TWO QUESTIONS ABOUT ACCOMMODATION THEORY (sociolinguistics)

TWO QUESTIONS ABOUT ACCOMMODATION THEORY 

1.      Mention two kinds of accommodation theory and explain.

There are two kinds of accommodation theory, they are:

a.       SPEECH CONVERGENCE

It is a process in which each person speech converges towards the speech of the person they are talking to. It happens when the speakers like one another, or where one speaker has vested interest in pleasing the other or putting them at ease.  For examples:

•      A travel agent who wants to gain her customer’s orders

•      An interviewer who wants to gain his interviewee’s cooperation

It is also a polite speech strategy and implies that the addressee’s speech is acceptable and worth imitating. When people respond to and develop a topic introduced by their addressee, they are converging in the content of their speech. Speech convergence is divided into two, they are:

1)      Converging Downwards

When people simplify their vocabulary and grammar in talking to foreigners or children, they are converging downwards towards the lesser linguistic proficiency of their addressee. When a complicated technical message is ‘translated’ for the benefit of someone who does not know the jargon, speech accommodation is also involved. It is convergence towards the speech of someone with less status or power.

2)      Converging Upwards

It is convergence towards the speech of someone with more status or power. For example, in an interview with the hospital matron, a nurse adopts some of the matron’s pronunciation features.

b.      SPEECH DIVERGENCE

It is deliberately choosing a language not used by one’s addressee. It is sometimes done to make a political point, for example:

·         Giving a speech in a minority language to an audience made up largely of majority group of monolinguals.

·         When the Arab nations issued an oil communiqué to the world not in English, but in Arabic.

Accent divergence also occurs, for example, working-class men often respond to university-educated students who join them just for summer on the docks (in factories) by increasing their swearing and using a higher frequency of vernacular forms.

Divergent pronunciations signal the speakers’ wish to distinguish themselves from their addressee, for example, in Liverpool, teachers’ pronunciation of some words like bath and grass distinguishes them from their pupils and pupils’ parents.

            Teachers: [ba:θ] and [gra:s]

             Pupils and pupils’ parents: [baθ] and [gras]

Speech divergence does not always reflect a speaker’s negative attitudes towards the addressees. Divergence can be used to benefit the diverger, for example, Brigitte Bardot and Maurice Chevalier exploited their French accents in speaking English to add their appealing.

2.      In what cases the speakers use those kinds of accommodation theory?

The speakers use speech convergence if they want to adapt to each other’s communicative behaviors, in order to reduce these social differences.

The speakers use speech divergence if they want to accentuate the speech and non-verbal differences between themselves and their interlocutors or to maintain their cultural identity, to contrast self images when the other person is considered a member of an undesirable group, or to indicate power or status differences, as when one individual wishes to render another one less powerful.