Theory 7: Communication Accomodation Theory

Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT) sees that communicative behaviors are adjusted when a person is trying to move toward or move away from the others during the interaction process. According to Howard Giles (1991), he stated that a person tries to adjust his/her communicative behavior in order to accommodate others. Generally, a person seeks to minimize the social differences and find similarities between themselves to interact. The question is that there is times when a person does not adjust his/her communicative behavior during the interaction process? What motivate his/her for not accommodating others? Thus, Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT) attempt to examine what motivate the speaker for accommodating others.

A person adjusts his/her communicative behavior to become similar like the other person because he/she desires for the approval of others – this strategy is called convergence. CAT found out that his/her main motivation is to seek for positive respond from other and fulfill the expected identity. Giles and Coupland (1991) believe that it involves varieties of linguistic/prosodic/nonverbal features such as smiling, speech rate, gaze, utterance length in order to adapt each others’ communicative behavior. For example, A and B came from different ethnic group where A tries to speak the way B speak in order to mesh with B whom he/she seeks for approval.

As opposite to convergence, divergence emphasized the difference between the speaker and the other person. Instead of trying to adapt each other’s communicative behavior, the speaker attempt to maximize the social differences between themselves – refer to counter – accommodation. For example, based on the above picture, it shows one person behave differently from the other person. In this case, the big man is bullying the little man with an intention that the little man need to be scared with him. Due to stimulus response, the little man adjust his behavior becoming a scared person instead of trying to seek for the big man’s approval.

Meanwhile, under-accommodation occurs when the speaker is very persistent in using his/her original communicative behavior without trying to adapt each other’s way of communicating. There are also times when convergence move into divergence called over-accommodating. This is where the speaker might have a good intention to adapt the other’s communicative behavior, but they might interpret it differently which make the recipient feels worse. The recipient sees the conversation as demeaning talk. Hence, in some cases, the main motivation for divergence is the need of distinctiveness and the speaker might expect to obtain a negative respond from the recipient.

Nevertheless, Delia and Clark (1977) argued that although convergent communication strategy acts to reduce social differences between individuals, the variability between themselves in extent and frequency of convergence is, perhaps not surprisingly, also apparent, corresponding to socio-demographic variables such as age. Krauss (1987) also argued that it depends on how the message is conveyed or how the message is formulated. He further explained without the addressee that particular message would not exist. But the message, in the concrete and particular form it takes, is as much attributable to the existence of the addressee as it is to the existence of the speaker.

In conclusion, Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT) examines what motivate the speaker to accommodate and not to accommodate the recipient. This theory also developed two strategies where a person tries to move forward or away from the others. The two strategies are convergence in which the speaker tries to be similar with the others and divergence accentuates the social differences between individuals. Both strategies have different motivation and different outcomes. However, Delia and Clark (1977) argued that convergence also correspond to socio-demographic factors and Krauss (1987) argued on how the message is conveyed and how it takes as much attributable to the existence of addressee as it is to the existence of the speaker.

REFERENCES:

Berger, C. (2005). Interpersonal Communication: Theoretical Perspective Future Prospects. Journal of Communication. Pp. 415-416.


Giles, H., Coupland J., Coupland, N., (1991). Contexts of Accomodation: Developments in applied Sociolinguistics. Pp.5-30. USA.

Griffin, E. (2012). A First Look At Communication Theory. 8th Edition. Pp.394-399. New York: McGraw Hill.