ABSTRACT

Communication accommodation theory (CAT) emerged in the early 1970s as a framework to understand the motivations for and ways in which individuals adjust their speech. CAT emerged from a post-positivist tradition relying primarily on experimental methods in early development of the tenets and propositions of the theory. CAT offers a framework for understanding how communication both affects and is influenced by these familial differences and how our communication is enacted to maintain relational, personal, and familial identity. CAT's focus is on the communicative adjustments that occur in our interactions, emphasizing two primary types of adjustments. CAT posits that there are a variety of linguistic and nonverbal dimensions that can be adapted as part of the strategies individuals enact in interaction. Communication theory of identity (CTI) conceptualizes communication as central to identity in that a "person's sense of self is part of his or her social behavior, and the sense of self emerges and is defined and redefined in social behavior".