ArticlePDF Available

Communication accommodation theory: Past accomplishments, current trends, and future prospects

September 2023
Language Sciences 99(4):101571

DOI:10.1016/j.langsci.2023.101571

Authors:

Howard Giles

University of California, Santa Barbara

America Edwards

University of California, Santa Barbara

Joseph B. Walther

University of California, Santa Barbara

Content uploaded by America Edwards

Content may be subject to copyright.

Communication accommodation theory: Past

accomplishments, current trends, and future prospects

Howard Giles

, America L. Edwards

, Joseph B. Walther

Department of Communication, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-4020, USA

School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia

article info

Article history:

Available online xxx

Keywords:

Communication accommodation theory

Computer-mediated communication

Human-machine communication

Convergence

Divergence

Communication technology

abstract

This Special Issue commemorates the 50th anniversary of communication accommodation

theory (CAT) in 2023, formerly known as speech accommodation theory. This article re-

ﬂects on the diversity of CAT research as seen in recent studies (2021–2023) as well as the

empirical papers to follow in this Special Issue. It provides an overview of CAT’s history by

reference to previously suggested stages in the evolution of research, with many updates

to stages therein, demonstrating the theory’s cross-disciplinary inﬂuences across many

applied social contexts, diverse social groups, languages and cultures, and other commu-

nicative features. Next, we overview burgeoning recent research in computer-mediated

and human-machine interactions that leads to the identiﬁcation of a seventh stage of

CAT and an agenda of research questions for future work suggested by it. In conclus ion, we

propose a reﬁned and expanded set of Principles of Accommodation.

Ó2023 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

1. Introduction

Communication accommodation theory (CAT) seeks to explain and predict when, how, and why individuals engage in

interactional adjustments with others, as well as recipients’inferences, attributions, and evaluations of, and responses to,

them (e.g., Giles et al., 1991;Soliz et al., 2022). Relatedly, in a ﬁctional novel about the antics of a 19th Century detective,

Charles Lenox, the author (Finch, 2021: 177) alluded to societal changes that can be understood as illustrations of commu-

nication accommodation theory (CAT):

Lenox came from a country whose fashionable manner were largely determine by just a few hundred people. It was

said the Prince of Wales could walk along Pall Mall without any risk of being recognized because so many gentlemen

had copied his appearance –his clothes, his smart beard, his regal pace and posture. The exactitude was almost sci-

entiﬁc. Once, after a bout of rheumatism, the prince had taken to shaking hands with an arm pressed tightly to his side.

Within a week it had been the only acceptable way to shake hands in society.

CAT was originally framed as an interpersonal theory of speech nonverbal alignments (see Stamp et al., 2015), but it

now includes intergroup processes as well (see Dragojevic and Giles, 2014); for comparison with other concepts and

theories of interactive alignment, synchrony, conversational entrainment, and the like, see for example, Gasiorek (2016a);

*Corresponding author. Department of Communication, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-4020, USA.

E-mail addresses: HowieGiles@cox.net (H. Giles), americaedwards@umail.ucsb.edu (A.L. Edwards), jwalther@ucsb.edu (J.B. Walther).

Current afﬁliation and address: Department of Communication, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-4020, USA.

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Language Sciences

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/langsci

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2023.101571

0388-0001/Ó2023 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Language Sciences 99 (2023) 101571

Rasenberg et al. (2020);Gasiorek et al. (2021);Wynn and Borrie (2022);Barón-Birchenall (2023); and van de Pol et al. (2023).

A description of CAT’s evolution at this, the theory’s 50th year, is one component of this article.

As some journals commemorate their 50th anniversaries (e.g., Language in Society and Human Communication Research),

Language Sciences is, similarly, celebrating 50 years of CAT publications through this Special Issue. We are indebted to the

journal’s Editor-in-Chief, Sune Stefferson, for his counsel, endorsement, and support. We also extend considerable gratitude

to the Guest Editorial Board for their input and dedicated, systematic, timely, anonymous reviews of the articles published

herein. There are many individual “CAT theorists”who have exuded creative and virtuosic scholarship to whom the ﬁeld owes

a great debt of gratitude.

A compelling feature of the theory’s history is that it has been studied across cultural contexts, languages, human social

groups, and applied settings (for example, see Gnisci et al., 2016;Watson and Soliz, 2019;Barlow et al., 2023) as well as across

disciplines (see Meyerhoff, 1998,2002;Elhami, 2020). CAT has also guided the design of pragmatic interventions and training

in a range of arenas, including inter-professional healthcare (Watson, 2020).

A substantial body of quantitative work has conﬁrmed many of the predictions emerging from the theory’s testable

propositions (for a meta-analysis, see Soliz and Bergquist, 2016; however, see Alemi and Maleknia, 2023) and, in tandem,

qualitative work has embraced CAT in naturalistic settings, demonstrating that “accommodation is...grounded in the

accomplishment of actions as they unfold in interactions”(Gallois et al., 2016: 118). Accommodation has not only been

studied across successive conversations with the same persons (e.g., Gasiorek and Dragojevic, 2017,2019), but longer-term

(so-called “language contact”) accommodation has also been shown to occur in communities’dialect shifts over extended

periods of time (e.g., Trudgill, 1986,2008;Trinh, 2022;Eide and Hjelde, 2023).

In what follows, we ﬁrst provide a selective snap-shot of the diversity and growth of features in CAT studies appearing

between 2021 and 2023 (see Table 1), followed by a similar analysis (Table 2) for the 9 empirical articles in this Special Issue.

Then, we update and elaborate previous historical accounts of CAT’s development as a six-stage conceptual map. Thereafter,

we introduce and overview a seventh stage of the theory in terms of its advances on accommodation phenomena that take

place through and with technology, encompassing both computer-mediated and human-machine communication. Finally,

and in light of these developments, we reﬁne and expand the most recent Principles of Accommodation (after Dragojevic

et al., 2016;Soliz et al., 2022).

2. Recent CAT studies’diverse foci and loci

As Table 1 documents, CAT research continues to expand its heuristic utility to explain accommodative dynamics across

more and more language features and strategies, social contexts, individual differences and applications, and journal sources.

In parallel, research that empirically demonstrates the use of different CAT strategies with more explorations of speech

complementarity and respectful avoidance are evident as are the distinctive social and institutional contexts in which CAT

research has taken place. In this vein, business settings, trade, and ﬁnance are now included under the CAT umbrella as is the

communicative management of diverse health conditions, like dementia and autism. Besides continuing to investigate the

role of differences in personality and social beliefs on accommodative practices, there has been an increase in interventions

providing CAT training to improve communication across various professional settings (e.g., second language education and

diet therapy). As is also apparent in Table 1, CAT research continues to appear in a variety of disciplines and their respective

journals. While individual citations appear under only one category/column, in most cases they also pertain to other

categories.

In addition to what is noted in Table 1, CAT has been also evoked in analyses and interpretations of communication ac-

commodation within and between an array of non-human species, such as ravens and monkeys (see, for example, Ruch et al.,

2018;Luef et al., 2020). Furthermore, and in addition to intriguing explorations into inter-brain synchrony in verbal (inter-

generational) interactions (e.g., Dikker et al., 2022), a case for the related biophysical underpinnings of communication ac-

commodation (see also, Palomares et al., 2016) has convincingly been laid out by Denes and Dhillon (2019: 232–233) who

argued that:

While individuals might not know their own hormone levels, for example, they can nonetheless identify potential signs

of physiological arousal (e.g., increases in heart rate and sweating) and recognize that such states may impede ac-

commodation competence. Embracing the complex and complicated ways that our bodies interact with environ-

mental, relational, individual, and communicative factors to inﬂuence behavior and well-being adds even more

richness to the already fruitful line of research investigating communication accommodation in interpersonal relations.

Turning now to contributions in the present Collection, Table 2 provides a bird’s eye view of the empirical papers that

follow, admittedly skewed towards USA contexts with quantitative, survey, and experimental methods. Table 2 draws

attention to the accommodative foci of studies, the characteristics of actors accommodating (or not) to particular target

others, and the various contexts and media inwhich accommodation happens. Consistent with our introduction of Stage 7 in

a section below, over half of the studies listed (see stage numbers in parentheses) adopt or investigate accommodative

phenomena through new communication technologies, and a few focus attention on mediating processes in technological

contexts. In other words, while accommodation has had direct effects on outcomes (see Bernhold, and Edwards et al., this

Issue), in other studies, accommodation was indirectly implicated through the interceding roles of perceived similarity,

credibility, anxiety, and social attractiveness (Allard and Holmstrom, Byrd and Zhang, and Zhang et al., this Issue).

H. Giles et al. / Language Sciences 99 (2023) 1015712

A selection of other features of these studies are worthy of note (and see also the thought-provoking Epilogue to, and

analysis of, this Collection by Meyerhoff, this Issue). First, in large part, predictions arising from CAT were supported in terms

of convergence and attuning, forging typically favorable intentions and social attributions (e.g., Bernhold, Coolidge et al., and

Cohn et al., this Issue). That said, and predictably so, normatively and negatively-valenced words, such as swearing in the

Table 1

The diversity of CAT features in a sample of recent studies (2021–2023)

Languages Within Language

Features and Issues

CAT Language

Strategies

Social and

Institutional

Contexts

Health

Conditions

and Issues

Individual

Differences

within Samples

CAT Training-

Intervention-

Journal

Sources

Ewe (Africa)

(Vinyo et al.,

2021);

Manadonese

(Indonesia)

(Diner et al.,

2022);

German

(Ulbrich,

2021);

Flemish

(Swerts et al.,

2021);

Bulgarian

(Filipov and

Zlateva,

2021);

Yaeyaman

(Japan)

(Guay, 2023)

Honoriﬁcs (Senaﬁca,

2022);

Spelling (Surkyn

et al., 2022);

Slangs (Fred et al.,

2022); Speech rate

(Fuscone et al., 2021);

Acoustic Features

(

Sturm et al., 2021);

Laughter

(Rathcke and Fuchs,

2022)

Convergence

(Rosen, 2023);

Speech

Complementarity

(Guydish and Tree

Fox, 2023);

Divergence

(Gessinger et al.,

2021);

Non-

Accommodations

(Zhang et al., 2021)

Under-

Accommodation

(Bernhold

et al., 2021)

Respectful

Avoidance

(Omori

et al., 2023)

Finance (Brau

et al., 2022);

Air Trafﬁc

Control

(Hamzah et al.,

2022);

Education

Frey and Lane

(2021);

Law

Enforcement

(Italiano et al.,

2021);

Business

(Ayeni, 2021);

Trade

(Odhiambo,

2022)

Autism

(Hopkins et al.,

2022);

Depression

(Weinstein &

Jensen, in press);

Covid

Pandemic

(Elhami and

Roshan 2021);

Dementia

(Momand

et al., 2022);

Child Birth

(Kabir and

Chan, 2022);

Psychotherapy

(Miner et al.,

2022)

Attachment Styles

and Loneliness

(Bernhold and

Giles, 2022);

Felt

Ostracism (Heng,

2023);

Assimilation

Attitudes

(Montgomery et al.,

2021);

Religious and

Political Beliefs

(Bernhold et al.,

2022);

Educational Track

(Hilte et al., 2021);

Big 5 Personality

Traits

(Marko, 2022)

Rapport-

Building

(Novotny et al.,

2021);

Caring for

Parkinson

Patients

(Pitts et al.,

2022);

Health Care

Workers (Pines

et al., 2021);

Inter-

Institutional

Collaboration

(Blick and

Waters, 2021).

Second

Language

Education

(Ding, 2021);

Diet therapy

(Min et al.,

2021)

Journal of

Qualitative

Linguistics;

Frontiers in

Computer

Science;

American

Journal of

Literature

Studies;

International

Journal of

Financial

Studies;

Journal of

Advanced

Nursing;

International

Journal of

Listening

While a few of these cites appear in the text and, therefore, in the References section, for spatial management issues, all other citations in Table 1 can be

found in the Supplementary Bibliographical Material on the online version of this article.

Table 2

Features of the empirical articles in this Special Issue.

Article Authors Accommodation Foci Actors-targets involved Contexts/media Methods CAT stages

implicated

Bernhold Perceptions of others’

accommodation

Middle-aged children & their

parents

Care-giving MTurk online survey 1 (& 6)

Coolidge Convergence to humor:

Verbal irony

General population sample Texting MTurk online survey 7 (& 1)

Allard and

Holmstrom

Convergence to and

divergence from others’

swear words

Imagined professor & student

friend

Education Online vignette survey

with experimental design

1(2&6)

Byrd and Zhang Accommodating others’

group identities

General population with

known person with-visible

disabilities

Interability

dialogues

Cross-sectional online

survey

1 (2, 3, & 6)

Aboba and

Montgomery-

Vesteecka

Accommodation:

Interpretability &

Control

Nonaccommodation:

negative emotional displays

Community health ofﬁcers &

community Ghanaian

members

Health care Critical discourse analysis

of focus group data

1 (2, 4, & 5)

Adams and Miles Degree of convergence to

non-conventional

nonverbal cues

Student to known others Texting Student online survey 7 (& 1)

Zhang et al. Accommodation

(supportive) &

Nonaccommodation

(non-supportive)

Chinese international student

with American students

Facebook Online survey with

experimental design

7(&6)

Cohn et al. Pronunciation convergence

to 3 text-to-speech voices

varying in human form

Students to machine voices

varying in humanness of

form

Human-

machine

interactions

Online survey with

experimental design

7(1&5)

Edwards et al. Evaluations of under- and

over- accommodations

Social robots to general

population

Education MTurk “Master”online

survey with experimental

design

7(4&6)

H. Giles et al. / Language Sciences 99 (2023) 101571 3

education context by Allard and Holstrom (this Issue), revealed more unfavorable outcomes. Nonetheless, non-

accommodative stances generated typically adverse outcomes as was shown with far-reaching and dire implications for

healthcare (see Aboba and Montgomery-Vesteeka, this Issue). Second, while predictable antecedents of accommodation, such

as relational closeness, degree of liking, and relative power, exhibited robust effects (e.g., Coolidge et al., this Issue), positive

outcomes were not, understandably, found for all verbal and nonverbal features that have been examined (Adams and Miles,

this Issue). Third, it was useful to see accommodation and nonaccommodation examined not only on their own but, also and

simultaneously, alongside other social phenomena - positive and negative self-presentation - as well (see Zhang et al., this

Issue). Furthermore, it is valuable to see the invocation of other theoretical models that complement and can be fruitfully be

aligned with CAT, such as intergroup contact (e.g., Byrd and Zhang, this Issue) and technology equivalence (Cohn et al., this

Issue).

Next, we revisit CAT’s stage structure while also introducing a new one.

3. CAT research as a series of stages

McGlone and Giles (2011) argued over a decade ago that the CAT literature existing at that time suggested a distinct, yet

interrelated, six-stage conceptual history (see also, Giles, 2016;Zhang and Giles, 2017;Zhang and Pitts, 2019). Hence, at this

juncture, it is useful to revisit the evolution of the theory’s benchmark stages, and to supplement their description with

various and more recent developments. It is important to note that, while each stagerepresents a new focus of study, it should

not be construed that they are mutually exclusive, nor that the research that adds to each stage was done in any kind of serial

and well-punctuated timeline. For example, stereotypically-oriented patronizing talk addressing older can be conceived as

such in the intergroup Stage 2 and as overaccommodation in Stage 4.

3.1. Stage 1: addressee foci and convergence

During the theory’s early development, when it was referred to as speech accommodation theory (SAT), it primarily

focused on how, when, and why people accommodated their language and speech patterns to become more similar to their

partners through the process of convergence (e.g., Giles, 1973;Giles et al., 1973;Coupland, 1984). Converging speech modi-

ﬁcations may be made consciously or unconsciously in response to internal motivations (e.g., the need to capture others’

approval, or liking, and/or a searching for common ground) to foster a sense of psychological closeness with another, or to

meet receivers’expectations of what is deemed appropriate (Giles, 2008). As paralleled in the literature on nonverbal

mimicry, such accommodative moves render “.numerous beneﬁts for both parties of the interaction leading to a conclusion

that ...they are... “social glue”(Kulesza et al., 2023: 9; for a CAT interpretation of the so-called “chameleon effect”in mimicry

research, see Bernhold and Giles, 2020a).

In some conversations, however, a parallel (and objectively divergent) way of achieving these outcomes can be enacted

when speakers complement each other’s speech patterns (Giles, 1980). This can be illustrated and evident in some societies’

romantic heterosexual relationships, in which males can accentuate their more masculine vocal features (e.g., assume a

deeper pitch) while, in contrast, their female partners can emphasize their more feminine characteristics (e.g., becoming

softer in tone; Hogg, 1985). Empirical study of this so-called tactic of speech complementarity has recently received renewed

attention (e.g., Guydish and Fox Tree, 2022).

In essence, accommodation regulates social interaction by decreasing or increasing social distance between communi-

cators, thereby often reﬂecting relative social status and power differentials (McGlone and Giles, 2011). The way in which

individuals accommodate their partners can vary in several ways (see Gallois and Giles, 1998)by:

upwardly or downwardly converging in terms of the prestige, where relevant, of the language variety targeted;

fully or partially accommodating a speciﬁc speaker characteristic or a particular constellation of them (see Ostrand and

Chodroff, 2021);

symmetrically or asymmetrically accommodating such that both or only one partner converges;

converging at different paces and/or in varying magnitudes within a single conversation or, longitudinally over a

sequence of encounters (e.g., across psychotherapy sessions, Ferrara,1991), yielding an array of cognitive, affective, and

behavioral outcomes that are typically positive, such as gaining compliance (Buller and Aune, 1988).

Indeed, convergence has been shown to have some compelling beneﬁts for its enactors. For instance, through an analysis

of Presidential debate transcripts, Romero et al. (2015) found that politicians who accommodated the linguistic markers of

others in the debate increased their ratings in the polls thereafter (see also, Rosen, 2023). However, in some contexts,

convergence can have detrimental effects when it is collectively enacted by many other people to another group’s higher

status language variety, resulting thereafter in the long-term demise (or even disappearance) of accommodators’traditional

heritage language variety (Matthew, 2023). In like fashion, some cultural groups, who value their group’s unique speech

styles, do not take kindly to large numbers of those who can approximate (and, hence, threaten the distinctiveness and vi-

tality of) them.

H. Giles et al. / Language Sciences 99 (2023) 1015714

Within a few years of its development, SAT was being applied not just to accent and dialect convergence which was its

initial focus (Giles, 1973;Giles and Powesland, 1975), but to communication patterns more broadly, encompassing nonverbal

and verbal behaviors in language use (Giles and Wadleigh, 2008), dress style, demeanor, and appearance. As such, the SAT

theory was subsequently renamed communication accommodation theory (e.g., Giles et al., 1987,1991). CAT work continues

across a wide variety of communicative and phonetic features (Earnshaw, 2021;Pardo et al., 2022; and see Bernhold, Coolidge

et al., Byrd and Zhang, Aboba and Montgomery, and Adams and Miles, this Issue).

3.2. Stage 2: intergroup identities and social differentiation

A fascination with processes of intergroup relations - when speakers’social identities are contextually more salient than

their personality characteristics, mood, or temperament (see Tajfel, 1978; for a recent review and critique of social identity

theory, see Demirden, 2021) - forged the focus of the next stage of CAT research. Here, speakers could adopt moves such as not

converging toward others and maintaining their unique or distinctive speech practices (Bourhis, 1979). Hence, when role

relationships or, say, ethnic group memberships were primed (see Giles et al., 1977), and unlike like the previous emphasis on

convergence, Stage 2 for the most part focused upon encounters where interactants would accentuate differences in their

speech or communicative patterns (e.g., Bourhis et al., 1979). This could be illustrated when physicians use medical jargon

with a patient, instead of using commonly understood terms and phrases. This would, arguably, be enacted by the former in

order to distance themselves sociolinguistically from the latter and, thereby, express and exert power differentials often

evoking deference or resentment by recipients; it could even be interpreted by divergent speakers as successful failure (see

Seibel, 2023).

Divergence could manifest itself as upward or downward, happen quickly or progressively, and be small scale or quite

intensive. In a recent study, Clementson et al. (2023) report on a family member talking to Brazilian colleagues in Portuguese,

noting that “.by diverging to a higher-status in her language through positive expectancy violations relative to her co-

workers, the coworkers respected her more, gave her more attention, and listened to her more attentively in conversations.”

In other words, while divergence is often very disdainfully received (Frey and Lane, 2021;Italiano et al., 2021; see Byrd and

Zhang, Aboba and Montgomery-Vesteeka, and Zhang et al., this Issue), it can, on occasion, have its own signiﬁcant social

rewards.

Research in Stage 2 often explored intergenerational interactions where certain younger adults act condescendingly with

certain older folk by using what can be termed (and attributed by them) as patronizing talk (e.g., Coupland et al., 1988). Put

another way, younger adults here are not so much responding to an elder as a unique person but, rather, as a member of

stigmatized social category (e.g., Coupland et al., 1993; Harwood et al., 1995). As Zhang and Pitts (2019) asserted, theoretical

attention during this stage focused on the relationship between interpersonal dynamics, on the one hand, and intergroup

dynamics on the other; see Dragojevic and Giles (2014) for a discussion of this distinction, and its implications for language

and communicative behaviors, such as accommodation.

Later developments in this stage examined so-called “group-based identity accommodation”where speakers could

accommodate to another’s group identity (e.g., religious or political) by recognizing and afﬁrming their membership in that

social category (e.g., Soliz et al., 2009;Bernhold and Giles, 2020b). Such work continues to develop today in family

communication (Warner et al., 2021) and in terms of going beyond dichotomous in-out-group interactions to unpacking

intersectionality and the study of accommodations when multiple group memberships are operative (e.g., Omori et al., 2023;

see also, Phoenix and Pattynama, 2006;Collins, 2019). Future work in this stage might also assist in exploring interpersonal

accommodative communication strategies for improving intergroup relations (see the fusion-secure basis hypothesis, Klein

and Bastian, 2023) and social justice (e.g., Mady and El-Khoury, 2023). Such beneﬁts might be interpreted as being allied

to notions of conversational receptiveness for coping with political polarization (Oliver-Blackburn and Chatham-Carpenter,

2023) and particularly under times of societally-threatening cultural changes (see Armenta et al., 2023).

3.3. Stage 3: subjective elements of accommodation

The third stage of CAT focuses on how the process of accommodation is not only a variable phenomenon that can be

concretely measured, coded, or discursively analyzed, but also has important subjective parameters. CAT theorists began to

recognize that accommodation may not align with where others are measured or coded as being objectively, but, on occasions

instead, where they are subjectively believed, expected, and/or perceived to be (for teenagers’self-reports of accommodation,

Hilte, 2023). For instance, Thakerar et al. (1982) found that lower and higher status others converged to where they believed

each other to be stereotypically in terms of speech rate and segmental phonology, irrespective of how they actually sounded.

In fact, they were analyzed as objectively upwardly and downwardly diverging from each other, respectively (see Giles et al.,

1991 : 14; for a 2 2 table of subjective vs. objective x convergence vs. divergence). More recently, Dunbar et al. (2023)

showed, in a study on interpersonal deception, that whereas in interaction truth-tellers’and deceivers’movements were

perceived by them (depending on topic) to be synchronous, objective automated measures of their behaviors showed

otherwise.

It was also during Stage 3 that the antecedent conditions of accommodation and nonaccommodation were elaborated

upon, and motives were more systematically conceptualized. For instance, cognitive motives (which relate to concerns about

message comprehension and communication efﬁciency) and affective motives (that deal with identity) can occur

H. Giles et al. / Language Sciences 99 (2023) 101571 5

simultaneously. Indeed, speakers can sometimes have multiple goals by wishing to gain another’s approval on the one hand

(e.g., matching them nonverbally) yet, at the same time, also desire to emphasize their heritage, integrity and group identity

(e.g., by exaggerating their regional accent); that is, simultaneous convergence and divergence (see Bilous and Krauss, 1988).

Motives arise, and may shift, during interaction as communicators respond to their own and others’subjectively perceived

identity needs and goals (Wilson, 2019). Recent research that is focused on this facet of the theory is relatively sparse than

other aspects, though the ideas are foundational to how we explain nonaccommodation (especially certain types of

stereotypically-driven overaccommodations) in Stage 4 below.

Interestingly, Simmons-Mackie (2018) suggests that people with aphasia, who have a strong desire to be socially accepted,

often adopt seemingly unusual forms of communication by converging to wherethey subjectively and uniquely feel the kinds

of accommodation that is needed. Not unrelatedly, and by taking the perspective of others (Gasiorek, 2016b;Gasiorek et al.,

2022), work on so-called recursive attributional schemas and mirroring (e.g., Antaki and Lewis, 1986;Folsom, 2004) suggest

that cognitive machinations such as, “I think I know what you think I think you are thinking”may consciously intercede in

decisions about whether to be accommodative or not. That said, there are communicative –and perhaps accommodative -

costs to such chronic mindfulness (see Ault and Brandley, 2023).

Stage 3 may have had its origins, in part, in Bell’s (1984,1991) research where he showed how certain broadcasters aligned

their speech with the presumed characteristics of their radio audiences. His highly inﬂuential audience design model has

been taken up by many sociolinguists over the years, particularly with respect social media, networking, and technologies

evident in Stage 7 below (see Seargeant et al., 2012;Androutsopoulos, 2014;Frobenius, 2014).

3.4. Stage 4: other forms of nonaccommodation with attributed inferences and outcomes

The next stage of CAT focused on other forms of nonaccommodation, further increasing its utility in intergenerational,

intercultural, interpersonal, and intergroup communication research (for a selective review and with respect to prejudice, see

Giles et al., in press). In CAT’sﬁrst decade or two, besides nonaccommodation being manifest in the form of divergence, it was

also conceptualized (as above) as a form of speech maintenance or non-convergence and was used to illustrate ineffective

adjustments to communication (Giles et al., 1991). By the mid-1990s, CAT took a more nuanced approach to distinguishing

other forms of nonaccommodation as over- and under-accommodative. The former was that which exceeded what was

considered appropriate communication, such as engaging in patronizing talk, as mentioned above (e.g., Giles and Williams,

1994). Underaccommodative moves, on the other hand, were those which failed to meet appropriate adjustments, such as

egocentrically ignoring another’s knowledge on the topic to hand or moving to an unrelated topic of only their own concerns

(e.g., Gasiorek, 2013). Research on under- and overaccommodation continues today and as it relates to cumulative forms of,

and the inferred intentionality and motives underlying, them (e.g., Gasiorek, 2016b;Gasiorek and Dragojevic, 2019) and see

Edwards et al. (this Issue).

Sometimes cycles of prolonged and effortful accommodation with certain others can lead to almost destructive non-

accommodative outcomes in follow-up conversations with others. In this vein, Giles and Edwards (in press) recently intro-

duced the notion of accommodative energy. As an illustration, a young relative of one of us regularly takes it upon herself in

family gatherings to devote considerable time and effort talking (but mostly listening) with her elderly aunt who otherwise

tends to monopolize family discussions. This welcome relief for the rest of the family, however, is offset when that niece

subsequently acts is seen to act toward the rest of the family in a passive, removed, and event moody demeanor. One apparent

consequence of the prolonged and exhausting attention to her aunt is that the overly-accommodative niece becomes un-

wittingly becomes nonaccommodative toward other family members in their subsequent conversations.

Edward Maguire (personal communication) suggested that the concept of accommodative energy aligns with the liter-

ature on health care providers’interactions with patients. Healthcare providers are encouraged to be empathetic with pa-

tients, but the expenditure of accommodative energy comes at the emotional costs of excessive stress and fatigue - and even

occupational burn-out - for many providers (see, for example, Adams et al., 2006;Cieslak et al., 2014). Speculatively, this

process also likely arises for some police ofﬁcers, ﬁrst responders, and social workers, too, particularly those who frequently

endure certain types of emotionally-draining assignments, such as investigating and or managing child or elder abuse.

3.5. Stage 5: attuning strategies

The ﬁfth stage of CAT research examines how mutual adjustment can go beyond convergence, divergence, over-, and

under-accommodation. Referring to these strategies as “approximation moves,”Coupland et al. (1988) conceptualized three

other distinct axes of so-called attuning strategies, namely, interpretability, discourse management, interpersonal control (for

the coding of them, see Jones et al., 1999). Interpretability strategies are adjustments made to promote message compre-

hension, such as taking into account a receiver’s lack of language proﬁciency or social knowledge. Discourse management

strategies take a partner’s social and conversational needs into consideration, such as topic selection and face management.

Interpersonal control strategies discursively focus on existing role-relations, and particularly relate to language (e.g., hon-

oriﬁcs) invoked to acknowledge, legitimate, or establish power differentials on the one hand, or defuse them on the other. A

further attuning strategy that is exceedingly important is emotional expression (e.g., Williams et al., 1990). This is enacted

when a conversant accommodates another’s affective state and provides social support, affection, and legitimation of that

other’s emotional dilemmas. Work of this genre was established in health communication (e.g., Watson and Gallois, 1998;

H. Giles et al. / Language Sciences 99 (2023) 1015716

Watson et al., 2016) and it continues across many different arenas, including interability communication (Byrd and Zhang,

2020, and this Issue) and classroom teaching (Weizheng, 2019).

Attuning strategies are not, of course, clear-cut on all occasions. While social dilemmas have been a well-established area

of study in social psychology (e.g., Dawes et al., 1977;Van Lange et al., 2013), such as those emerging in dating and multi-racial

relationships (e.g., Gaines et al., 1999;Yum, 2004), CAT has also acknowledged them communicatively. In addressing such

“accommodative dilemmas,”Gallois and Giles (1998) argued that any decision (conscious or otherwise) to accommodate

another person (or not) may be fraught with risks and uncertainties about just how to be behave (Pittam and Gallois, 1999;

Williams, 1999). This may particularly be the case when it cannot be entirely clear to speakers what the real conversational

needs and social identities of their message recipients might be (Giles, 2009) as well as the need, in close relationships, to

balance personal autonomy on the one hand with interdependence on the other (Giles 2008).

Accommodative dilemmas in communication can occur for a range of other reasons (Shankar and Pavitt, 2002), including

social encounters where there are several speakers in a small group setting who use different registers, styles, and dialects

(Dragojevic, 2019) or speeches on sensitive topics in the media where different, and strongly-held, stake holders’positions are

difﬁcult to reconcile (Maguire et al., 2023). Not unrelatedly, accommodative dilemmas can, on occasion, affectively intensify

interactions in ways that lead to so-called “accommodative turbulence”(Giles, 2008; see also, Knobloch et al., 2022), the

interpersonal consequences of which can ignite mistrust, angst, and identity violations.

3.6. Stage 6: mediating mechanisms

The sixth and last stage identiﬁed in CAT research (Zhang and Pitts, 2019) has focused on processes and mechanisms that

mediate the effects of accommodation on conversational and social outcomes. As such, accommodation and non-

accommodation have been found, respectively, not always to produce positive or negative evaluations directly per se. Instead,

evaluations are determined in part by cognitive and affective mechanisms triggered by accommodative moves (Myers et al.,

2008) which can themselves, in turn, shape outcomes (see the prejudices-nonaccommodative cyclic model, Giles et al., in

press). For instance, as seen in a series of cross-cultural studies, the more that civilians perceived police ofﬁcers as accom-

modating, the more they reported complying with the ofﬁcers’directives and the more willing they were to report crime to

them. This only worked, however, because perceived accommodation led to increased trust in police which itself then

rendered the positive outcomes (e.g., Choi et al., 2019). Work in this tradition –as well as that adopting so-called moderated

mediated models (e.g., Vincze and Gasiorek, 2016;Gasiorek et al., 2022;Omori et al., 2023) - can be seen through the work of

Bernhold et al. (2021) and Zhang et al. (2021) as well as herein by Bernhold, Byrd and Zhang, Zhang et al., and Edwards et al.

(this Issue).

3.7. Summarizing stages 1–6

In sum, we have followed others in characterizing CAT’s evolution as a series of interlocking stages. These stages are not

mutually exclusive and may even feed into each other; Vincze and Gasiorek’s (2018) work, for example, falls into at least the

ﬁrst, second, and sixth stages of CAT research. By this means we acknowledged CAT’s key attuning strategies in social context

(e.g., those of approximation and discourse management), together with its subjective parameters and mediating mecha-

nisms. During its ﬁrst six stages of development, CAT has spawned many satellite models, including (but not limited to) the

intergroup model of bilingualism (Giles and Byrne, 1982), multilingual accommodation model (Sachdev et al., 2012),

communicative predicament model of aging (Ryan et al., 1986), ethnolinguistic identity model (Giles and Johnson, 1981), and

communicative model of acculturation (Giles et al., 2012). As mentioned earlier (see Table 1), CAT has also been used to guide

interventions in a variety of contexts as, for example, Chevalier and colleagues’(2020) work on pharmacists and patients, and

Pines et al.’s (2021) work on healthcare workers and aggressive patients.

Even with 50 years of history, CAT research is still ongoing and continues to help advance our understanding of inter-

personal communication as the world keeps changing. Most recently, attention has shifted to the massive, global disruptions

caused by the COVID-19 pandemic which have necessitated increased attention on language and communication manage-

ment (see Jucks and Hendriks, 2021;van Hooft et al., 2023). For instance, we have recently encountered accommodative

dilemmas about, and strong emotive reactions from others associated with, the wearing of face masks (see Rains et al., 2022),

and even via remote video conferencing (e.g., Zoom). In fact, using the initial six Phases as a springboard, we now introduce

Stage 7 of CAT, which is helping us to understand more about how communication is mediated through and occurring with

technology.

4. Communicating through and with technology

When CAT research was introduced ﬁve decades ago, humans communicated with one another primarily through face-to-

face (FtF) communication, telephone calls, and letters. Not surprisingly, prior to 2000, only 4% of CAT publications focused on

computer-mediated communication (CMC; Soliz and Bergquist, 2016). The public accessibility of the Internet in the 1990s

ushered dramatic changes to communication, not only in terms of the channels, but the codes that traversedthem (for review,

see Walther and Whitty, 2021). The early CMC systems like email and group conferencing systems had no facial, bodily, or

vocal cues of the kind that signaled identity and prompted accommodation in the earliest CAT (speciﬁcally SAT) studies. The

H. Giles et al. / Language Sciences 99 (2023) 101571 7

prevalence and salience of language (and only language) in CMC raised questions whether CAT, or other relational theories,

would “work”in online interactions (for review, see Walther, 2018). By 2007, Fox et al. (2007: 395) were calling for “further

research on both asynchronous and synchronous CMC.to gain a better understanding of when, how, and why accommo-

dation occurs online.”Naturally, researchers began to assess whether CAT could help to better understand CMC, despite its

lack of real-time reactions and its limited sets of communicative cues. From that time to this, however, “.research on CMC is

second only to culture/ethnicity context in terms of the proportion of CAT-based quantitative research inquiries”published

between 2010 and 2015, constituting 25% of studies in that period (Soliz and Bergquist, 2016: 64).

Grifﬁn (2009:397–398) asserted 15 years ago that CAT had impressive generalizability and “has morphed into a

communication theory of enormous scope”that “can be beneﬁcially applied to any situation where people from different

groups or cultures come into contact.”We ﬁnd that the theory’s applicability in mediated communication channels that were

unheard of at the theory’s inception, that connect us globally, supports Grifﬁn’s assessment to a signiﬁcant extent. This may be

even more strongly the case if CAT helps to explain communication with even newer technologies, including human-machine

communication (HMC).

4.1. Communicating through technology

Research applying CAT to mediated contexts in the late 1990s began exploring whether and to what extent accommo-

dative behaviors take place in non-live, asynchronous interactions, such as voicemail and CMC. In fact, Buzzanell et al. (1996:

330) expressly articulated the need for investigation of “accommodation in less information rich contexts,”and they were

among the ﬁrst to apply CAT to mediated interactions. Their research found that voicemail users with lower status (students)

tend to accommodate to higher status individuals (professors), but not vice versa. This established that accommodation can

and does occur when communication is mediated and asynchronous, that is, even when communicators are not physically

present to one another.

A great deal of CAT research has focused on micro-level speech and language behaviors that stimulate accommodation,

and in CMC, many of these language qualities are especially apparent and concretely displayed. Because CMC is often limited

to language and temporal cues alone, without visual or audio cues of interactants, linguistic cues to identity and group

membership emerge particularly strongly, and accommodation takes place in CMC over the course of message exchanges.

Ample research demonstrated that, despite asynchronous interaction among interlocutors who do not see or hear one

another in plain-text CMC environments, receivers decode signals from others and then compensate or reciprocate, often

following social norms. Both Thomson et al. (2001) and Bunz and Campbell (2004) examined accommodation in e-mail.

Participants in the latter study accommodated both lexically and structurally to politeness norms in e-mails (see also Scissors

et al., 2009). More recently, Gibson (2019) found that moderated Reddit forums tend to contain a greater level of self-

censoring than what is apparent in unmoderated, free speech forums. That is, in the presence of moderators who can

remove participants’message postings, Reddit users are more likely to engage in accommodation through self-censorship

than in non-moderated forums where hostile political talk is not removed. Indeed, the timing of when, how, and why in-

dividuals (sometimes strategically) reply or not to computer-mediated messages is an interesting empirical question in terms

its interpersonal consequences, as well as with respect to organizations’relationships with customers, in management and in

marketing (Liu et al., 2022).

Having established the existence of accommodation in CMC generally, attention has shifted to identifying which mediated

situations lead to different forms of accommodation and convergence, speciﬁcally (see Stage 1). Fullwood et al. (2013) found

convergence in terms of emoticon use when ﬂirting in online chatrooms (see also Marko, 2022). In addition to using emo-

ticons more similarly to others when ﬂirting, there may be convergence in the time it takes for someone to respond to a

message. Additional research has also examined convergence in terms of conversational and linguistic styles online in social

media contexts (e.g., Tamburrini et al., 2015;Jakic et al., 2017;Liebrecht and van Hooidonk, 2022; see also, Zahn et al., this

Issue), online brainstorming (e.g., Wang and Fussell, 2010), text messaging and the use of textisms (e.g., Adams et al., 2018; see

Coolidge et al., and Adams and Miles, this Issue), and phone calls (e.g., 

Sturm et al., 2021). It should be noted, however, that

there may be a maximum threshold in which convergence can occur. That is, Riordan et al.’s (2012) and Brinberg and Ram

(2021) and found ceiling effects in which zero-history interactants as well as romantic partners stopped converging to one

another online at a certain point.

Several studies applying CAT to CMC focus on the positive effects of convergence, in terms of impression development,

rapport, and even group outcomes. For example, accommodation over e-mail leads to more positive perceptions of the

communicator (Crook and Booth, 1997). Similarly, Scissors et al. (2009) found that lexical mimicry increases trust among

interactants in instant messaging, including among online negotiators (Swaab et al., 2011). Additionally, accommodating to

another’s linguistic style can increase cohesiveness within small groups that communicate via plain-text CMC (Gonzales et al.,

2009). Likewise, Liao et al. (2021) found that behavioral compliance is greater, in the form of a monetary donation to a charity,

when strangers accommodate to each other’s expressions and linguistic styles during mediated interaction.

On the ﬂip side, convergence can also lead to negative outcomes in some forms of CMC. For instance, Muir et al. (2017)

found that when high-power individuals accommodated toward their low-power counterparts, perceptions of them were

more negative than wereperceptions of high-power individuals who did not engagein accommodation. Similarly, Liao et al.’s

(2018) results suggest that CMC partners who accommodate to others are perceived as having less expertise than non-

accommodating partners. In fact, Zimmerman and Jucks (2018) found that experts who used medical jargon in online

H. Giles et al. / Language Sciences 99 (2023) 1015718

forums were perceived as more competent than those who did not, even though medical jargon is often seen as not ac-

commodating to patients. Interestingly, Stein (2023) found that the excessive, potentially overaccommodative use of emojis

in international interactions leads to more negative interpersonal outcomes.

Other CMC research that utilizes CAT focuses on divergence among communicators (see Phase 2). Christopherson (2011),

for instance, found that when patrons and librarians interact with each other through virtual reference services, librarians

diverge by using more formal language than their patrons do. This likely serves to aid in differentiation between high-status

and low-status individuals, as suggested in earlier CAT work (see Stage 2). In addition to power differentials, divergence can

also occur as a function of the words being adopted. Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil et al. (2011), for instance, found that divergence

among Twitter users is more likely to occur when tweets contain certain and positive language than when they contain more

tentative or negative language.

4.2. Communicating with technology

In addition to the emergence and advancement of communication mediated through technology, the last decade has also

seen the emergence of communication with technology. That is, we are interacting with social robots in increasingly

numerous contexts, in the workplace, healthcare, entertainment, and education (see, for example, Ahmad et al., 2017;Richert

et al., 2018;Hildt, 2021;van Pinxteren et al., 2023). In introducing their fourth volume of the journal Human-Machine

Communication (HMC), Fortunati and Edwards (2022:8)deﬁned HMC as a form of communication between humans and

digital interlocuters, or machines. They proposed that these machines act as human surrogates, simulating humans’“bio-

logical and psychological abilities to formulate, issue, and receive a message and on the basis of this message, to elaborate

another message.”

Edwards et al. (2019) point out that previous research in the “computers are social actors”(CASA) paradigm demonstrates

that individuals tend to assign human agency and even human stereotypes to artiﬁcial intelligence (AI) and computers. In fact,

individuals like robots more, and ascribe them with intentions and beliefs, when robots appear to be more humanlike

(Marchesi et al., 2022). Schreibelmayr and Martina (2022), for instance, found that robots with more humanlike voices were

rated as more pleasant and less eerie than were robots with less humanlike voices. Given this, it is only natural that CAT’s

scope has begun to expand into the realm of HMC (see Cohn et al., this Issue).

Like that of CMC research, research focused on how we communicate with technology has concerned itself with how we

accommodate, speciﬁcally converge, toward technological partners. This is an exciting endeavor; HMC research holds the

opportunity to uncover to what extent CAT applies to communication not just among humans, but between humans and

other non-human agents. Von der Pütten et al. (2011), for instance, was one of the ﬁrst HMC scholars to expand CAT’s scope by

examining the number of words in the self-disclosures people uttered to virtual agents, represented by avatars, as in-

terviewers. When interviewees face more talkative digital agents, they produced greater self-disclosure, accommodating to

the number of words spoken by the avatar. There is also evidence to suggest that humans engage in conceptual alignment

when communicating with robots. That is, Cirillo et al. (2022) found that when social robots default to semantic category

names (e.g., “fruit”) as opposed to more basic-level object names (e.g., “banana”), humans did the same. These results may be

the ﬁrst to show that conceptual alignment occurs not only in human-to-human interaction, but that humans align at the

conceptual level even to technological agents. In fact, Shen and Wang (2023) found that people are more likely to align with a

computer than they are to another human in terms of lexical use.

In many ways, research examining accommodation in HMC has highlighted how humans accommodate totheir partners,

whether human or machine, similarly. Bergmann et al. (2015), for example, suggests that when engaging in online simula-

tions, participants employ similar lexical choice and gesture handedness whether their online partner is human or artiﬁcial.

More recently, Cohn and Zellou (2021) examined whether communicators interact with artiﬁcially intelligent assistants (i.e.,

Amazon’s Alexa) as they do with other humans. They found that when a communicator’s voice is misrecognized, whether it

be by Alexa or another human, they accommodate by producing more distinct vowel backing and by being louder and slower.

Within this same context, Mengesha et al. (2021) report that artiﬁcially intelligent assistants often rely on automated speech

recognition, which tend to prioritize linguistic styles of white speakers. African-American participants in this study reported

having to work around the issue of their machine assistant misrecognizing what they said by “accommodating their speech to

meet the limits of voice technology”(p. 7). These ﬁndings, taken together, suggest that interpersonal accommodation occurs,

even when communicating with technology.

Finally, evidence seems to suggest that whether humans are communicating with other humans or technological agents,

and whether they are doing so via FtF means or via CMC, the effects of accommodation are similar. Fujiwara et al. (2022), for

instance, found that when humans and avatars had greater synchrony during interactions involving negotiation, humans

reported greater levels of afﬁliation toward to the avatar. Similarly, Biancardi et al. (2021) found that adaptive, or accom-

modative, digital agents are perceived more positively by humans than their non-adaptive counterparts, which seems to

mirror the effects of human-to-human accommodation.

As of this writing, new and more advanced artiﬁcial intelligence systems are available to and useable by ordinary persons

via Web access, through chat interfaces. So-called large language models like ChatGPT are revolutionary not only because of

their immense power to synthesize information, but because anyone can use them by asking simple, natural language

questions. Not only that, one can make requests to be told about a topic, using various parameter speciﬁcations, and even to

H. Giles et al. / Language Sciences 99 (2023) 101571 9

have the output appear in certain narrative styles. Asking ChatGPT to “tell me about communication accommodation theory,

in the style of a cowboy”returns a not-altogether-poor introduction:

Now, picture this: you’re ridin’through the Wild West, and you come across a bunch of folks with different ways of

speakin’. Some drawl their words, some talk fast like a tumbleweed in the wind, and some got accents thicker than

molasses. Now, the Communication AccommodationTheory, or CAT for short, is like wranglin’all them diverse ways of

speakin’into one corral. It’s a theory that explains how folks adjust their talkin’style to match the folks they’re

communicatin’with. It’s all about adaptin’your language to make it easier for others to understand and connect with

you.

You see, in the wild west of communication, there’s two main ways folks can accommodate: they can either converge or

diverge. Convergin’is when you rope in your talkin’style to match the other person’s. It’s like speakin’the same lingo,

so you’re both on the same dusty trail. This here helps build rapport and shows respect for the other person’s way of

communicatin’. On the other hand, divergin’is when you let your own language ride off into the sunset, differin’from

the other person’s style. It’s like breakin’away from the herd, makin’a statement. Divergin’can be used to assert your

identity or show a power dynamic in play, sorta like a lone wolf howlin’in the night. (OpenAI, 2023)

Perhaps goofy, the ChatGPT response is clearly accommodative. But to what? Writing in the style of an extreme

Hollywood-style caricature probably does not match the conceptual style of any real humans, and its potentially over-

accommodative exempliﬁcation of cultural stereotypes is cause for concern.

4.3. Future stage 7 agenda and research questions

As we suggested, above, the signiﬁcance of Stage 7 is not just the application of CAT to technological phenomena and

contexts that did not yet exist when the theory was ﬁrst conceived. Rather, it is for Phase 7 to ask big questions that can

prompt theoretical and philosophical growth about relationships, communication, and ontology. For instance, the application

of CAT to plain-text CMC, as we have mentioned, showed enormous breadth and scope of the theory, in its applicability to

interactions comprised of pure language, sans the nonverbal and co-present attributes that originally guided SAT, CAT, and

many other communication theories.

Application of CAT and CAT principles to HMC also offers puzzles that strike at the heart of our theoretical and ontological

assumptions. It prompts us to ask, for instance, why do we accommodate to machines? Because we like them? Because we

identify with them as members of the same social group? Do we want to appear favorable to them? Are we afraid of them?

These traditional bases for afﬁnity to a person, in CAT research, do not seem to make as much intuitive sense in the HMC

context. Is it really accommodation after all, whenwe tailor our speech and language to what a virtual agent can understand?

Or is it simply a matter of verbally learning what buttons to press? And if that is accommodation, was it also accommodation

when we ﬁnally learned to program our video recording machines (or when we cursed at those stupid machines when they

still did not do what we wanted)? HMC can help deﬁne boundaries of CAT and vice versa.

Consideration of CAT can help prompt re-examination of other theories in HMC, as well. For instance, CASA theory,

described above, is routinely drawn upon to predict that humans relate to computers and robots as they do to other humans.

On that basis, CASA researchers often posit that we like computers and robots who seem to act as humans do. But CAT re-

minds us that we must ask, as which other humans? The humans to whom we converge, or the humans from which we

diverge? The humans we like, or the humans we dislike? CASA’s research seems often to forget what CAT research knows only

too well: that there are people whom we do not want to resemble or mimic or accommodate. That to dislike a human, or a

machine, may not be the same as to dehumanize a human or to fail to experience a robot as a social actor. One of the chief

legacies of CAT is that liking and disliking predict a variety of speciﬁc alternative behaviors and perceptions. In the context of

HMC research, CAT may be said to suggest, the assessment of liking and of humanization will be more meaningful if these

constructs are employed orthogonally rather than in a unidimensional fashion.

While a plethora of exciting challenges and questions can be addressed as CAT continues forward in its seventh Phase - and

many of these will also guide Stage 1 through 6’s continued development –we raise just three below. First, how do

communication adjustments differ in human-to-human versus human-machine interaction, and what is the salience of

intergroup cues? Given that social interaction is no longer limited to interaction between humans, but may also include

interaction with social robots and machines onto which we project human stereotypes, another challenge becomes under-

standing whether, and to what extent, humans adjust or adapt their communicative behaviors to each other the same as they

do when interacting with machines. A closely related challenge will be parsing out the salience of various cues, whether a

reﬂection of interpersonal identity or intergroup membership. That is, it is not yet clear if we assign identity and intergroup

cues to communication technologies and machines the same way we do to humans. Greater focus to these principles could

help to build upon CAT in CMC and HMC, particularly in terms of CAT Phase 2 regarding intergroup communication.

Second, how can machines and robots detect and accommodate to human emotion and behavior? As HMC continues to

advance, it is extremely important for developers to consider how they can build machines in such a way that allows them to

detect, and then accommodate to, human emotions and behavior (e.g., Gratch et al., 2013). Uslu et al. (2021) suggest that

interactions between service providers and customers/clients can be optimized when they are sensitive to their customer’s

moods –and adapt their own behavior accordingly. Though their research focuses on human-to-human interaction, it is

H. Giles et al. / Language Sciences 99 (2023) 10157110

increasingly common to interact with robot or machine service providers (for review, see Henschel et al., 2021), and mood

adaptation might be one way in which interactions can be improved. Attention to this challenge could also help to further

develop CAT Phase 3, pertaining to the subjective nature of accommodation.

Third and ﬁnally, how canwe better engage CAT in CMC and HMC research? McGlone and Giles (2011: 224) asserted that

one of the promising challenges to move CAT research forward will be analytically to link “with the growing number of

studies in social psychology on mimicry and the chameleon effect.that seem to be very closely underpinned by CAT

principles.”It seems as though another, similar challenge will be to do so with the growing number of studies on linguistic

accommodation (e.g., Liao et al., 2021), synchrony (e.g., Fujiwara et al., 2022), lexical and gestural alignment (e.g., Bergmann

et al., 2015), linguistic convergence (e.g., Mieczkowski, 2021) in both CMC and HMC that seem to be built on CAT principles,

using terms that are consistent with the theory, without directly referencing CAT theory explicitly (e.g., Kelly et al., 2022). By

attending to and synthesizing these related works, appearing in ever newer human to human and human to machine settings,

not only Phase 7, but each Phase of CAT will continue to be further deﬁned and nuanced.

5. Conclusions: “Principles of Accommodation”revised and expanded

Currently, CAT rests on a number of key Principles that have been revised and elaborated over the years (see also, Coolidge,

this Issue). In this ﬁnal section, we continue this iterative chain of reﬁnements and expansions (after Dragojevic et al., 2016;

Soliz et al., 2022) in light of developments documented above and elsewhere in this Special Issue. For the sake of parsimony,

not every intricacy or nuance could have been, or likely should be, evident in what are now core 11 CAT Principles, most of

which are testable and, hopefully, will be useful in inspiring future empirical and theoretical work. These are:

Accommodative norms, competences, resources, and energies are fundamental characteristics of social interaction and

communication in social media and those involving other new technologies, allowing the individuals and groups

involved to manage variable conversational goals, identities, and power differentials between and among themselves;

People have expectancies about what constitutes appropriate and desirable accommodation in FtF and mediated

contexts that are inﬂuenced by an array of interpersonal, intergroup, biological, cultural, and sociohistorical dynamics;

The nature of communication accommodation during an interaction is a product of people’s various motivations for, and

abilities as well as willingness to, adjust to certain relationally-deﬁned others as well as the topics that unfold and are

managed;

When people wish to reduce social distance during a FtF and mediated interaction, they are more likely to engage in

accommodative acts that they believe will facilitate this outcome;

Identity accommodation towards individuals’known or supposed group identities by recognizing, acknowledging, and

afﬁrming them can lead to improved attitudes towards the social group represented by, as well as the reduction of,

stereotypes about them;

When accommodations are optimally-calibrated in terms of rates, magnitudes, and number of communication features

in FtF and mediated contexts, they can produce a variety of beneﬁts, including decreased social distance, enhanced

relational rapport, and improvements in mutual understanding and satisfaction with the ongoing interaction and those

following on from it.

When people wish to increase social distance during a FtF and mediated interaction, they are more likely to engage in

nonaccommodative behaviors that they believe will facilitate this outcome and that can, arguably, be attributed by them

as successful failure;

When accommodation is poorly-calibrated (including being under- or over-accommodative), it can produce a variety of

negative cognitive and affective outcomes. These include increased social distance and dissatisfaction with allied re-

ductions in mutual understanding within the interaction, FTF or mediated, as well as lead to a range of others’mis-

attributions, miscommunications, and social and communication failures;

While accommodation and nonaccommodation can have direct effects on others’(as well as our own) cognitions, affect,

and behaviors, sometimes accommodative moves act more indirectly triggering mediating mechanisms which, in turn,

shape or are responsible for the social consequences;

Accommodation and nonaccommodation can occur not only in response to pre-interactional social identities but may,

subsequently, arise in discourse from which they are then created and become situationally salient;

Dilemmas of whether to accommodate or nonaccommodate –in the short-term over a sequence of encounters with the

same people or in the longer-term across generations - can arise for a range of reasons that are associated with various

risks and uncertainties or by the perceived diversity of communication ideologies in a small group or public setting.

These Principles, presented as a collective, exemplify the evolutionary breadth, depth, and range of the theory. It may be

for these reasons that CAT’s status has generously been described as “one of the most inﬂuential behavioral theories of

communication”(Littlejohn and Foss, 2005: 147). Indeed, and while appreciating that talk about accommodative commu-

nication has –as illustrated in this article’s opening and princely quote –been around for centuries (see Meyerhoff, this Issue),

CAT has enjoyed a robust inﬂuence in numerous ﬁelds of study and, as of this writing, “communication accommodation

theory”returns over 288,000 references on Academia.edu (with well over a thousand being added each week). Furthermore,

H. Giles et al. / Language Sciences 99 (2023) 101571 11

until recently, CAT researchers focused on FtF interaction between humans, although its scope now extends to CMC, HMC, and

even communication among animals. Over the next ﬁve decades, we expect to see even greater attention paid to accom-

modative strategies being engaged through and with technologies, as articulated in the seventh Phase of CAT research and,

inevitably, new and stimulating stages over the next 50 years.

Data availability

No data was used for the research described in the article.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to our Epilogist/Discussant, Miriam Meyerhoff, who generously helped broaden our sociolinguistics

coverage, and to Chad and Autumn Edwards for their assistance in crafting Phase 7 as it pertains to human-machine

communication research.

Appendix A. Supplementary data

Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2023.101571.

References

Adams, A., Miles, J., Dunbar, N.E., Giles, H., 2018. Communication accommodation in text messages: exploring liking, power, and sex as predictors of

textisms. J. Soc. Psychol. 158 (4), 474–490. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.2017.1421895.

Adams, R.E., Boscarino, J.A., Figley, C.R., 2006. Compassion fatigue and psychological distress among social workers: a validation study. Am. J. Orthopsy-

chiatry 76 (1), 103–108. https://doi.org/10.1037/0002-9432.76.1.103.

Ahmad, M., Mubin, O., Orlando, J., 2017. A systematic review of adaptivity in human-robot interaction. Multimodal Technologies and Interaction 1 (3), 14.

https://doi.org/10.3390/mti1030014.

Alemi, M., Maleknia, Z., 2023. Politeness markers in emails of non-native English-speaking university students. Russian Journal of Linguistics 27 (1), 67–87.

https://doi.org/10.22363/2687-0088-33334.

Androutsopoulos, J., 2014. Languaging when contexts collapse: audience design in social networking. Discourse, Context & Media 4 (5), 62–73. https://doi.

org/10.1016/j.dcm.2014.08.006.

Antaki, C., Lewis, A. (Eds.), 1986. Mental Mirrors: Metacognition in Social Knowledge and Communication. Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA.

Armenta, A., Alvarez, M.J., Aguilera, R., Hitlan, R., Federico, C., Zárate, M.A., 2023. Cultural inertia: framework of change and intergroup relations. Pers. Soc.

Psychol. Bull. 49 (5), 659–672. https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672221076209.

Ault, M., Brandley, B., 2023. The human cost of chronic mindfulness in U.S. law enforcement: toward a more nuanced understanding of HRO theory. J. Appl.

Commun. Res. 51 (1), 18–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/00909882.2022.2118547.

Barlow, M., Watson, B., Jones, E., Maccallum, F., Morse, K.J., 2023. The inﬂuence of professional identity on how the receiver receives and responds to a

speaking up message: a cross-sectional study. BMC Nurs. 22, 26. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-023-01178-z.

Barón-Birchenall, L., 2023. Phonetic accommodation during conversational interactions: an overview. Revista Guillermo De Ockham 21 (2). https://doi.org/

10.21500/22563202.6150. Advance online:

Bell, A., 1984. Language style as audience design. Lang. Soc. 13 (2), 145–204. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4167516.

Bell, A., 1991. Audience accommodation in the mass media. In: Giles, H., Coupland, J., Coupland, N. (Eds.), Contexts of Accommodation. Cambridge University

Press, Cambridge, UK, pp. 69–102 .

Bergmann, K., Branigan, H.P., Kopp, S., 2015. Exploring the alignment spacedlexical and gestural alignment with real and virtual humans. Frontiers in ICT 2.

https://doi.org/10.3389/ﬁct.2015.00007.

Bernhold, Q.S., Giles, H., 2020a. Vocal accommodation and mimicry. J. Nonverbal Behav. 44 (1), 41–62. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-019-00317-y.

Bernhold, Q.S., Giles, H., 2020b. Group-based identity accommodation in older adults’romantic relationships. Commun. Q. 68 (4), 417–437. https://doi.org/

10.1080/01463373.2020.1804960.

Biancardi, B., Dermouche, S., Pelachaud, C., 2021. Adaptation mechanisms in human-agent interaction: effects on user’s impressions and engagement. Front.

Comput. Sci. 3. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomp.2021.696682.

Bilous, F.R., Krauss, R.M., 1988. Dominance and accommodation in the conversational behaviors of same- and mixed-gender dyads. Lang. Commun. 8, 183–

194. https://doi.org/10.1016/0271-5309(88)90016-X.

Bourhis, R.Y., 1979. Language in ethnic interaction: a social psychological approach. In: Giles, H., Saint-Jacques, B. (Eds.), Language and Ethnic Relations.

Pergamon, Oxford, UK, 117-142.

Bourhis, R.Y., Giles, H., Leyens, J.P., Tajfel, H., 1979. Psycholinguistic distinctiveness: language divergence in Belgium. In: Giles, H., St Clair, R.N. (Eds.),

Language and Social Psychology. Blackwell, Oxford, UK, pp. 158–185 .

Brinberg, M., Ram, N., 2021. Do new romantic couples use more similar language over time? Evidence from intensive longitudinal text messages. J.

Commun. 71 (3), 454–477. https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqab012.

Buller, D.B., Aune, R.K.,1988. The effects of vocalics and nonverbal sensitivity on compliance: a speech accommodation theory explanation. Hum. Commun.

Res. 14 (3), 301–332. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.1988.tb00159.x.

Bunz, U., Campbell, S.W., 2004. Politeness accommodation in electronic mail. Commun. Res. Rep. 21 (1), 11–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/

08824090409359963.

Buzzanell, P.M., Burrell, N.A., Stafford, S.R., Berkowitz, S., 1996. When I call you up and you’re not there: application of communication accommodation

theory to telephone answering machine messages. West. J. Commun. 60 (4), 310–336. https://doi.org/10.1080/10570319609374552.

Byrd, G.A., Zhang, Y.B., 2020. Perceptions of interability communication in an interpersonal relationship and the reduction of intergroup prejudice. West. J.

Commun. 84 (1), 19–42. https://doi.org/10.1080/10570314.2019.1636131.

Chevalier, B.A.M., Watson, B.M., Cottrell, W.N., 2020. Pharmacy students’self-reported attitudes, beliefs and behaviors about communicating with patients

over time. Pharm. Educ. 20 (1), 116–126. https://doi.org/10.46542/pe.2020.201.p116-126.

Choi, C.W., Khajavy, G.H., Raddawi, R., Giles, H., 2019. Perceptions of police-civilian encounters: intergroup and communication dimensions in the United

Arab Emirates and the USA. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 12 (1), 82–104. https://doi.org/10.1080/17513057.2018.1503317.

Christopherson, L., 2011. Can u help me plz?? Cyberlanguage accommodation in virtual reference conversations. Proceedings of the American Society for

Information Science and Technology 48 (1), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1002/meet.2011.14504801080.

H. Giles et al. / Language Sciences 99 (2023) 10157112

Cieslak, R., Shoji, K., Douglas, A., Melville, E., Luszczynska, A., Benight, C.C., 2014. A meta-analysis of the relationship between job burnout and secondary

traumatic stress among workers with indirect exposure to trauma. Psychol. Serv. 11 (1), 75–86. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0033798.

Cirillo, G., Runnqvist, E., Strijkers, K., Nguyen, N., Baus, C., 2022. Conceptual alignment in a joint picture-naming task performed with a social robot.

Cognition 227, 105213. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105213.

Cohn, M., Zellou, G., 2021. Prosodic differences in human- and Alexa-directed speech, but similar local intelligibility adjustments. Frontiers in Commu-

nication 6. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2021.675704.

Collins, P.H., 2019. Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory. Duke University Press, Durham, NC.

Coupland, N., 1984. Accommodation at work: some phonological data and their implications. Int. J. Sociol. Lang. 46, 49 –70. https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl.1984.

46.49.

Coupland, N., Coupland, J., Giles, H., Henwood, K., 1988. Accommodating the elderly: invoking and extendinga theory. Lang. Soc. 17 (1), 1–41. https://doi.org/

10.1017/S0047404500012574.

Crook, C.W., Booth, R., 1997. Building rapport in electronic mail using Accommodation Theory. SAM Adv. Manag. J. 62, 4–14.

Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil, C., Gamon, M., Dumais, S., 2011. Mark my words! Linguistic style accommodation in social media, pp. 745–754. In: WWW ’11:

Proceedings of the 20th international conference on World Wide Web. https://doi.org/10.1145/1963405.1963509.

Dawes, R.M., McTavish, J., Shaklee, H., 1977. Behavior, communication, and assumptions about other people’s behavior in a commons dilemma situation. J.

Personality Soc. Psychol. 35 (1), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.35.1.1.

Demirden, A., 2021. The critical examination of social identity theory. Politik Psikoloji Dergisi [The Journal of Political Psychology 1 (2), 39–56. https://www.

researchgate.net/publication/357528106.

Dikker, S., Mech, E.N., Gwilliams, L., West, T., Dumas, G., Federmeier, K.D., 2022. Exploring age-related changes in inter-brain synchrony during verbal

communication. In: Federmeier, K.D., Payne, B.R. (Eds.), Psychology of Learning and Motivation. Academic Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 29–68. https://doi.

org/10.1016/bs.plm.2022.08.003. Retrieved from:

Denes, A., Dhillon, A., 2019. Future directions for communication accommodation theory: considering the biological correlates of accommodative behavior

in interpersonal contexts. In: Harwood, J., Gasiorek, J., Pierson, H., NussBaum, J.F., Gallois, C. (Eds.), Language, Communication, and Intergroup Relations:

A Celebration of the Scholarship of Howard Giles. Routledge, New York, pp. 231–233.

Dragojevic, M., 2019. Beyond dyads: accommodative dilemmas in small group interaction. In: Harwood, J., Gasiorek, J., Pierson, H., NussBaum, J.F., Gallois, C.

(Eds.), Language, Communication, and Intergroup Relations: A Celebration of the Scholarship of Howard Giles. Routledge, London, UK, pp. 234–235.

Dragojevic, M., Gasiorek, J., Giles, H., 2016. Accommodative strategies as core of the theory. In: Giles, H. (Ed.), Communication Accommodation Theory:

Negotiating Personal Relationships and Social Identities across Contexts. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, pp. 36–59.

Dragojevic, M., Giles, H., 2014. Language and interpersonal communication: their intergroup dynamics. In: Berger, C.R. (Ed.), Handbook of Interpersonal

Communication. De Gruyter Mouton, Berlin, Germany, pp. 29–51.

Dunbar, N.E., Fujiwara, K., Bernhold, Q.S., 2023. Truth-tellers’and liars’synchrony during attitude-inconsistent conversations. Frontiers in Communication 8,

921446. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2023.921445.

Earnshaw, K., 2021. Examining the implications of speech accommodation for forensic speaker comparison casework: a case study of the West Yorkshire

FACE vowel. J. Phonetics 87. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2021.101062.

Edwards, C., Edwards, A., Stoll, B., Lin, X., Massey, N., 2019. Evaluations of an artiﬁcial intelligence instructor’s voice: social identity theory in human-robot

interactions. Comput. Hum. Behav. 90, 357–362. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2018.08.027.

Eide, K.M., Hjelde, A., 2023. Linguistic repertoires: modeling variation in input and production: a case study on American Speakers of heritage Norwegian.

Language 8, 49. https://doi.org/10.3390/Languages8010049.

Elhami, A., 2020. Communication accommodation theory: a brief review of the literature. Journal of Advances in Education and Philosophy 4 (5), 192–200.

https://doi.org/10.36348/jaep.2020.v04i05.002.

Ferrara, K., 1991. Accommodation in therapy. In: Giles, H., Coupland, J., Coupland, N. (Eds.), Contexts of Accommodation. Cambridge University Press,

Cambridge, UK, pp. 187–222.

Finch, C., 2021. The Last Passenger. Minatour Books, New York.

Folsom, M., 2004. Recursion: a theological axiom for relationships. Marriage Fam. 7 (1), 197–214. Retrieved from: https://www.academia.edu/409879/

Recursion_A_Theological_Axiom_for_Relationships.

Fortunati, L., Edwards, A.P., 2022. Framing the psycho-social and cultural aspects of human-machine communication. Human-Machine Communication 4,

7–26.

Frey, T.K., Lane, D.R., 2021. CAT in the classroom: a multilevel analysis of students’experiences with instructor nonaccommodation. Commun. Educ. 70 (3),

223–246. https://doi.org/10.1080/03634523.2021.1903521.

Frobenius, M., 2014. Audience design in monologues: how vloggers involve their viewers. J. Pragmat. 72, 59–72. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2014.02.

008.

Fujiwara, K., Hoegen, R., Gratch, J., Dunbar, N.E., 2022. Synchrony facilitates altruistic decision making for non-human avatars. Comput. Hum. Behav. 128,

107109. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2021.107079.

Fullwood, C., Orchard, L.J., Floyd, S.A., 2013. Emoticon convergence in internet chat rooms. Soc. Semiotic. 23 (5), 648–662. https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330.

2012.739000.

Fox, A.B., Bukatko, D., Hallahn, M., Crawford, M., 2007. The medium makes a difference: gender similarities and differences in instant messaging. J. Lang. Soc.

Psychol. 26 (4), 389–397. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X07306982.

Gaines, S.O., Granrose, C.S., Rios, D.I., Garcia, B.F., Youn, M.S.P., Farris, K.R., Bledsoe, K.L., 1999. Patterns of attachment and responses to accommodative

dilemmas among interethnic/interracial couples. J. Soc. Pers. Relat. 16 (2), 275–285. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407599162009.

Gallois, C., Giles, H., 1998. Accommodating mutual inﬂuence. In: Palmer, M., Barnett, G.A. (Eds.), Mutual Inﬂuence in Interpersonal Communication: Theory

and Research in Cognition, Affect, and Behavior. Ablex, New York, pp. 135–162.

Gallois, C., Weatherall, A., Giles, H., 2016. CAT and talk in action. In: Giles, H. (Ed.), Communication Accommodation Theory: Negotiating Personal Re-

lationships and Social Identities across Contexts. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, pp. 105–122.

Gasiorek, J., 2013. “I was impolite to her because that’s how she was to me”: perceptions of motive and young adults’communicative responses to

underaccommodation. West. J. Commun. 77 (5), 604–624. https://doi.org/10.1080/10570314.2013.778421.

Gasiorek, J., 2016a. Theoretical perspectives on interpersonal adjustments in language and communication. In: Giles, H. (Ed.), Communication Accom-

modation Theory: Negotiating Personal Relationships and Social Identities across Contexts. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, pp. 13–35.

Gasiorek, 2016b. The “”dark side”of CAT: nonaccommodation. In: Giles, H. (Ed.), Communication Accommodation Theory: Negotiating Personal Re-

lationships and Social Identities across Contexts. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, pp. 13–35.

Gasiorek, J., Dragojevic, M., 2017. The effects of accumulated underaccommodation on perceptions of underaccommodative communication and speakers.

Hum. Commun. Res. 43 (2), 276–294. https://doi.org/10.1111/hcre.12105.

Gasiorek, J., Dragojevic, M., 2019. The effects of speaker group membership and stereotypes on responses to accumulated underaccommodation. J. Lang.

Soc. Psychol. 38 (4), 514–522. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X19864981.

Gasiorek, J., Dragojevic, M., Vincze, L., 2022. Perspective-taking and language competence as predictors of language accommodation by adolescents from

monolingual and bilingual households. Int. J. Biling. Educ. BiLing. 25 (1), 148–155. https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2015.1128385.

Gasiorek, J., Weatherall, A., Watson, B.M., 2021. Interactional adjustment: three approaches in language and social psychology. J. Lang. Soc. Psychol. 40 (1),

102–119. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X20965652.

Gibson, A., 2019. Free speech and safe spaces: how moderation policies shape online discussion spaces. Social Media þSociety 5 (1), 1–15. https://doi.org/

10.1177/2056305119832588.

H. Giles et al. / Language Sciences 99 (2023) 101571 13

Giles, H., 1973. Accent Mobility: a model and some data. Anthropol. Ling. 15 (2), 87–105.

Giles, H., 1980. Accommodation theory: some new directions. In: de Silva, S. (Ed.), Aspects of Linguistic Behavior. York University Press, York, UK, pp. 105–

136.

Giles, H., 2008. Accommodating translational research. J. Appl. Commun. Res. 36 (3), 121–127. https://doi.org/10.1080/00909880801922870.

Giles, H., 2009. The process of communication accommodation. In: Coupland, N., Jaworksi, A. (Eds.), The New Reader in Sociolinguistics. Red Globe Press,

London, UK, pp. 276–286.

Giles, H., 2016. The social origins of CAT. In: Giles, H. (Ed.), Communication Accommodation Theory:Negotiating Personal Relationships and Social Identities

across Contexts. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, pp. 1–12.

Clementson, D.E., Zhao, W., Park, S., 2023. How intense language hurts a politician’s trustworthiness: voter norms of a political debate via language ex-

pectancy theory. J. Lang. Soc. Psychol. Advance online: https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X231171688.

Giles, H., Bonilla, D., Speer, R.B., 2012. Acculturating intergroup vitalities, accommodation and contact. In: Jackson, J. (Ed.), Routledge Handbook of Inter-

cultural Communication. Routledge, New York, pp. 244–259.

Giles, H., Bourhis, R.Y., Taylor, D.M., 1977. Towards a theory of language in ethnic group relations. In: Giles, H. (Ed.), Language, Ethnicity and Intergroup

Relations. Academic Press, San Diego, CA, pp. 307–348.

Giles, H., Byrne, J.L., 1982. An intergroup model of second language acquisition. J. Multiling. Multicult. Dev. 3 (1), 17–40. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.

1982.9994069.

Giles, H., Coupland, N., Coupland, J., 1991. Accommodation theory: communication, context, and consequence. In: Giles, H., Coupland, J., Coupland, N. (Eds.),

Contexts of Accommodation. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, pp. 1–68.

Giles, H., Johnson, P.,1981. The role of language in ethnic group relations. In: Turner, J.C., Giles, H. (Eds.), Intergroup Behavior. Blackwell, Oxford,UK, pp. 199–

343.

Giles, H., Mulac, A., Bradac, J.J., Johnson, P.,1987. Speech accommodation theory: the ﬁrst decade and beyond. Annals of the International Communication

Association 10 (1), 13–48. https://doi.org/10.1080/23808985.1987.11678638.

Giles, H., Powesland, P.F., 1975. Speech Style and Social Evaluation. Academic Press, San Diego, CA.

Giles, H., Taylor, D.M., Bourhis, R.Y., 1973. Towards a theory of interpersonal accommodation through speech: some Canadian data. Lang. Soc. 2 (2), 177–192.

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0 047404500000701.

Giles, H., Wadleigh, P.M., 2008. Accommodating nonverbally. In: Guerrero, L.K., Hecht, M.L. (Eds.), The Nonverbal Communication Reader: Classic and

Contemporary Readings, vol. 3. Waveland Press, Long Grove, IL, pp. 491–502.

Giles, H., Williams, A., 1994. Patronizing the young: forms and evaluations. Int. J. Aging Hum. Dev. 39 (1), 33–53. https://doi.org/10.2190/0LUC-NWMA-

K5LX-NUVW.

Gnisci, A., Giles, H., Jordan, S., 2016. CAT on trial. In: Giles, H. (Ed.), Communication Accommodation Theory: Negotiating Personal Relationships and Social

Identities across Contexts. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, pp. 169–190.

Gonzales, A.L., Hancock, J.T., Pennebaker, J.W., 2009. Language style matching as a predictor of social dynamics in small groups. Commun. Res. 37 (1),3–19.

https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650209351468.

Gratch, J., Kang, S.-H., Wang, N., 2013. Using social agents to explore theories of rapport and emotional resonance. In: Gratch, J., Marsella, S. (Eds.), Social

Emotions in Nature and Artifact. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, pp. 181–197.

Grifﬁn, E., 2009. Communication accommodation theory of howard Giles. In: Grifﬁn, E. (Ed.), A First Look at Communication Theory, vol. 7. McGraw-Hill

Higher Education, New York, pp. 387–399.

Guydish, A.J., Fox Tree, J.E., 2022. Good conversations: grounding, convergence, and richness. New Ideas Psychol. 63, 100877.

Harwood, J., Giles, H., Ryan, E.B., 1995. Aging, communication, and intergroup theory: social identity and intergenerational communication. In: Nussbaum, J.

F., Coupland, J. (Eds.), Handbook of Communication and Aging Research. Erlbaum, Hillsdale, N.J., pp. 133–159.

Henschel, A., Laban, G., Cross, E.S., 2021. What makes a robot social? A review of social robots from science ﬁction to a home or hospital near you. Current

Robotics Reports 2, 9–19. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43154-020-00035-0.

Hildt, E., 2021. What sort of robots do we want to interact with? Reﬂecting on the human side of human-artiﬁcial intelligence interaction. Front. Comput.

Sci. 3. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomp.2021.671012.

Hilte, L., 2023. How is linguistic accommodation perceived in instant messaging? A survey on teenagers’evaluations and perceptions. Journal of Language

and Social Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X231167108. Advance online.

Hogg, M.A., 1985. Masculine and feminine speech in dyads and groups: a study of speech style and gender salience. J. Lang. Soc. Psychol. 4 (2), 99–112.

https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X8500400202.

Hopkins, Z.L., Yuill, N.N., Branigan, H.P., 2022. Autistic children’s language imitation shows reduced sensitive to ostracism. J. Autism Dev. Disord. 52, 1929–

1941. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10803-021-05041-5.

Italiano, R., Ramirez, F., Chattopadhyay, S., 2021. Perceptions of police use of force among U.S. adults and the role of communication accommodation in

improving police-civilian interactions. J. Appl. Commun. Res. 48 (6), 669–686. https://doi.org/10.1080/00909882.2021.1930103.

Jakic, A., Wagner, M.O., Meyer, A., 2017. The impact of language style accommodation during social media interactions on brand trust. J. Serv. Manag. 28 (3),

418–441. https://doi.org/10.1108/JOSM-12-2016-0325.

Jones, E., Gallois, C., Callan, V., Barker, M., 1999. Strategies of accommodation: development of a coding system for conversational interaction. J. Lang. Soc.

Psychol. 18 (2), 123–151. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X99018002001.

Jucks, R., Hendriks, F., 2021. Introduction: language and communication related to COVID-19. J. Lang. Soc. Psychol. 40 (5–6), 540–545. https://doi.org/10.

1177/0261927X211045728.

Kelly, L., Duran, R.L., Miller-Ott, A.E., 2022. Conversational partners’interactions in response to co-present mobile phone usage. Commun. Q. 70 (5), 537–

559. https://doi.org/10.1080/01463373.2022.2095217.

Klein, J.W., Bastian, B., 2023. The fusion-secure base hypothesis. Pers. Soc. Psychol. Rev. 27 (2), 107–127. https://doi.org/10.1177/10888683221100883.

Knobloch, L.K., Solomon, D.H., Theiss, J.A., McLaren, R.M., 2022. Relational turbulence theory: interpersonal communication during times of transition. In:

Braithwaite, D.O., Schrodt, P. (Eds.), Engaging Theories in Interpersonal Communication: Multiple Perspectives, 3

. ed. Routledge, New York, pp. 366–

378.

Kulesza, W., Dolinski, D., Muniak, P., Borkowska, J., Bibikova, P., Grzyb, T., 2023. The chameleon effect in customer relationship management: experiments on

the spillover effects of mimicry in natural settings of a chain hotel and a chain grocery shop. Front. Psychol.14, 1016125. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.

2023.1016125.

Liao, W., Bazarova, N.N., Yuan, C.Y., 2018. Expertise judgement and communication accommodation in linguistic styles in computer-mediated and face-to-

face groups. Commun. Res. 45 (8), 1122–1145. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650215626974.

Liao, W., Zhang, J., Oh, Y.J., Palomares, N.A., 2021. Linguistic accommodation enhances compliance to charity donation: the role of interpersonal

communication processes in mediated compliance-gaining conversations. J. Computer-Mediated Commun. 26 (3), 173–191. https://doi.org/10.1093/

jcmc/zmab001.

Liebrecht, L.C., van Hooidonk, C.M.J., 2022. Webcare across public and private social networking sites: how stakeholders and The Netherlands Red Cross

adapt their messages to channel affordances and constraints. Psychol. Lang. Commun. 26 (1), 375–398. https://doi.org/10.2478/plc-2022-18.

Littlejohn, S.W., Foss, K.A., 2005. Theories of Human Communication, vol. 8. Wadsworth, Belmont, CA.

Liu, D., Gong, C., Zhang, S., Ma, Y., 2022. The inﬂuence of ﬁrm’s feedbacks on user-generated content’s linguistic style matching: an explanation based on

communication accommodation theory. Front. Psychol. 13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.949968.

Luef, E.M., Ter Maat, A., Jäger, M., Pika, S., 2020. The ‘culture of two’: communication accommodation in ravens’(Corvus corax) nonvocal signaling. Journal of

Language Evolution 5 (1), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1093/jole/lzz008.

H. Giles et al. / Language Sciences 99 (2023) 10157114

Mady, C., El-Khoury, J.R., 2023. The role of interpersonal communication in instilling a sense of social justice: Beirut August 4, 2020, explosion. J. Appl.

Commun. Res. 51 (1), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/00909882.2022.2146524.

Giles, H., Bernhold, Q.S., McCarty, D.N., Prejudicial nonaccommodative moves: the cycle of intergroup communication experience. In: Croucher, S., Nshom, E.

(Eds.), The Handbook of Communication and Prejudice. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK. in press.

Maguire, E.R., Hill, S.L., Giles, H., 2023. Stuck in the middle: accommodative dilemmas in police-community relations. Psychol. Publ. Pol. Law. in press.

Marchesi, S., Tommaso, D.D., Perez-Osorio, J., Wykowska, A., 2022. Belief in sharing the same phenomenological experience increases the likelihoodof

adopting the intentional stance toward a humanoid robot. Technology, Mind, and Behavior 3 (3). https://doi.org/10.1037/tmb0000 072. Advance online:

Marko, K., 2022. “Depends on who I’m writing to”- the inﬂuence of addressees and personality traits on the use of emojis and emoticons, and related

implications for forensic authorship analysis. Frontiers in Communication 7. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2022.840646.

Matthew, L., 2023. “Some don’t even know where south is!”: linguistic strategies for spatial reference and seasons in Ishigaki Yaeyaman and their

disappearance. Language 8, 9. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8010009.

McGlone, M.S., Giles, H., 2011. Language and interpersonal communication. In: Knapp, M.L., Daly, J.A. (Eds.), Handbook of Interpersonal Communication, vol.

4. Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 201–237.

Mengesha, Z., Heldreth, C., Lahav, M., Sublewski, J., Tuennerman, E., 2021. “I don’t think these devices are culturally sensitive.”Impact of automated speech

recognition errors on African Americans. Frontiers in Artiﬁcial Intelligence 4. https://doi.org/10.3389/frai.2021.725911.

Meyerhoff, M., 1998. Accommodating your data: the use and misuse of accommodation theory in sociolinguistics. Lang. Commun. 18 (3), 205–225. https://

doi.org/10.1016/S0271-5309(98)00006-8.

Meyerhoff, M., 2002. Social psychology of language and language variation. Univ. Penn. Work. Pap. Ling. 8 (3). Article 12. Retrieved from: https://repository.

upenn.edu/pwpl/vol8/iss3/12.

Mieczkowski, H., 2021. Positioning AI-mediated communication in the ﬁeld of human-machine communication. In: Building Bridges and Not Walls:

Expanding Human-Machine Communication Connections within HRI. A Virtual workshop at HRI 2021 (HRI’18). ACM, New York. Retrieved from. https://

www.hnmiecz.com/media/HMC_HRI_2021.pdf.

Muir, K., Joinson, A., Cotterill, R., Dewdney, N., 2017. Linguistic style accommodation shapes impression formation and rapport in computer-mediated

communication. J. Lang. Soc. Psychol. 36 (5), 525–548. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X17701327.

Myers, P., Giles, H., Reid, S.A., Nabi, R., 2008. Law enforcement encounters: the effects of ofﬁcer accommodativeness and crime severity on interpersonal

attributions are mediated by intergroup sensitivity. Commun. Stud. 59 (4), 1–15 . https://doi.org/10.1080/10510970802467361.

Oliver-Blackburn, B.M., Chatham-Carpenter, A., 2023. ‘But I don’t know if I want to talk to you’: strategies to foster conversational receptiveness across the

United States’political divide. J. Appl. Commun. Res. 51 (1), 55–71. https://doi.org/10.1080/00909882.2022.2093122.

Omori, K., Stark, R.K.,Ota, H., 2023. When age and race/ethnicity salience meet: group salienceand its association withcommunicative behavior, andintergen-

erationalcommunicationsatisfactionamong JapaneseAmericans. J. Intercult. Commun.Res. 52 (2),129–147. https://doi.org/10.1080/17475759.2022.2054849.

OpenAI, 2023. In: ChatGPT (May 12, 2023 version). https://chat.openai.com/chat.

Ostrand, R., Chodroff, E., 2021. It’s alignment all the way down, but not all the way up: speakers align on some features but not others within a dialogue. J.

Phonetics 88, 101074. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2021.101074.

Palomares, N.A., Giles, H., Soliz, J., Gallois, C., 2016. Intergroup accommodation, social categories, and identities. In: Giles, H. (Ed.), Communication Ac-

commodation Theory: Negotiating Personal Relationships and Social Identities across Contexts. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, pp. 36–59.

Pardo, J., Pellegrino, E., Dellwo, V., Möbius, B. (Eds.), 2022. Vocal accommodation in speech communication. J. Phonetics 95, 101196. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.

wocn.2022.101196.

Phoenix, A., Pattynama, P., 2006. Intersectionality. European Journal of Women’s Studies 13 (3), 187–192.

Pines, R., Giles, H., Watson, B.M., 2021. Managing patient aggression in healthcare: initial testing of the long-term value of a communication accommodation

theory intervention. Psychol. Lang. Commun. 25 (1), 62–81. https://doi.org/10.2478/plc-2021-0004.

Pittam, J., Gallois, C., 1999. Negotiating a working consensus: conversations about HIV and AIDS. Int. J. Appl. Ling. 9 (2), 207–222. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.

1473-4192.1999.tb00173.x.

Rains, S.A., Harber, P., Warner, E.L., Leroy, G., 2022. Public response to COVID-19 mask mandates: examining pro and anti-Mask anger I tweets before and

after state-level mandates. Commun. Monogr. 89 (4), 539–557. https://doi.org/10.1080/03637751.2022.2043555.

Rasenberg, M., Özyürek, A., Dingemanse, M., 2020. Alignment in multimodal interaction: an integrative framework. Cognit. Sci. 44 (11), e12911. https://doi.

org/10.1111/cogs.12911.

Richert, A., Müller, S., Schröder, S., Jeschke, S., 2018. Anthropomorphism in social robotics: empirical results on human-robot interaction in hybrid pro-

duction workplaces. AI Soc. 33, 413–424. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-017-0756-x.

Riordan, M.A., Markman, K.M., Steward, C.O., 2012. Communication accommodation in instant messaging: an examination of temporal convergence. J. Lang.

Soc. Psychol. 32 (1), 84–95. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X12462695.

Romero, D.M., Swaab, R.I., Uzzi, B., Galinsky, A.D., 2015. Mimicry is presidential: linguistic style matching in presidential debates and Improved polling

numbers. Pers. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 4 (10), 1311–1319. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167215591168.

Rosen, Z.P., 2023. A BERT’s eye view: a big data framework for assessing language convergence and accommodation. J. Lang. Soc. Psychol. 42 (1), 60–81.

https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X221095865.

Ruch, H., Zürcher, Y., Burkhart, J.M., 2018. The function and mechanism of vocal accommodation in humans and other primates. Biol. Rev. 93 (2), 996–1013.

https://doi.org/10.1111/brv.12382.

Ryan, E.B., Giles, H., Bartolucci, G., Henwood, K., 1986. Psycholinguistic and social psychological components of communication by and with older adults.

Lang. Commun. 6 (1–2), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1016/0271-5309(86)90002-9.

Sachdev, I., Giles, H., Pauwels, A., 2012. Accommodating multilinguality. In: Bhatia, T.K., Ritchie, W.C. (Eds.), The Handbook of Bilingualism and Multilin-

gualism. Blackwell, Oxford, UK, pp. 391–416.

Schreibelmayr, S., Martina, M., 2022. Robot voices in daily life: vocal human-likeness and application context as determinants of user acceptance. Front.

Psychol. 13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.787499.

Scissors, L.E., Gill, A.J., Geraghty, K., Gergle, D., 2009. CMC we trust: the role of similarity. In: CHI 09:Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on

Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, New York, pp. 527–536. Retrieved from: https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?

repid¼rep1&type¼pdf&doi¼1bacaf3866a700e0e1f05afda708cb96c93aa778.

Seargeant, P., Tagg, C., Ngampramuan, W., 2012. Language choice and addressivity strategies in Thai–English social network interactions. J. SocioLinguistics

16 (4), 510–531. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9841.2012.00540.x.

Shankar, A., Pavitt, C., 2002. Resource and public good dilemmas: a new issue for communication research. Rev. Commun. 2 (3), 251–272. https://citeseerx.

ist.psu.edu/document?repid¼rep1&type¼pdf&doi¼867842a067c3f991fe125fb274052fefe781e2b1.

Shen, H., Wang, M., 2023. Effects of social skills on lexical alignment in human-human interaction and human-computer interaction. Comput. Hum. Behav.

143, 108818. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2023.107718.

Simmons-Mackie, N., 2018. Communication partner training in aphasia: reﬂections on communication accommodation theory. Aphasiology 32 (10), 1215–

1224. https://doi.org/10.1080/02687038.2018.1428282.

Seibel, W., 2023. Successful failure. In: Mica, A., Pawlak, M., Horolets, A., Kubicki (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Failure. Routledge, New York, pp.137–146.

Soliz, J., Bergquist, G., 2016. Methods of CAT inquiry: quantitative studies. In: Giles, H. (Ed.), Communication Accommodation Theory: Negotiating Personal

Relationships and Social Identities across Contexts. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, pp. 60–74.

Soliz, J., Giles, H., Gasiorek, J., 2022. Communication accommodation theory: converging toward an understanding of communication adaptation in

interpersonal relationships. In: Braithewaite, D.O., Schrodt, P. (Eds.), Engaging Theories in Interpersonal Communication: Multiple perspectives, vol. 3.

Routledge, New York, pp. 130–142 .

H. Giles et al. / Language Sciences 99 (2023) 101571 15