Living with the CAT

You’ll never find a theory whose expression is so ubiquitous like the Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT). If you have ever witnessed a foreign student trying to communicate with local students or stewards of expatriates trying their best to be understood, then you’ve probably seen the theory in action. The two examples cited here are convergence processes of the theory while the other two accommodation processes are divergence and over-accommodation. The accommodation processes are sometimes necessary for effective communication between speakers of a common language with different speech patterns and sometimes, speakers can unintentionally engage in one of the three processes of the theory. From my observation, you can easily predict which of the processes people will engage in based on their country of origin and whom they are speaking with.