{"id":4427,"date":"2009-04-17T08:48:33","date_gmt":"2009-04-17T05:48:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eltweekly.com\/more\/?p=211"},"modified":"2009-04-17T08:48:33","modified_gmt":"2009-04-17T05:48:33","slug":"eltweekly-issue16-subscriber-space-research-paper-by-mahnaz-azad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eltweekly.humbeestudio.xyz\/?p=4427","title":{"rendered":"ELTWeekly Issue#16, Subscriber space: Research paper by Mahnaz Azad"},"content":{"rendered":"

Accommodation Theory Revisited<\/strong><\/p>\n

By <\/span>Mahnaz Azad,\u00a0Islamic Azad University<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

In interpersonal situations, language can be used to convey information about one’s personality, temperament, social status, group belonging, and so forth. Although many of us like to think that we interact essentially the same way to virtually every person we encounter, due to fairness and our integrity, this simply is not true. In most instances, it is desirable, and even necessary, to adjust our language patterns to our conversational partners, be they close friends or loathed offender. Sometimes we encode this deliberately and consciously, other times it emerges automatically and may not even be decoded overtly (Giles and Baker, 2008). Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT), initially known as Speech Accommodation Theory<\/em>, was first developed by Giles in (1971) so as to explain how we manage certain facets of interpersonal communication, particularly, our choice of accents and dialects. Indeed, it was originally conceptualized to excavate more complex socio-psychological understanding of language choices than a mere recourse to people’s socially normative dispositions. Over the years, and with various colleagues, Giles has elaborated and revised the theory in varying directions and it has, according to many commentators, assumed the status of a major socio-psychological theory of language and social interaction. In what follows, the underlying concept of Accommodation Theory, its components and related issues will be elaborated and subsequently, its similarities with some other models, some proposed criticisms regarding the theory, and finally some of its implications will be presented.<\/p>\n

Each one of us is aware that our style of speech changes in the twinkling of an eye, as it were, depending on a wide range of variables such as the setting, the topic of discourse, the person we are interacting with, the purpose of the interaction, and so on. For instance, we tend to speak more slowly when conversing with foreigners, or use grammatically simple language with babies or children (baby talk<\/em>). We also tend to match non-verbal behaviors. It would create greater rapport and cause people to approve us more. This can be unwelcome, especially if it is perceived as aping or being overly familiar. The reverse also happens: people deliberately assert their identity by speaking and acting differently from the other person. In other words, we accommodate <\/em> to others by adjusting our communicational behavior to the requisite roles that participants are assigned in a given context.<\/p>\n

That language is \u2018socially diagnostic’ is manifest in everyday conversations. How many times have we come across a \u2018different’ accent or pronunciation of an individual sound without adopting a critical stance or making guesses as to the speaker’s non-linguistic <\/em> characteristics, such as status, education, class, or even intelligence? In fact, the slightest shade in pronunciation can often have evaluative effects for its utterer (p.32). Huspek (1986)\u00a0 contends that, if someone says, “I went joggin’<\/em> this morning” instead of “I went jogging<\/em> this morning,” chances are that in the first case he will be perceived as being of lower rank than in the second case (cited in Giles and Coupland, 1991,p. 32). As Giles and Clair (1979) note, “language is not a homogeneous, static system. It is multi-channeled, multi-variable and capable of vast modifications from context to context by the speaker, slight differences of which are often detected by listeners and afforded social significance”(p.17). Given the fact that even the most trivial aspects of speech and pronunciation can take on crucial importance, it stands to reason that individuals, consciously or unconsciously, should, among other things, seek identification with others through language. It is in this light that Accommodation Theory has become an important, though controversial, issue in sociolinguistics and social psychology (Griffin, 2009). Communication Accommodation Theory focuses on the role of conversations in our lives. The theory has been incorporated in a number of different studies. For instance, accommodation has been studied in the mass media (Bell, 1991), with families (Fox, 1999), with Chinese students (Hornsey & Gallois, 1998), with the elderly (Harwood, 2002), on the job (McCroskey & Richmond, 2000), in interviews (Willemyns, Gallois, Callan, & Pittam, 1997), and even with messages left on telephone answering machines (Buzzanell, Burrell, Stafford, & Berkowitz, 1996) ( cited in West and Turner,2004).\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

There is no doubt that the theory is heuristic. The theory is expansive enough to be very complete, and it has been supported by research from diverse authors. In addition, the theory’s core processes of convergence and divergence make it relatively easy to understand, underscoring the simplicity of the theory. It is an axiom that accommodating to others’ speech may prove beneficial or detrimental, in the long run. For example, immigrants whose command of standard English or any other language is not “up to scratch” is bound to suffer discrimination and prejudice on the part of teachers and society at large, which influences their educational and career prospects. Moreover, adapting our speech patterns (pronunciation, speech rate, content etc.) to those of our interlocutors can exert a tremendous influence on our career prospects and prestige, or even affect the judicial outcome of a trial. At any rate,<\/p>\n

“…accommodation is to be seen as a multiply-organized and contextually complex set of alternatives, regularly available to communicators in face-to-face talk. It can function to index and achieve solidarity with or dissociation from a conversational partner, reciprocally and dynamically “(Giles and Coupland, 1991, p.60-61).<\/em><\/p>\n

Nearly every relationship<\/a> we have entails a particular accommodation of speech<\/a>:<\/p>\n