ELTWeekly Issue#16, Subscriber space: Research paper by Mahnaz Azad

Accommodation Theory Revisited

By Mahnaz Azad, Islamic Azad University

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, 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.

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). 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 to others by adjusting our communicational behavior to the requisite roles that participants are assigned in a given context.

That language is ‘socially diagnostic’ is manifest in everyday conversations. How many times have we come across a ‘different’ accent or pronunciation of an individual sound without adopting a critical stance or making guesses as to the speaker’s non-linguistic 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) contends that, if someone says, “I went joggin’ this morning” instead of “I went jogging 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).

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,

“…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).

Nearly every relationship we have entails a particular accommodation of speech:

When speaking to children we adjust the way that we speak as well as the words we use to accommodate the individual to whom we are speaking.
When speaking to the elderly we often change the way that we interact, including our speech patterns and behaviors and might show more respect.
When giving information during a job interview, an individual is going to accommodate his/her speech to the situation and person to whom they are speaking.
One would not talk the same way to his/her boss as he/she would to his/her friends.
Individuals speak to their parents differently than they speak to their peers (McCann and Giles, 2006).

Accommodation theory or ‘Interpersonal Accommodation Theory’ has sprung from the awareness that speakers are not merely “incumbents” of roles imposed on them by society but rather as inquirers attempting to comprehend themselves and others (Runciman, 1998).

There have been proposed four psychological theories in this regard: similarity-attraction, social exchange, causal attribution, and Tajfel’s theory of intergroup distinctiveness (Giles and Clair, 1979), each to be tackled briefly here.

A very common modification of speech is what has been called as convergence. This term refers to the processes whereby two or more individuals alter or shift their speech to resemble that of those they are interacting with. For example, someone might not only change their way of speaking but also how they act and even dress more smartly if they were to meet their boss for the first time. This interaction might cause a young man to dress better than usual, act in a calmer and perhaps more inquisitive manner and speak with a politeness that is not usual to his everyday demeanor. Individuals in an interaction might converge for the purpose of demonstrating that they approve of the other person in the interaction.

Boylan (2009) distinguished between two Saussurian-like categories of convergence, each with corresponding subcategories:

Convergence of expression (i.e., convergence of the interactants’ way of communicating, verbal or otherwise behavioral); this produces what will be called formal accommodation; and
Convergence of intentionality (i.e., convergence of the interactants’ will to mean, deriving from their culturally-determined will to be); this produces what will be called substantial accommodation.

Expressive convergence may be divided into two subcategories:

Linguistic expressivity. As in standard Accommodation Theory, this includes not only ‘delivery features’ , whether intentional signs, such as a sneer, or unintentional signals like a shaky voice: but also ‘discourse features‘ such as ‘genres'(Miller, 1984) and ‘functions’ – for example, Halliday’s (1975) instrumental, regulatory, interactional, personal, heuristic and imaginative functions.
Pragmatic expressivity. Reworking the pragmatic categories proposed by Ylanne-McEwen and Coupland (2000), Boylan (2009) divided pragmatic expressive convergence into:
1. Interpretive strategies: expressive use of formality or informality, implicit requests, kind of humor, etc.;
2. Interpersonal control strategies: face-maintenance, role changes, use of proxemics, etc.;
3. Discourse management strategies: topic selection, turn management, repair strategies, etc.

entente

Cconvergence of expression, unaccompanied by the effective internalization of an interlocutor’s worldview will be called formal accommodation or ‘mimicry’. When a Westerner bows low upon encountering Japanese interlocutors, without any knowledge of or feeling for the bowing ritual in Japanese culture but simply because s/he has seen Japanese people bow low in films, s/he is accommodating formally (Miller, 1982). Purely formal accommodation can be dangerous, in particular in intercultural situations: one runs the risk of seeming old-fashioned at best, patronizing, ridiculous or even offensive at worse (Giles and Smith, 1979).

Convergence of intentionality redirects one’s will to make one’s felt values converge with those held by one’s interlocutor(s). Note that neither converge means make equal nor even necessarily make similar, but rather make consonant. Further, convergence must be with an interlocutor’s cultural values – i.e., those s/he shares with the other members of her/his speech community of reference and which define that community ethnographically and can be with her/his idiosyncratic values, those specific to her/him. This is because reciprocal understanding requires shared meanings which, at least initially, are necessarily cultural, not idiosyncratic, constructs (Boylan, 2009).

By intentionality is meant not just what an interactant wants to attain, but also how s/he wants to attain it, for what reasons, and so on. It can be divided into three subcategories, one unconscious and two conscious:

Contingent intentionality – the momentary mobilization of the will to attain a specific goal in a specific context; in English the word ‘intent’ is often preferred to express single states like this;
Constant intentionality – the overall disposition to seek particular kinds of satisfaction, deriving from how one orients one’s: cognitive values – beliefs, concepts, etc.; affective values – tastes, feelings, etc.; and volitive values – inclinations, wants, etc. (Boylan, 2009).

Converging with an interlocutor’s contingent goals is not always desirable – as in zero-sum negotiations or dealing with criminal suspects – and in any case can easily become ‘over accommodation’ (it is what yes-men do). But it is always possible to converge intentionally with one’s interlocutor by internalizing her/his constant value system and (re)interpreting it as circumstances dictate, i.e., in light of the specific (and even divergent) contingent goals to attain.

Substantial accommodation

constant intentionality

culturally-determined

idiosyncratic

By the same token, divergence refers to the ways in which speakers accentuate their verbal and non-verbal differences in order to distinguish themselves from others. This occurs when an individual places strong emphasis on a communicative act that is different than the one to whom they are speaking. For example, one might exaggerate a Turkish accent when speaking to a person with Persian accent. As was mentioned above, there is a tendency for people to become more alike in terms of linguistic, prosodic or non-verbal features, including pronunciation, utterance length, pauses, speech rates, vocal intensities, as well as facial expressions and the ‘intimacy of their self-disclosures’ (McAllister and Keisler, 1975, cited in Giles & Clair, 1979, p. 46).

Giles’ work has been explained as a psychological reaction that individuals have in wanting to be liked. People reason that similarity to others creates attractiveness for themselves. Particularly of great focus, are people with higher status. Wanting to be liked by others with greater position encourages us to act more like them and thus accommodate to their communication styles when interacting with them (Miller, 2005, pp.155-6). Ostensibly, meeting the expectation of others is the factor that most strongly guides us in whether we converge.

There are instances when others are particularly looking for differences in others and so we may diverge to meet those expectations (Miller, 2005, p. 156). These situations and situations wherein individuals want to demonstrate their differences because of ‘pride‘ in that difference (e.g., nationality, language, etc.), may lead people to diverge.

Also, Miller (2005) pointed to ‘maintenance’ adding that Communication accommodation recognizes the fact that not every aspect of a person’s speech or behavior changes in different interaction. There are often many aspects that remain constant in various conversations. Maintenance is a phenomenon that occurs when an individual does not change particular communication acts or behaviors. For instance, while an individual who usually jokes around with her friends may not joke around with her potential boss during an interview (convergence), she may joke around with a new acquaintance when they are introduced to each other by a family member; thus, maintaining that particular aspect of their communication behavior (p.154).

Moving away from the possible rewards attending an act of convergence, such as an increase in social approval, we must also consider the costs involved, i.e., an increased effort to appear likeable and friendly, and the concomitant loss of personal integrity and identity that such an effort may entail. Of course, social exchange theory suggests that speakers and listeners share “a common set of interpretative procedures which allow the speaker’s intentions to be (i) encoded by the speaker, and (ii) correctly interpreted by the listener” (Giles and Clair, 1979, pp. 46-7). Besides, it presupposes that, “prior to acting, we attempt to assess the rewards and costs of alternate courses of action” (Homans, 1961, cited in Giles and Clair, 1979, p.48). Thus, engaging in speech convergence may acquire more rewards than costs. For instance, in England ‘Received-Pronunciation’ (RP) speakers are looked upon as more intelligent, serious and self-confident than regional accented speakers. In the same vein, there is empirical evidence that people react more favorably to those converging towards them, while it is almost always the case that the very same persons judged favorably in the first case will be denigrated as uneducated, impolite and socially incompetent when using vernacular varieties, as the matched-guise technique developed by Wallace Lambert and his associates has shown. Moreover, the act of convergence, upward and downward, may stand one in good stead. Consider the case where a young employee, aspiring to a salary rise or promotion, may converge upwards towards his boss by using formal language; or when an employer converges downwards towards his workers in order to win their approval (Fasold, 1987, pp.149-50).

Nevertheless, observing people’s behavior and taking it at face value is not what interpersonal communication is all about. Causal attribution theory proposes that, when we interact with others, we engage in an interpretative process, evaluating the individuals in terms of the possible motives that we attribute as the cause of their action. For example, we do not just observe an affluent man helping the poor and instantly become enraptured by his kindness and generosity. Rather, we tend to consider his motives first. In this light, if we attribute to him a personal gain from this act, then we may take a dim view of his behavior, judging him negatively as a shallow and deceitful opportunist. Likewise, speech convergence may not be favorably received when attributions of speakers’ intentions are negative (Simard, Taylor and Giles, 1976; cited in Giles & Clair, 1979, p.50).

Within the context of the theory of intergroup distinctiveness, Tajfel proposes that when different groups come in contact, there is a tendency for them to compare themselves on the grounds of abilities, possessions, personal traits, accomplishments, and so forth. According to his theory, these ‘intergroup social comparison’ will assist individuals in forging their group image and positive in-group distinctiveness. It may be the case that individuals seek support in the knowledge that they are part of groups which enjoy some primacy and prestige (cited in Giles & Clair, 1979).

Therefore, divergence can be a tactic of intergroup distinctiveness at the disposal of people seeking a positive social identity. On an interpersonal note, overdoing divergence-as well as convergence-may offend others. Scotton (1985, cited in Giles & Coupland, 1991) introduced the term ‘dis-accommodation‘ to refer to the shift of registers by certain people in repeating something uttered by their interlocutors. Maintaining one’s idiosyncratic speech patterns may be spontaneous and inherently unexceptionable, but when it comes to communication, one may be frowned upon as disdainful, pompous and unapproachable when systematically diverging away from others’ speech. Also, over-convergence may result in unfavorable outcome. Imagine a situation where a person converges towards the pronunciation of someone talking in a lisp. It is highly unlikely that she will be regarded as polite or as signaling that she is on the same wavelength, seeking to achieve solidarity and good rapport with her interlocutor. Rather than sounding considerate and friendly, she will be perceived as patronizing or even uncanny.

More to the point, Giles and Smith (1979) argued that there may also be optimal rates of convergence and divergence. More specifically, Aronson and Linder (1965) proposed ‘gain-loss’ theory of attraction, according to which people feel stronger liking for those whose respect they are acquiring than for those whose respect they already enjoy. What can be extrapolated from this is that convergence is preferable and more effective when taking place in an additive manner than all at once. ‘Gain-loss’ theory also claims that people dislike those whose respect they have lost rather than those who have never held them in high regard. In Accommodation Theory perspective, individuals are pertinent to disapprove of those who diverge sequentially away more than those who diverge all at once (cited in Giles and Coupland, 1991).

We have thus far been concerned with two basic accommodation strategies (convergence and divergence) which are set up by individuals to signal identification with, or dissociation from, the communication patterns of others. In this light, we could say that these strategies are the linguistic realizations of deeper goals and orientations that individuals tacitly negotiate. Thakerar et al. (1982) have made the distinction of psychological versus linguistic accommodation, defining the former as individuals’ integrative or dissociative orientations to others, and the latter as the speech strategies realizing these orientations (cited in Giles and Coupland, 1991).

Apart from this, Thakerar et al.(1982) have suggested that convergence and divergence are not only affective phenomena but may also function as cognitive organization devices (cited in Giles & Coupland, 1991). The cognitive organization function involves communicative features being used by communicators to organize events into meaningful social categories, thereby allowing the complex social situation to be reduced to manageable proportions. In this way, speakers may organize their outputs to take into account the requirements of their listeners; listeners may select from this discourse and organize it according to the cognitive structures most easily available for comprehension (Brown and Dell, 1987, cited in Giles & Coupland, 1991). Clear examples of such devices are ‘baby talk‘(which fulfils the cognitive organization function of simplifying one’s output) and a sociologist’s attempt to make himself understood to people who are not versed in the jargon.

A question to be asked relevantly here to the present study is that ‘why do low-prestige language varieties persist?‘ ‘Why is it that certain groups of people insist on using vernacular varieties, even though, in doing so, they may run into obstinate difficulties, in terms of educational and career prospects, prestige and status, and so forth?’ In fact, one might expect these varieties to disappear, given that the high prestige standard is used predominantly by the social groups with the highest status. Yet, rather than deteriorating, vernacular dialects may – and in some cases have – become a regional standard over a high status variety.

Thus, although regional, ethnic, and lower-class individuals have limited access to opportunities for acquiring the prestige variety compared to members of the high status groups, much of the failure of these individuals to profit from whatever opportunities are available is due to counter-acting pressures favoring their native speech styles (Patterson ,1975, cited in Giles & Clair, 1979,p. 148). Indeed, the more important it is for a particular group to maintain its cultural distinctiveness, the more salient language becomes. In a way, ‘language functions as a very sensitive filter through which one perception of self, own group, and others must pass” (ibid, p. 187).

Nevertheless, depending on individuals’ motivation and purposes, such low-prestige varieties may lose ground to the standard variety, if the speakers of non-standard forms choose to move away from the contexts in which these are vernaculars. In other cases, many speakers of regional dialects may become bi-dialectal; shifting their speech according to the situations they are in.

As Boylan(2009) put forward, there are three theses in Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT). The first thesis is that effective communication – i.e., communication producing entente – requires substantial accommodation. At least one of the interactants in an encounter must ‘decenter’ her/himself, modifying her/his cultural value system in order to ‘share’ temporarily that of her/his interlocutor. This creates a common communicative terrain on which both can make themselves fully understood.

The second thesis is that formal accommodation follows substantial accommodation automatically, at least to some extent, and need not be pursued as a goal in itself, provided one has a minimal knowledge of the major dos and don’ts in the host culture. In other words, interactants who manage to decenter themselves will spontaneously and instinctively converge pragmatically with their interlocutor’s expressive style and, to some extent, with the more salient delivery, genre and functional features of that style as well. Patrick Boylan,2009

The third thesis, already mentioned, is that interactants, who converge expressively with their interlocutors without first having converged intentionally with them, accommodate purely formally and risk appearing false. If an interactant is “unable to converge intentionally” with an interlocutor, the best temporary option may be “Level 0” (no accommodation), save for a few token gestures to indicate good-will toward the interlocutor’s culture. The recurrent inability of an interactant to converge intentionally with culturally-diverse interlocutors, in spite of adequate training and familiarization time, is usually due to “dysfunctional identity defense mechanisms“, often compounded by incapacity to empathize in general (Boylan, 2009).

The reason why accommodation must be intentional lies in the very notion of meaning-making, which is essentially a volitional act that becomes cognitive only post-hoc. Meaning is, in fact, rooted in communicative intentionality, i.e., one’s “will to mean” (in a particular manner) which necessarily derives from one’s “will to be “(in a particular manner) shaped by the collective worldview or Weltanschauung of one’s culture and which, in fact, defines that culture essentially (Boylan, 2009).

As for the extent to which one should converge with the worldview of interlocutors, the short answer is: continue the spiraling movement until what is real for your interlocutors becomes real for you, i.e., until “you see the same things” (although perhaps not in the same way). This implies that you notice, name and react affectively and volitionally to the same objects, although not necessarily to the same degree or even in the same way that your interlocutors do.

Thus when there is convergence of expression, accommodation means ‘saying things the same way‘ as one’s interlocutor. When there is convergence of intentionality, the reverse is true: here accommodation does ‘not’ mean ‘seeing things the same way’, for this would imply a total and perhaps servile identification with the target culture. Instead, this kind of accommodation requires ‘seeing the same things‘ – i.e., seeing as real what is real for one’s interlocutors (and feeling and wanting as a consequence, whether as a mainstream or as a nonconformist member of their culture) (Boylan, 2009). For instance, clean has different meaning in different culture. While in all cultures ‘clean’ means generically ‘free from dirt,’ each culture determines what ‘dirt’ consists of and how much must be removed for an object to be ‘clean’. Substantial accommodation thus means ‘seeing’ as clean what the target population, on the whole, sees as clean: the boys did not do so and this produced yet another communicative breakdown.

According to Boylan, the two-tier definition of accommodation offers multiple advantages. For one thing it shows the way to genuine intercultural understanding. In addition it promotes authenticity in relationships. It makes cultures easy to understand: adaptive behavior, being willed, is immediately meaningful. It also offers greater flexibility: one need not learn to use specific expressive forms, like those in “guide books to foreign cultures”; one only needs to seek intentional convergence with the host culture and then take one’s cues from one’s interlocutors. This admittedly requires excellent ethnographic observation capabilities but, in any case, the task is inherently simpler.

The Accommodation Theory shares certain premises with Acculturation Model, but it also differs from it in a number of significant ways. Like Schumann, Giles is concerned to account for successful language acquisition. Both are concerned with the relationships between the learner’s social group (ingroup) and the target language community (outgroup). However, Schumann explains these relationships in terms of variables that create actual social distance, while Giles refers to perceived social distance. Also, Schumann treats social and psychological distance as absolute phenomena that determine the level of interaction between the learner and native speakers; Giles claims that ingroup relationships are subject to constant negotiation during the course of each interaction. So for Schumann social and psychological distances are static, for Giles ingroup relationships are dynamic and change in situations (Ellis, 1985).

Moreover, Giles agrees with Gardner that motivation is the primary determinant of L2 proficiency. He considers the level of motivation to be a reflex of how individual learners define themselves in ethnic terms. He referred to a number of key variables: identification of the individual learner with his ethnic ingroup, inter-ethnic comparison; perception of ethno-linguistic vitality; perception of ingroup boundaries; and identification with other ingroup social categories (Ellis, 1985).

The strengths of the theory may be quite significant because the theory has elicited little scholarly criticism. Still, a few shortcomings of the theory merit attention. Burgoon, Dillman, and Stern (1993), for example, questioned the convergence-divergence frame advanced by Giles. They believed that conversations are too complex to be reduced simply to these processes. They also challenged the notion that people’s accommodation can be explained by just these two practices. For instance, what occurs if people both converge and diverge in conversations? Are there consequences for the speaker? The listener? What influence (if any) does race or ethnicity play in this simultaneous process? One might also question whether the theory relies too heavily on a rational way of communicating. That is, although the theory acknowledges conflict between communicators, it also rests on a reasonable standard of conflict. It appears that the theory ignores this possible dark side of communication (cited in West and Turner, 2004).

Ellis (1985) asserted that Accommodation Theory does not explain assembly mechanisms. It does not account for the developmental sequence the strength of Accommodation Theory is that it encompasses language acquisition and language use within a single framework. It also relates the acquisition of a new dialect or accent to the acquisition of a L2, as both are seen as a reflection of the learner’s perception of himself with regard to his own social group and the target language group. This theory provides an explanation of a ‘language -learner language variability’ (p. 258).

In his earlier writings on the theory, Giles challenged researchers to apply Communication Accommodation Theory across the life span and in different cultural settings. For the most part, his suggestions have been noticed. His research has broadened our understanding of why conversations are so complex. Through convergence, Giles sheds light on why people adapt to others in their interactions. Through divergence, we can understand why people choose to ignore adapting strategies. He has pioneered a theory that has helped us better understand the culture and diversity around us (West and Turner, 2004).

The extension of Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT) derives from reconsidering as well what language is and what it means to communicate. Communication is not the encoding-transmission-decoding of messages; it is the ongoing search for a common code by two or more interlocutors, through attempts at co-constructing shared meanings. What guides the interlocutors in their search is what guides the child in learning her/his mother tongue: the will to mean something – or to respond to someone’s will to mean – in concrete communicative events (Boylan, 2001). Revisiting accommodation theory calls for reconsidering what actually takes place when people accommodate successfully. Thus it is possible to accommodate maximally with minimal behavioral change. Likewise it is possible to converge on principles and yet diverge on practices, by separating constant, contingent and idiosyncratic intentionalities.

To sum up, we could say that accommodation theory has helped us understand why individuals speak the way they do, accounting for the manner in which they interpret their own roles and those of their interlocutors, as well as the procedures they resort to in order to act meaningfully. What is more, the accommodative processes that people employ may fulfill the function of attenuating or accentuating their social identity, which inescapably opens up new vistas of study (Griffin, 2009). The study of accommodation theory may, on the one hand, reveal the extent to which language impinges on our lives, resulting in the maintenance or breakdown of human relationships, and on the other give useful insights into the tendency for different varieties to evoke or ‘trigger’ different perceptions of their speakers.

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ELTWeekly Issue#16, Subscriber space: Research paper by Mahnaz Azad

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