| This study used a social accommodation approach to analyze negotiation discourse, a pragmatic setting where the participants hold opposing conversational objectives. A role-playing scenario was created where two participants engage in a negotiation-persuasion situation, and the speakers were recorded trying to resolve their assigned, opposing goals. The speaker strategies were categorized into an original taxonomy including such devices as private state references and volition and intent of the addressee, as well as traditional categories such as offers, apologies, and confirmations. The pattern of accommodation and disaccommodation was analyzed to show the strategies and functions of its use. A model of social accommodation is proposed, based on Austin (1962) and Searle's (1969, 1975) work on speech act theory and Giles' (1984) speech accommodation, which assert that speakers perform social acts with their utterances which will produce expectations or obligations on the addressee. Speakers then must be aware of their effects, and often socially accommodate the addressee, although there are instances of deliberate disaccommodation. Accommodation takes many forms which can be defined by broader pragmatic categories, such as politeness, conversational maxims, and face-work. Other models of accommodation devices were developed to represent the progression of a request process or to account for expressions of the speaker's thought process. A conversation framework was developed for the negotiation situation, allowing specific points to be compared across conversations. The analysis showed that accommodation and disaccommodation are often coupled with each other, being used as setup and redressive functions. An utterance with an illocutionary disaccommodating core function is often surrounded by multiple accommodation devices. Instances of disaccommodation are often couched across turns in a larger accommodation shell. Speakers will deliberately employ a strategy of using a series of disaccommodating moves in order to set up a larger accommodating scenario for the addressee, and thus refashion their original disaccommodating intent, a request, into an accommodating move, an offer. Their patterns of use and disuse show that speakers do not only use accommodation merely as practical or redressive maintenance for a social relationship, but rather for pragmatic purposes relating to their conversation goals. |
