Communication Accomodation Theory

Question 1

Assumption 1

Answer 1

1) Similarities and dissimilarities
2) How we perceive communication and behavior will determine how we evaluate it. When we’re perceiving we’re looking at context

3) Language and behavior impart info about social status and group belonging
- it’s about status (can you tell someone’s social status like wealth, middle, low class)

4) Accommodation varies in it’s degree of appropriateness
- it’s about how we adjust

Question 2

Accommodation (DEF.)

Answer 2

Has to do with the ability to adjust, modify, or regulate one’s behavior in response to another

• being flexible
• we modify ourselves when interacting with another person especially with someone who’s from a diff culture

Question 3

Ways to Adapt: Convergence

Answer 3

Occurs when the communicators involved work to become more or like one another.
- they’re making an adaption, they’re accommodating

Question 4

Ways to Adapt: Divergence

Answer 4

Strategies used to accentuate the verbal and nonverbal differences between communicators

• they’re making no effort to see similarities
• they try to point out that they’re not alike, but not necessarily disagreeing with each other
• It’s: I’m not a member and I’m trying to highlight that I’m not a member

Question 5

Overaccommodation

Answer 5

When the listener and the receiver comes away as though they are less than equal in the interaction but the source had good intentions

Question 6

Overaccommodation: Sensory

Answer 6

Where a source overly adapts to another who is perceived as limited in some way.
- when you’re interacting with a person whose first language is not english

Question 7

Overaccommodation: Dependency

Answer 7

This occurs when the source places the listener in a lower status role.
- sometimes consciously/unconsciously making the listener to be dependent on the source

Question 8

Critique:

Answer 8

Heurism: (+)
Scope: (+/-)
Logical consistency: (-)