Showing papers by "Howard Giles published in 1991"

Accommodation theory: Communication, context, and consequence.

Abstract: Introduction When academic theorizing addresses everyday communication phenomena, there are losses as well as gains. Research may, selectively or otherwise, partially represent the full subtlety of contextualized interaction. Methodological constraints may impose their own selectivity, so that we tend to access the accessible and learn what is most readily learnable. The real-time nature of programmatic research will reflect epistemological shifts and disciplinary development. It is altogether likely that academic and lay versions of the phenomena themselves and their boundaries will not perfectly mirror each other at any one point. On the other hand, research can discover regularities within communicative interchanges and identify, and perhaps even predict, contextual configurations that relate systematically to them. If it is amenable to methodological triangulation upon data and research questions, and if it incorporates within its own activities a mechanism for building cumulatively on empirical insights, communication research can begin to impose order on the uncertainty that interaction presents to us. More particularly, research that addresses the contexts as much as the behaviors of talk can tease out the ordering – motivational, strategic, behavioral, attributional, and evaluative – that interactants themselves impose upon their own communication experiences, and the ways in which the social practices of talk both are constrained by and themselves constrain goals, identities, and social structures. In the case of “accommodation theory,” the focus of the present collection, we have a research program that has developed over more than a dozen years, undergoing many extensions and elaborations, as an account of contextual processes impinging on sociolinguistic code, style, and strategy selections.

Language: Contexts and Consequences

Abstract: Part 1 Language in context: the "language builds upon context" approach the "language reflects context" approach - Brown and Fraser's taxonomy, perceived structure of social situations, intergroup relations a model of speech as a reflection of situational representations the "languge determines context" approach further complexities and directions. Part 2 Language attitudes: the matched-guise technique (MGT) the empirical avalanche which followed - standard versus nonstandard speaker evaluations, the role of context, other intervening and mediating variables theoretical developments future developments - the MGT from a discursive perspective, language attitudes and linguistic action. Part 3 Accommodating language: basic concepts and strategies - convergence and divergence, some important distinctions accommodative motives and consequences - convergence and integration, caveats, divergence and intergroup processes further distinctions - psychological versus linguistic accommodation, cognitive organization and identity maintenance functions discourse attuning future rapprochements. Part 4 Language, ethnicity and intergroup communication: the salience and language approaches and problems ethnolinguistic identity strategies of language change - individual mobility and group assimilation, psycholinguistic distinctiveness intergroup communication "breakdown" models of "breakdown" - the stereotype process framework. Part 5 Bilingualism and the survival of languages: the field and its importance influential frameworks - Gardner's model, Clement's model the intergroup model (IGM) - ethnolinguistic vitality, the IGM revised the IGM revisited the very survival of languages integrating models of language survival. Part 6 Language, ageing and health: intergenerational differences - beliefs about talk, over and underaccommodation, other features of discursive style, telling age towards a lifespan communicative framework language, health and social support a language perspective on health and social support. Part 7 Epilogue: future priorities - the status of miscommunication, units of analysis, epistemological dilemmas.

′Miscommunication′ and Problematic Talk

Abstract: Talk as 'Problem' and Communication as 'Miscommunication' - Nikolas Coupland, John M Wiemann and Howard Giles An Integrative Analysis Gender, Power, and Miscommunication - Nancy M Henley and Cheris Kramarae Misunderstanding Children - Elinor Ochs Uncovering the Human Spirit - Lerita M Coleman and Bella M DePaulo Moving Beyond Disability and 'Missed' Communication Reproduction of Aging and Agism in Intergenerational Talk - Justine Coupland, Jon F Nussbaum and Nikolas Coupland Intercultural Encounters and Miscommunication - Stephen P Banks, Gao Ge and Joyce Baker Miscommunication in Nonnative Speaker Discourse - Susan M Gass and Evangeline M Varonis Openness, Uncertainty, and Intimacy - Julie R Brown and L Edna Rogers An Epistemological Reformulation Miscommunication in Medicine - Candace West and Richard M Frankel Miscommunication in Clinical Contexts - Michael F McTear and Florence King The Speech Therapy Interview Social Interaction and the Recycling of Legal Evidence - Karin Aronsson Miscommunication in Organizations - Eric M Eisenberg and Steven R Phillips Hot Air - Allan Bell Media, Miscommunication, and the Climate Change Issue Miscommunication at the Person-Machine Interface - Ronan G Reilly Misunderstanding and Its Remedies - Kent Drummond and Robert Hopper Telephone Miscommunication

Formulating age: Dimensions of age identity in elderly talk

Abstract: It is illuminating to study identity as a dynamic, interactionally achieved process rather than as a static, intraindividual construct. Our article identifies and seeks to overview the diverse means by which the age identities of elderly (aged 70–87) interactants are formulated in a corpus of 40 cross‐generation and within‐generation conversations, based on transcriptions of videorecorded data. We propose an informal taxonomy of age‐identity marking processes in talk, spanning particular age categorization and temporal framing processes. Detailed analysis of individual cases shows how variable identities may be constructed by and for individuals, often bilaterally, and relative to projected identities of others. Finally, we consider theoretical and practical implications of the discursive management of age identity for intergenerational relations and contact.

Information-seeking triggered by age.

Abstract: Age labels may lead to the seeking of age-stereotypic information from target individuals. Using Carver and de la Garza's information-seeking procedure (which asked respondents to judge the relative importance of various kinds of information they would glean from drivers involved in an automobile accident for assigning accident responsibility), but extending it to a wider life span (16 to 91 years of age) and to both genders, we generalized earlier findings to a similar undergraduate sample (n = 437) in another country. Also demonstrated for the first time is the fact that ageist information-seeking across the life span was independent of the driver's gender, the participant's age, and the participant's gender. Specifically, participants wanted to know from younger drivers about their driving conduct (whether they had been drunk and speeding), and from older drivers about their capacity for driving (mental competence, vision, and health). The seeking of environmental information (car safety and road conditions) did not vary with the age of driver in any systematic way. Language: en

Ethnolinguistic vitality in the Danish capital of America

Abstract: This paper analyses objective/subjective and qualitative/quantitative aspects of vitality in Solvang, a Danish‐American community. The setting is interesting for its radical transformation from being all about leading a fulfilling (Grundtvigian) community life to being instrumentally all about attracting tourists with an external Danish facade. By ethnographic‐like means, we analyse the historical vitality of Solvang to the present leading us to formulate hypotheses for testing in three investigations using the Subjective Vitality Questionnaire (SVQ) with adolescent and adult Danish‐ and Anglo‐Americans. Informants were realistic in their evaluations associating Danish strengths with the past, judging Anglos and Danes as currently equal economically and culturally, and ranking Danes lower than both Anglos and Hispanics as to language use and demographics. Younger Anglos viewed Hispanic vitality more positively than their elders. A so‐called ‘perceptual distortions in favour of the outgroup’ profi...

Sociopsychological Perspectives on Older People's Language and Communication

Abstract: This paper overviews a series of recent investigations of the sociopsychological meanings of older people's language and communication. The first set of studies investigated young people's perceptions of younger and older voices. Older voices were, in general, downgraded relative to younger voices by young people. In addition, younger people's messages were recalled significantly better than older people's messages. The next set of studies was concerned with whether people seek information differently from people of various ages. The findings indicate that different questions were posed depending on the target's age. Further studies show that young people's information-seeking strategies draw on various ageist assumptions to formulate questions to both younger and older targets. The next investigation examined how young people address both younger and older people when they are requesting different kinds of assistance from them. Not only do we find ageist assumptions mediating the kinds of compliance-gaining young people use with older people, but also negative stereotypes emerge when younger people are asked what kinds of compliance-gaining strategies older people themselves usually adopt. Finally, the above findings are meshed with a new model being developed concerning the relationships between language, health and the elderly.