ANÁLISIS DE DATOS

Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT) is an extended version of Speech Accommodation Theory (SAT) that derives from the 1970’s, starting with Giles’s (1973) work on accent convergence.21 _{The theory was devised to account for motivations} underlying adjustments in people’s speech styles, particularly the cognitive and affective processes underlying speech convergence and divergence – that is, making one’s speech respectively more or less like that of one’s interlocutor(s) (Thakerar, Giles & Cheshire 1982: 207). The focus on motivations “underlying” adjustments in people’s speech styles

21 _{For a summary of the developments of the theory, see Gallois, Ogay and Giles (2005). For previous} studies on accommodation and ELF, see Jenkins (2000), Cogo & Dewey (2006), Cogo (2009), Hülmbauer (2009), Seidlhofer (2009b), Rogerson-Revell (2010) and Sweeney & Hua (2010).

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suggests intentionality of accommodation. Gallois et al. (2005) also talk about accommodative strategies22_{, a term that similarly implies intentionality.}23 _{At least two} main (psychological) motivations guiding speech behaviour can be distinguished: (a) facilitating comprehension and (b) identity maintenance or development (Thakerar et al. 1982, Gallois et al. 2005: 139). As Gallois et al. (2005) point out, both of these concern the amount of distance or difference expressed through communication: Oftentimes facilitating comprehension means increasing similarity through convergence; in other situations it may require increasing dissimilarity (e.g. L2 speakers exaggerating their foreign accent in L1–L2 interaction in order to lower their interlocutor’s expectations of their pragmatic skills). Identity maintenance and development, then again, may mean identification with the group one is talking to or identification with some other group.

In CAT, interactional encounters are seen to be situated in a sociohistorical context. This means (a) that interactants bring their history into the interaction and that this initial orientation affects the extent to which they are motivated to accommodate to others or not; and (b) that interactants evaluate each other’s (accommodative) behaviour and construct future intentions for interacting with their interlocutor(s) based on these evaluations (Gallois et al. 2005: 135–136). Within the immediate interactional situation, then, speakers are seen to draw from their psychological accommodative stance, that is, their motivation and intention to accommodate (Gallois et al. 2005: 135–136). This is seen to influence the speakers’ accommodative behaviour, but the stance, and thus, the accommodative behaviour is subject to change by way of influence from the interlocutors’ behaviour (Gallois et al. 2005: 135–136). The actual accommodative behaviour is further interpreted by the interlocutor(s), but the interpretation does not necessarily coincide with the intention of the speaker.

In this study, accommodation is explored at the level of communicative behaviour (section 5.2.3), which means that the focus is on its use and the consequences the use may have, rather than on speaker motivations guiding the accommodative practice. While I adhere to the communicational framework described in CAT (see Gallois et al. 2005: 135), I do not focus on the cognitive side of accommodation. However, the use itself, as

22 _{To highlight my focus on communicative behaviour, rather than speaker motivations, I talk about} accommodative practices, not strategies.

23 _{It should be noted, though, that, in CAT, intentionality appears to refer to both conscious and} unconscious behaviour, in that “in addition to consciously generated behaviors [sic] such as self- disclosures, language choice, and certain lexical choices, communicators’ purposes, intentions, and affective orientations to others may also be […] produced at low awareness levels” (Street & Giles 1982: 218, see also Giles, Coupland & Coupland 1991: 25). This means that even the more unconscious behaviour is seen to be an aspect of speaker intentions.

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well as speakers’ interpretations of their behaviour (see chapter 6) can be seen to be connected to their motives and intentions.

In CAT, the immediate interactional situation, where we can observe accommodative behaviour in action, is seen to be norm-constrained, but interactants’ history and initial orientation are seen to affect the application of norms (Gallois et al. 2005: 138). Norms are thus considered a part of the societal and situational context, which lays emphasis on norms that interactants take into interaction on the one hand, and perceived situational norms on the other. These, in turn, are seen to place constraints on the forms accommodation can take, and they may even override accommodative tendencies, as in situations where hierarchical role relations make convergence inappropriate (Giles & Coupland 1991: 76).24 _{Norms are thus seen to restrict} accommodation in that speakers are seen to draw on their preconceived normative notions as well as norms they perceive to be valid in the situation; but not much attention is paid to interactants recreating norms in interaction, and accommodation as a practice to do this (cf. Garrod & Anderson 1987, Garrod & Doherty 1994). This seems to reflect the cognitive orientation of studies such as Thakerar et al. (1982), which imply that communicational goals reside in the heads of speakers only. However, as Giles and Coupland (1991: 87, original emphasis) point out, such an orientation “ignores the many occasions when convergences or divergences are collaborative acts reflecting emergent goals”. This means that despite the tendency to focus on norm perceptions of the speakers (as in e.g. Gallois & Callan 1991), there is room in CAT for an interpretation of norms, too, being collaboratively negotiated.

This interpretation is supported by Garrod and Doherty’s (1994) study (see also Garrod & Anderson 1987), where the interactants were found out to establish new practices by accommodating to specific linguistic items, which means that accommodation not only reconstructs norm perceptions but can potentially construct new ones. The study was conducted in experimental conditions, where two groups of people were asked to play a co-operative maze game. In the first group, the subjects always played with the same partner, and in the second, the subjects switched partners and thus formed a small community of players. The results show that the speakers modified their language to suit the local requirements of the communicators, and thus

24 _{In my interactional analyses, I draw on CA, an approach that has very different starting points}

compared to CAT. According to CA, context is limited to what is displayed in the sequential unfolding of utterances, or to something that is mutually achieved (see Blum-Kulka 2005: 276–277), which means that the interactional situation is what counts. In CAT, then again, also elements outside of the interactional situation can be relevant. I explain my approach to spoken interaction in section 4.2.1, and chapter 5 includes more detailed descriptions of the applications of the different approaches.

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accommodated to specific description schemes needed in the interaction. In addition, the speakers in the second group not only co-ordinated language on the local level accommodating to the person they were playing with, but they also appeared to retain the most popular scheme from previous encounters. They thus drew on previous knowledge (at least partly) shared in the community of players and co-ordinated on a more global level. Garrod and Doherty (1984: 214) suggest that this is best seen as “producing a sufficiently stable precedent to act as the basis for common knowledge”, which, as the writers further suggest, means that the co-ordination process (or convergence) may actually be a crucial precursor to establishing a convention or a norm in the first place, and conventions and norms function as a means to fix the language once the community has achieved an initial degree of ‘conceptual’ stability.

What we can expect to find in the study event interactions, along the lines of Garrod and Doherty (1984), is similar stabilisation of some of the lexical items (see section 5.2.3). On the one hand, we can expect accommodation based on local co- ordination sensitive to the immediate constraints of salience of lexical items, and the need to solve communicative turbulence. On the other hand, later in the same interaction and especially in the later encounters, we may witness repetition of the successes, which can be seen to reinforce the use of specific items. Accommodation can thus be seen as an online process that displays speakers’ immediate situational needs, and reinforcement of that implies the formation of an emerging norm.

2.3 Methodological framework: two dimensions of language regulation