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15-Communication Accomodation

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4 views24 pages

15-Communication Accomodation

Uploaded by

xnxxu
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Communication Accommodation

CMN 101Y
Dr. Cuihua (Cindy) Shen
Howard Giles

Source: UCSB
Defining Culture
 “Learned patterns of perception,
values, and behaviors, shared by
a group of people, that are
dynamic and heterogeneous”
Cultural Patterns: An Example
Accomodation
 Accommodation: “The constant
movement toward or away
from others by changing your
communicative behavior.”
General Focus
 How we adjust our
communication to one another
to gain approval or maintain
distinctiveness
◼ especially during intergroup,
intercultural, interethnic, or
intergenerational communication
Convergence
Overview
Ways to
Accommodate

Convergence Divergence

Maintenance Over-
accommodation
Convergence
 Adapt your communication
behavior to become more similar
to another person
 Mirror the other person’s speech
patterns (vocabulary, accent, speech
rate, grammar, voice, etc.)
 Match the other person’s
appearance and nonverbal
behavior (gestures, mannerisms, etc.)
Convergence
Divergence
Divergence
 A strategy of accentuating the
differences between yourself
and another person
 Speaks and gestures
differently from other person,
or overaccomodate
Divergence
 Special forms
 Maintenance: persisting in one’s
original communication style
 Over-accommodation:
demeaning or patronizing talk;
excessive concern paid to vocal
clarity, simplification, etc.
Motivations to Converge/Diverge
Social Identity Theory
 Pressure to evaluate one’s own
group positively through in-
group/out-group comparisons
leads social groups to attempt to
differentiate themselves from
each other
Motivations
 Personal identity salient: Desire
for approval
 Convergence

 Social identity salient: Need for


distinctiveness
 Divergence
Motivations
 Initial Orientation: an individual’s
predisposition toward focusing
on either individual identity or
distinctive group identity
Factors that Influence Initial Orientation
 Collectivist cultural context
 Distressing history of interaction
 Negative stereotypes
 Norms for treating other groups
of people
 High in-group solidarity
Perception of Accommodation
Accommodation
 Accommodation may be
conscious or unconscious;
mutual or non-mutual
Perception of Accommodation
 Recipient’s evaluation of accommodation
 Objective vs. subjective accommodation
 Speaker’s perception of accommodation
 “one does not converge toward (or diverge from) the
actual speech of the recipient, but toward (or from)
one’s stereotype about the recipient’s speech.”
Evaluation
Critique of the Theory
 Enormous scope at the cost of
clarity
Critique of the Theory
 Conversations are too complex
to be reduced to the dual
processes of convergence and
divergence

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