Chapter 7
Within-speaker accommodation behavior in apology-centered interactions
The role of socio-pragmatic factors
The present study explores the extent to which vocal accommodation in conflicting situations can be explained by socio-pragmatic factors such as interpersonal relationships (i.e., politeness) and pragmatic events occurring in apology-centered interactions. A total of 28 dyadic conversations where 14 target speakers (8 males and 6 females) interacted in apology-centered role-plays with a status superior and a friend interlocutor were annotated phonetically, orthographically, pragmatically and analyzed separately. Accommodation was measured with the difference-in-distance paradigm comparing the first and last 30% of the conversations. The main results indicate that the conversations with a status superior are characterized by more divergent behavior than the conversations with a friend. These findings suggest that interpersonal power dynamics between interlocutors could serve as a predictor for accommodation behavior.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Background
- 2.1Vocal accommodation behavior
- 2.2Function of accommodation behavior
- 2.3Factors affecting accommodation behavior
- 2.4Accommodation effects
- 3.Methods
- 3.1Participants
- 3.2Stimuli
- 3.3Annotation
- 3.4Measuring accommodation
- 3.5Statistical analysis
- 4.Results
- 4.1F0 variation depending on social distance between the interlocutors
- 4.2F0 accommodation behavior as a function of social distance
- 4.3F0 accommodation behavior as a function of speaker gender
- 4.4Within-speaker analysis of accommodation
- 5.Discussion and conclusion
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Acknowledgments
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References