Summary with the article: Communication accommodation theory van Shepard et. al. (2001)

The study of language has been studies across different disciplines, such as social psychology, sociolinguistics, sociology and communication. The communication accommodation theory (CAT) is an important theoretical perspective for these four areas of research. The CAT is an interdisciplinary model of relational processes in communicative interaction. This theory contains different context and behaviors of verbal and non-verbal varieties and attitudes and perceptions. The theory was originally developed as a sociopsychological model to explain modifications in speech style during interactions and was called the speech accommodation theory (SAT). SAT proposed that social cognitive processes mediate the relationship of communicative behavior and interaction and that individual motivations was the driving force behind choice in speech behaviors. CAT is much more wider than the SAT. The main focus of this model was on language behaviors in interpersonal and intergroup interaction. Language is a marker of group membership, status define ethnic and ingroup or outgroup boundaries.

Approximation strategies

The primary thesis of the CAT proposes that individuals use language to achieve a social distance between self and interacting partners. This strategic behaviors are the so-called approximation strategies. These strategies are convergence, divergence, maintenance and complementary. Convergence is the strategy that a person uses to adapt linguistic and non-verbal features to become more similar to the interaction partner. Divergence is the opposite of convergence. People who use the divergence strategy, want to differentiate in speech and non-verbal behaviors between themselves and other people. There is also strategy to not convergence and not divergence. This is called maintenance. The speaker continues his or her own original speech style. The last strategy is complementarity. This means that people accentuate differences between different roles. Men use more masculine tones of voice when talking with women than when they talk to men. Researchers also proposed three different strategies. The first one is interpretability and this focuses on the ability of the perceiver to interpret language during a conversation. The second one is discourse management and this focuses on the other person’s conversational needs and how the person can try to make these needs come true. The third strategy is interpersonal control and this strategy tries to direct the course of the interaction.

Researchers think that speakers move trough these different strategies for a number of reasons. One of these reasons is similarity and is based on the similarity attraction hypothesis. This means that people try to be more like the people to whom they are attracted to. It seems that convergence is driven by the need to gain approval from the other interaction partner. However, people may also want to use convergence to let the interaction flow more smoothly. This also improves the effectiveness of communication. Divergent behavior is motivated by the need to be distinct or the emphasize valued group identity. Convergence strategies are usually evaluated positively. This is because usually the intent of convergence strategies is seen as positive. Divergence and maintenance are usually rated negatively.

Accommodation can be upward or downward. Upward accommodation means that the conversation is shifting to a valued form of communication. Downward accommodation refers to the move towards a stigmatized and less socially valued forms of communication. Accommodation can be unimodal or multimodal and unidirectional or mutual. There are also different dimensions of accommodation. One of them is subjective accommodation. This focuses on the perception of the listener in an interaction. Psychological accommodation means that the speaker something different than his or her intention was. There are also different levels of accommodation. You can show convergence on one dimensions, but divergence on the other.

In every society people hold stereotypes. Stereotypes in outgroups may create expectations about how individuals respond in a social encounter. Research has found that people change their behavior to accommodate a stereotype they have about the interaction partner. Norms can also guide the amount of convergence and divergence. When two groups live next to each other, they can establish norms for how the members of these groups should interact with each other.

History of CAT and comparison of CAT with other theories

The CAT started out as the SAT. In 1987 writers of a scientific paper expanded SAT to include communicative strategies, motives and behaviors. This is the reason they changed the name to Communication Accommodation Theory. The model has gone through various revisions. Accommodation strategies were renamed as approximation strategies. CAT has also grown so much, that it can explain many phenomena in many different contexts.

There are many theories that also focus on convergence and divergence strategies. Affiliative conflict theory was one of the first theories that focused on the process of interpersonal adaptation. This theory assumes that interactants want to maintain the status quo of a certain intimacy level that has been established. Communicators will make adjustments to maintain the level of their relationship. The cognitive valence theory (CVT) thinks that there is a level of intimacy displayed between interaction partners and which leads to automatic responses. When intimacy levels increase, arousal will take place and this may lead to automatic responses. Cognitive valence of the behavior may occur. Valencing is dependent on social norms, relational history, environmental context, reward potential, situational personal well-being factors and personality traits. There are a couple of more theories that show comparison to the CAT, but these will not be discussed here. These alternative theories discussed above focus on the attempt to explain what happens when behavior deviates from a certain baseline. Changes of behavior are an outcome variable in CAT, whereas they are the focus in the other studies mentioned.

Recent CAT research

Recent research has found new, interesting about the CAT. One of these findings is that the sociohistorical context will predict a person’s accommodative orientation to interact in a situation. Research has also found that sociostructural relations affects the degree to which people will accommodate to each other. The sociohistorical context is the factor that defines which group is dominant and to which group or person somebody should converge. The sociopsychological state describes the speaker’s motivation. For example, researchers found that perceived status of an interactant affected speech behavior and this person was rated based on the stereotypes held about this person than the actual speech itself. Recent CAT research also focuses on short-term motivations to accommodate in social interactions. This can be identifying with the other and gaining approval from the other. CAT research nowadays also focuses on the conversational needs. Recent research also tends to focus on labeling. Studies showed that positive labels result in more convergence strategies, whereas bad communicative relations result in negative labeling of the interaction partner.