditions giving rise to convergence and divergence might be expected to be simple theoretical opposites of each other, which is not clearly obvious (e.g., Is person-salience, as such, associated with either convergence or divergence, or both?). One way of restoring symmetry and simplicity could be to portray speech accommodation theory in terms of a simple two-way statistical interaction, in which the person-salient/group-salient dimension determines magnitude of convergence or divergence and the speaker’s favourablity towards his or her partner determines the direction of speech shifts, as shown in Fig. 10.1 . Here, the vertical dimension runs from extreme outgroup speech variety upwards towards extreme ingroup speech variety and shifts

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