Communication Accommodation Theory.

Everyone has a specific way of speaking towards different group. Either that towards the elderly, or towards teens, everyone eventually change, back and forth, on how they communicate and interact on different groups. Howard Giles 1972 quoted, “when people interact they adjust their speech, their vocal patterns and their gestures, to accommodate to others”.


Giles said that there are reasons on why we do this. Whether that to converge (to communicate in a similar way to the other individual) or to diverge (to communicate in an accentuated way to maximize oneself), we always find ourselves in situation where we want to be a part and also fit in to a group or try to be different than those in that group to preserve positive identity. 


This theory basically tries to ‘accommodate’ for differences within situations.Let us see the examples below to briefly show Communication Accommodation Theory.


Convergence:
(From the hit American sitcom comedy, Friends, by David Crane and Marta Kauffman)

Convergence is basically a process whereby the individual tries to change their speech styles just so they can become more similar to those they're interacting.


The video shows Joey (Matt Leblanc) trying to act the age 19, which is 11 years younger from his real age, just to show that he could pull of being 19. Here, we can see how he shifts his whole personality, just so he can prove that he could pull off 19 when he's interacting with a 19 year old.


Clothing: before, he dresses up like a normal 30-year-old, simple long pants and a buttoned up shirt. Now he's trying to look 19 by wearing how a typical 19 would wear during that time, which is far different from how he would wear clothes, a 30 year old. 


Communication: It is obvious that Joey changed his language into that of a 19 year old. He changed his speech patterns so that he could accommodate if he were to talk to a 19 year old. He even change his body language to suit the different context in the conversation, following him being 19.


Giles states "...it is probably safe to assume that these shifts resulted in a favorable appraisal of the speaker that is, they have created an impression that the speaker is trying to accommodate to his or her listener(s)".


Divergence:
(From the supernatural drama television series, Vampire Diaries, by Kevin Williamson and Julie Plec)

Giles and Coupland 1991, refers divergence as “the way in which speakers accentuate speech and nonverbal differences between themselves and others” Divergence talks about how a person change his behavior so that it differs from the other person and they have no intentions on accommodating the other. Divergence can also happen when a person wants to maintain some distance from another person.


The video above shows how Stefan (Paul Wesly) is being a jerk towards Elena (Nina Dobrev). There's a reason why he's being a jerk. He used to be caring and loving towards her (typical romantic couple). But then it all change when the bad guy, Klaus (Joseph Morgan), forced Stefan to hate Elena because of certain reasons, or else he would kill her.


Stefan then change his way of communicating and treated her differently so she could hate him and thus easier for him to move on and not love her anymore. He is diverging so he can create distance between them.


Griffin 2009, mentioned that with divergence, there are 'counter-accommodation', 'under-accommodation' or 'over-accommodation'.Counter-accomodation is basically a direct way of telling the other individual on their contrasts, and maximizing their differences. Under-accomodation is, to simply put it, not accommodating enough, or that the person ignores the other person's way of communicating. Over-accommodating is obviously the opposite, where the individual pays too much attention on the other person's communication style and engage onto an exaggerated compensation.


In conclusion, this theory basically explains why we sometimes change our communication styles, whether that be convergence or divergence. It shows how we can change to either benefit from being a group or benefit from having someone out of a group. 


References:


Griffin, E. (2009). A First Look At Communication Theory (7th ed). New York: McGraw-Hill.


Giles, Howard; Coupland, Joustine; Coupland, N. (1991). "Accommodation Theory: Communication, Context, and Consequence". In Giles, Howard; Coupland, Justine; Coupland, N.. Contexts of Accommodation. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.


Giles, H (1973). Accent mobility: A model and some data. Anthropological Linguistic, 15.