Accommodation Theory
Accommodation Theory is a sociolinguistic concept that explores how individuals adjust their speech patterns to either converge with or diverge from the speech of their interlocutors. Convergence involves adapting one's speech to be more similar to the other person, while divergence involves emphasizing differences. This theory helps to explain how language is used to establish social identity and rapport in communication.
7 Key excerpts on "Accommodation Theory"
eBook - ePub- Miriam Meyerhoff(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...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...
eBook - ePub- Urszula Clark(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...In their seminal work, Giles and St Clair define speech accommodation as the degree to which speakers adjust ways of interacting with one another, especially between people of different cultures. They do this by altering in some way linguistic features such as pronunciation, intonation, morphosyntax, register and so on, according to whom they are speaking to. Accommodation Theory takes account of the fact that communication processes are complex, comprising of different components or features and the various relationships between them (Garrett 2010: 88). Accommodating one’s speech in this way contributes towards forming a common linguistic identity between the speakers or interlocutors (Schiffman 1997). Schiffman found that by adopting high-prestige English to match that of her upper-class clients, the shop assistant presented herself as – and was in turn perceived by her client – as a fellowmember of the British, or Welsh, middle class. Accommodation Theory, or Speech Accommodation Theory, is based upon the twin concepts of convergence and divergence. Convergence is the term used to describe a strategy of minimising dissimilarities in communication features between speakers. Divergence is used to describe the opposite – the degree to which difference is accentuated. A middle point, maintenance, is also recognised, where a speaker does not shift in either direction. Members of the British Royal family, for example, on the whole, neither converge nor diverge in their speech on public occasions. They simply maintain their speech since, hierarchically, their speech serves as a mid-point that speakers who aim to speak standard English with an RP accent aspire to. Kelly and Toshiyuki (1993), in their simulation of conditions of vocal convergence (accommodation) and divergence (non-accommodation), found, like Coupland, that their subjects had more positive feelings towards speakers whose voice volume was similar to their own...
eBook - ePubLanguage, Communication, and Intergroup Relations
A Celebration of the Scholarship of Howard Giles
- Jake Harwood, Jessica Gasiorek, Herbert D. Pierson, Jon F. Nussbaum, Cynthia Gallois, Jake Harwood, Jessica Gasiorek, Herbert D. Pierson, Jon F. Nussbaum, Cynthia Gallois(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...M. (1979). Accommodation Theory: Optimal levels of convergence. In H. Giles & R. N. St. Clair (Eds.), Language and social psychology (pp. 45–65). Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Giles, H., & Soliz, J. (2015). Communication Accommodation Theory: A situated framework for relational, family, and intergroup dynamics. In D. O. Braithwaite & P. Schrodt (Eds.), Engaging theories in interpersonal communication: Multiple perspectives (pp. 162–173). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Giles, H., Taylor, D. M., & Bourhis, R. Y. (1973) Towards a theory of interpersonal accommodation through language: Some Canadian data. Language in Society, 2, 177–92. Giles, H., & Williams, A. (1994). Patronizing the young: Forms and evaluations. International Journal of Aging & Human Development, 39, 33–53. Hajek, C., Giles, H., Barker, V., Lin, M.-C., Zhang, Y. B., Hummert, M. L., & Anderson, M. C. (2008). Expressed trust and compliance in police–civilian encounters: The role of communication accommodation in Chinese and American settings. Chinese Journal of Communication, 2, 168–180. Harwood, J., & Giles, H. (1996). Reactions to older people being patronized: The role of response strategies and attributed thoughts. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 15, 395–421. doi:10.1177/0261937X960154001 Hewett, D. G., Watson, B. G., Gallois, C. (2015). Communication between hospital doctors: Underaccommodation and interpretability. Language and Communication, 41, 71–83. doi:10.1016/j.langcom.2014.10.007 Hewett, D. G., Watson, B. M., Gallois, C., Ward, M., & Leggett, B. A. (2009a). Communication in medical records: Intergroup language and patient care. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 28, 119–138. doi:10.1177/0261927X08330612 Hewett, D. G., Watson, B. M., Gallois, C., Ward, M., & Leggett, B. A. (2009b). Intergroup communication between hospital doctors: Implications for quality of patient care. Social Science & Medicine, 69, 1732–1740. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2958.2012.01426.x Hummert, M. L. (2011)...
eBook - ePubExploring Communication Theory
Making Sense of Us
- Kory Floyd, Paul Schrodt, Larry A. Erbert, Kristina M. Scharp(Authors)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Another is by considering the social rules and norms that provide a framework for communicative action and competence. Through accommodation, we align our individual beliefs, motives, and ways of being, and we recognize that others play an important role in our continued adaptation to social circumstances. See Table 7.4 for a summary of CAT’s intellectual tradition, assumptions, key concepts, and claims. Table 7.4 Snapshot of Communication Accommodation Theory Intellectual tradition Giles relied on four social psychological theories: Byrne’s similarity-attraction paradigm, social exchange theory, Heider’s attribution theory, Tajfel’s theory of intergroup relations. Assumptions 1. Communication accommodation comprises the range of strategies wherein speakers “attune” their talk to characteristics of the other. 2. Communication is influenced by people’s orientations to interactions and the sociohistorical contexts in which they are embedded. 3. Through communication, people not only exchange facts, ideas, and emotions; they also negotiate their memberships in various social categories. Key concepts 1. Convergence—the process whereby people adjust their communication behavior to create connections with others. 2. Divergence—the process by which people create distance or accentuate differences from others. 3. Maintenance—the process in which a person persists in the use of his or her original communication style, regardless of the communication behaviors of the other person. 4. Accommodation—the process by which individuals vary their behavior for the purposes of convergence and divergence. 5. Underaccommodation—the process whereby people believe that others...
- Howard Giles, Robert N. St. Clair, Howard Giles, Robert N. St. Clair(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...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 divergence 3 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?)...
eBook - ePub- Janet Holmes, Nick Wilson(Authors)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...what to say to whom and how to say it appropriately in different situations. Example: Growing up in Brazil, a Cahinahua child learns that a direct answer to a first question implies that the speaker has no time to talk, while a vague answer means that the question will be answered more directly the second time, and that talk can continue. Sociolinguistic universals Definition: Generalisations concerning the relationships between language and society which, it is proposed, can be applied to any speech community. Example: If a particular pronunciation or grammatical feature is used to express a shift in formality of style, the same feature will be used to signal differences in social group membership. Sociolinguistic variable See Linguistic variable Sociopragmatic competence Definition: Interpreting the social meaning conveyed by talk-in-interaction, and encoding social meaning appropriately in different social contexts. Example: Knowing whether to interpret the use of dear in an interaction as an endearment or a patronising microaggression. Speech Accommodation Theory See Communication Accommodation Theory Speech community Definition: A regionally or socially definable human group, all of whose members share at least a single code/variety and a set of norms and rules for its appropriate use. Example: Italians in Aosta; Greek community in Melbourne; and French-speaking community in Quebec. Speech convergence Definition: Ways in which speakers emphasise. similarities between their speech and that of others. When people like the person they are talking to or wish to please them or put them at ease, their speech often becomes more similar: i.e. their speech converges. Example: A travel agent in Wales using Welsh when talking to Welsh clients and English to English clients. Speech divergence Definition: Ways in which speakers emphasise differences between their speech and that of others...
eBook - ePubFamily Communication
Cohesion and Change
- Kathleen M. Galvin, Dawn O. Braithwaite, Paul Schrodt, Carma L. Bylund(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...In fact, one of your textbook authors, Dawn O. Braithwaite, and her colleagues recently published a book highlighting 29 different family communication theories. 3 We already talked about one of these theories, family communication patterns theory, in Chapter 2. Here in 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...
