ACCOMMODATION THEORY

Irsalina Rachma Viramdani

Khusnen Khoirin Nada
 The Founder
Howard Giles

Professor of linguistics and

psychology at the University
of California, Santa Barbara.
Giles developed the theory
in 1973
 Accommodation Theory

Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT)

is the way the speaker adjusting speech, vocal
patterns, and/or gestures to accommodate
the interlocutor in a certain communication.
 Purpose

People change the way they speak to be

better understand others to accommodate to
their communication needs
 Downward
Convergence

Speech Upward
Convergence Convergence
Accommodation
Theory
Speech Mutual
Divergence Convergence
 Speech Convergence
Speech convergence is the way the speakers
move their speech closer toward each other
There is a tendency for people to become
more alike in terms of linguistic, prosodic or
non-verbal features, including pronunciation,
utterance length, pauses, speech rates, vocal
intensities, as well as facial expressions and
the "intimacy of their self-disclosures"
 Downward Convergence

Downward convergence occurs when people

in upper class (such as people with an RP)
toning down their way of speech to speak to
people in a lower-class
 Upward Convergence

Upward convergence occurs when lower-class

people trying to eliminate some of the
stronger regional feature of their speech when
they speak to the upper class
 Mutual Convergence

Mutual convergence occurs when the speaker

and the interlocutor adjust their speech
toward each other
 Speech Divergence

Speech divergence is the ways in which both

speakers accentuate their verbal and non-
verbal differences
 Conclusion
The point of Communication Accommodation
Theory is to be able to communicate with
others affectively. Without it, problems with
language barriers, age barriers, or
understanding people clearly can be a result
of failed communication accommodation