Lydia Hanson

Dr. Langan
Comm-301
26 April 2021

1. Theory #34: Communication Accommodation Theory

My high school had a foreign exchange student program where students from various

parts of the world were housed in dorms or with host families and studied at our school for the

year. I became acquainted with one Chinese boy who seemed very, very eager to learn the

“American way of doing things” and shed his Chinese heritage. He showed up to school one day

with a purple mohawk and an American flag t-shirt. He brought a hot dog or mac-n-cheese for

lunch almost every day. It was evident that he was trying to fit in with how Americans dressed

and what they ate. He did not try to make friends with the other foreign exchange students,

instead hanging around American students and volunteering stories about how he loved to “drink

beer and drive four-wheelers” (since he thought that was what high school students in rural

Wisconsin liked to do).

I vividly remember a group of guys that he continuously tried to hang out with, though it

was obvious that these guys wanted nothing to do with him. It was sad to see, as this exchange

student was trying so hard to converge to the dominant culture of this rural Wisconsin town yet

was obviously from a completely different culture and did not understand some of the social cues

that these guys were giving off. While he was converging, they were most certainly diverging

away from him and his attempts at friendship with them.

2. Theory #26: Semiotics
As another example from my high school, each year the winner of the homecoming

football game received a trophy. However, this trophy was very plain, and had been around for

generations. It symbolized success, hard work, but also a sense of temporary achievement

because the trophy was up for grabs once a year, at each homecoming game. There was no

guarantee that it would stay with one team for more than the year they won it. For those of us

who did not play football, the trophy seemed a little silly and symbolized the pridefulness of

some of the members of the football team who bragged when they obtained the trophy.

The meaning of this trophy was constantly changing. When one team lost it, the trophy

was viewed with disdain and as a symbol of failure. Even looking at a picture of the trophy was a

source of disappointment for the teams that had lost it for the season. The opposite was true for

the team that had won it for the season; its members viewed the trophy as their most prized

possession, a symbol that could attest to their hard work and dedication all season. This symbol,

or “sign,” that the trophy was could not predict who would win it the next year. Its meaning

could only reflect that which its owners thrust upon it, and likewise for those who had lost it. As

for those of us who were not directly involved with the trophy, we assigned a much less

important meaning to the trophy.

3. Theory #29: Cultivation Theory

Growing up in a rural area, as a child I was never afraid of walking around outside by

myself or playing with the neighborhood kids by ourselves at different areas of the town. As I

started looking at colleges, I researched Wheaton and read that the area surrounding the college
was generally pretty safe but that if I went into Chicago, I would most likely be mugged or shot

(according to the news I was reading). I knew that this wasn’t necessarily the case, and that some

of my fear was just because I had not grown up in a big city and therefore tended to be more

leery of that type of environment. Nevertheless, the few times that my friends and I traveled into

Chicago through the years (especially when we took public transportation), I felt extremely

uncomfortable and was on high alert all the time. I remained aware of my surroundings

everywhere we went, even when we were in a coffee shop in a relatively safe-looking area of the

city.

For me, I believe that this fear came from having little prior experience with cities and

basically just relying on news outlets, radio stations out of Chicago (where, it seems, each time I

turned it on there had been yet another shooting), and what others had told me. In hindsight, the

people I was seeking this information from also did not have much prior experience with big

cities; they had also received their news from mass media, and because of this we seemed to be

in an endless loop of trading scary statistics back and forth until no one dared venture into the

city. My mom, however, grew up in a rough neighborhood near Boston and has no problem in

cities. She does not watch the news and just goes by her experience growing up, which shows

that media do have an effect on our perceptions.

4. Theory #35: Face-Negotiation Theory

I have two friends who have completely different communication styles. On the one

hand, my friend who was adopted from China as a baby and grew up in the U.S. has a very

individualistic and independent self-concept, while the one who grew up in China and moved to
the U.S. when he was 16 has a much more collectivistic view of life. This has caused some

issues in the past, as the one raised in America tended to put her needs and desires above the

needs and desires of our other friend. He, in turn, was very conflict-averse and just let her walk

all over him and get her way in every situation. He was quite face-giving in general and did not

want her to get a bad impression of him.

I had to try to act as a moderator at points. Even though I also grew up in an

individualistic culture, I have learned to act in a more collectivistic manner and make sure that

my friend who just moved to the U.S. does not get taken advantage of by my other friend, who,

admittedly, can be quite pushy at times. Whenever she realizes that she may have said something

a bit harsh to my other friend, she focuses on her own face-restoration instead of face-giving by

addressing how he might be feeling after the interaction. She’ll say things like, “well, you know

that I’m just stressed so I don’t usually say things like that” which saves her own “face” instead

of straight up apologizing and asking if he is okay with what she said.

5. Theory #36: Co-Cultural Theory

My childhood best friend came out as bisexual when we were in high school. She began

dressing in a more androgynous manner, she shaved her head, stopped wearing makeup, and

began speaking in a very intimidating and almost hostile manner to people. This was quite a

shock for me, as I had always known her as a girly-girl who talked with me about boys we had

crushes on in middle school and shared makeup and hair tips with me. We both also went to the

same church as kids. Her manner of aggressive separation caused her to become very distinctive

from the rest of the people at our high school, except for the few others who dressed in quite
different, unique ways. Her hostile manner of speaking seemed like a form of protection so that

no one would criticize her new life decisions.

The most distressing part of this shift was her utter disregard of the Christian faith after

declaring herself part of the LGBTQ+ community. She bought into the idea that she needed to

choose between being her true, bisexual self, and following Jesus. Since this decision, she has

gone on to write articles about why Christianity is bad and unaccepting, and how she is glad to

have gotten out of it when she did. Again, these behaviors exhibited a very aggressive and

separative style of communicating. It became almost impossible to try to talk to her after this, as

each encounter was laced with hostility towards those who seemed to question her lifestyle.

(This is still a very painful memory for me, as we no longer speak, but I thought it was a perfect

example of this theory in action.)