Adjustments as Strategies for Successful Communication

Abstract

We present Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT) as a way of approaching ELF communication as intercultural communication contexts. Many collaborative, strategic features in ELF studies are described as communicative, pragmatic, discourse-based, and accommodative strategies without an underpinning theory. CAT can describe language use in ELF communication in more depth and provide more satisfactory explanations. Perspectives rooted in second language acquisition and interpretations of this reflected in communication strategies are rejected. This is because they are based on seeing everything as ‘learner language’ and ‘deficit’, and users’ strategies as compensating for gaps in ability. Three important dimensions are discussed in the CAT perspective: convergence, divergence, and maintenance. Convergence is related to a desire to make our speech more like that of our interlocutor(s). This can be done phonologically, in speech rate, or in many other ways we may change our language while communicating. In contrast, divergence and maintenance are related to a desire to keep some distance from our interactant(s) by either increasing differences or making them more obvious, or simply maintaining our speech without orienting to our interlocutor(s). Research findings from the CAT literature show that adopting one of these three strategies is closely linked to our motives, attitudes, and identities. We discuss ELF studies, especially examples focussing on ad hoc (as needed), creative ways of using language, and how they are taken up by others in context.