Roberta Zoppo, Task 3, English II Year LM April, 5, 2009

METTING WITH THE AMERICAN STUDENTS OF THE TRINITY COLLEGE CAMPUS IN ROME.

The aim.

The aim of this task is to show how it is possible to accommodate your way of thinking to another culture. To do this, we met a group of American students in Rome and spoke to them first in our variety of English than in General American.

Their reaction in the first part of the evening.

During the first part of the evening I tried to speak and behave as an Irish girl. For this reason, I tried to recap mentally Irish values like national pride and family relationship, so I was not open-minded and ready to talk about my personal life (where I come from, what I study and so on). However, it was only a formal accommodation because, even if I used naturally spontaneously some Irish expressions like “I mean” and gave not much confidence to my interlocutors, I did not feel myself as Irish. Their reaction was half surprised and half curious, either because they knew I am Italian or because I was not really credible as Irish. Consequently, they put myself me at ease and broke the ice with more general questions such as “Have you ever been in America?”. In general, they tended to keep the maintain a distance between them and me. [Well, your expereince seems to provide evidence for the statement (in Accommodation Theory Revisited) that if you do not really accommodate substantially, people will consider you an actor and have difficulty relating to you. Of course, you have an excuse for not being able to accommodate substantially: there was not enough time and you did not have enough input models to acquire a feeling as an Irish lass. Still, the purpose of this experiment was to give you the chance to TRY. Experiments are considered of scientific interest even when they do not succeed. And your experiment, even though it did not succeed because you were not prepared to enter into the Irish mind set genuinely, enabled you to understand something about accommodation, precisely from your failure.]

The degree of entente was low: there was no reciprocal understanding in nor affinity and or warmth. In other words, they continued to be American and I a false Irishwoman. [Conclusion of this part of the experiment: Don't be false in the future! But could it be possibile for you to be a TRUE American woman for an evening, entering into their mentality? And if this is possible, what would be better for creating entente: for you to be a true American woman or a true Italian woman? This is the heart of the experiment.] My interlocutors adapted their way of speaking to make me understand what they said but in spite of that they did not make the effort to change their mind and adapted themselves to me, maybe for the reason I mentioned below [above?]. The My interlocutors used the foreigner talk to relate themselves to me underlining emphasising once again that we belonged to two different cultures. Unconsciously I activated a sort of auto defence mechanism to protected myself from the external world. [Interesting point. Usually scholars speak of foreigner talk as a “distancing” by the native speaker. But, as you mention, it also produces, by reaction, a distancing on the part of the non-native speaker.]

Analysing the discourse above, you can not say that there was any spontaneous formal accommodation. Thinking to be another person activated a sort of mental block and every movement or word was carefully measured. [Yes, but this was because you did not really feel like an Irish woman. If you had learned more about being Irish and learned to feel an empathy with the Irish way of being, then you probably could have “been yourself” (your new self) during the first part of the evening. The question therefore is: were the American students defensive because: (a.) you were not sincerely yourself as an Italian, (b.) you were not able to be sincerely yourself with an Irish mentality, (c.) your language difficulties imposed upon them to use foreigner talk and maintain a distance. I do not believe in (c.) because many young people of different nationalities, who meet in trains or on beaches, spend enjoyable moments using foreigner talk to get to know each other. So the distance must be due to (a.) or (b.).] There was no feeling and no reciprocal understanding, even if I reproduced Irish sounds and Irish behaviour like asking the name at the end of the conversation. This operation was maybe complicated by the fact that the conversation was not spontaneous: both my interlocutors and me repeated ready-made sentences (the type of sentences you find in a grammar books, to be clear) without trying to get in touch.

To conclude this section, I can say that the thesis of the accommodation theory were not fully respected. [From your description, the opposite seems true. You did NOT create entente because you did NOT accommodate to them. And you did not accommodate to them for three reasons: (1.) you were an “Irish”woman who wanted to stay Irish and not try to be like her interlocutors, (2.) you were not really sincere in playing that role. (3.) Your lack of familiarity with Irish being and speech, plus your lack of knowledge of the interactive functions of English, made whatever you said sound stilted. These three factors, put together, were a deadly cocktail indeed! In any case, they do not show that accommodation theory is wrong; if anything, they suggest that by NOT accommodating you do not facilitate entente.]

Their reaction in the second part of the evening.

During the second part of the evening I tried to adapt myself to the American way of thinking and the atmosphere was much more relaxed than before. The American students had a friendly behaviour and put myself me at ease successfully and we started speaking about ourselves in English and Italian. I was interested to in understanding their gestures that I tried to imitate, but they did not show the same interest. [Accommodation is, usually, unilateral. Creating a mutual “third space” is ideal but rare.] For example, when we wrote on the blackboard the our respective commonplaces, we explained our choices to them but they did not do the same to us. [Most people are not aware of the cultural dimension of their expressions or behavior. Were you aware before our course?] You I have to say that, by assuming their posture and their way of talking, I found less difficulty to in entering into contact with them, maybe because they did not looked at a me as a stranger. [Again you raise the issue – which is seldom discussed in the literature of Intercultural Communication Studies – of the effect of native-speaker behavior on the non-native. Usually Intercultural Communication Studies investigate, as we were doing, how the behavior of the non-native influences the native speaker.]

Compared to the first part of the evening, the a certain entente among us was established but it was not a real entente. In other words, there was a friendly atmosphere but no reciprocal understanding. It seemed that I tried to understand them but they had no will to adapt themselves to us even when they spoke our language: for them we were Italians who spoke English. There was a difference of culture and values and no will, or better a partial will, to establish a point of contact. Perhaps, we could speak about real entente when we explained to each other our different conceptions of personal space, but no more than this. [Obviously, trying to create real entente in an artificial situation in one (1) hour is almost impossible. Yet you COULD, if things were different, have felt you were beginning to build real entente. Why didn't YOU feel warmth toward them? Answer: probably because you didn't feel American either; so the American students remained “foreigners” to you. Too bad. If you had had the time and ability to learn be accommodate substantially to them as Americans (sincerely feeling them as close to you and your values), then perhaps you would have begun to feel warmth – the warmth of meeting a connazionale all'estero (a fellow American, in this case). Is such a feeling possible, WITHOUT ACTING? Obviously it IS possible, since when young people from different cultures meet and fall sincerely in love, that is what happens: each enters into the other's cultural world and they create a third space. It is also what happens – immediately – to Italians, who really love American or Brazilian or Indian culture, when they go for a stay in these countries. It didn't happen to you so you were not able to produce a significant amount of warmth. And so it is not fair to expect a significant amount of warmth from your American counterparts. As for the other two components of entente, affinity and understanding, the same applies.]

This time I did not find it particularly difficult to accommodate myself to the situation. Observing the American behaviour, I generally understood how to enter into touch contact with them [with warmth, affinity and real understanding???] (be informal and not force the physical contact, for example) and I was much more spontaneous. I repeated easily American interactional gambits such as “Yeah” and avoided the use of Latinate verbs. I have however to admit that the last point was not easy to reach because of the Latin influence in the Italian culture. Generally speaking, the formal accommodation was good. [But did it occur SPONTANEOUSLY when you adopted an American mindset? THAT was the hypotheses to test.]

In conclusion, during the second part of the evening the process of accommodation was in general well issued successful [had a favorable outcome].

Conclusion.

The experiment gave good results, especially in the second part of the evening, although it is not easy to enter into touch contact with people if of different cultures in a few short time. the entente was not fully reached attained maybe because of the commonplace (we were Italians and for this reason nice, for example [I don't understand your point]) and maybe because there was no a real will to do this by the both parts. [As I said, there unfortunately seldom is.] However, it the experiment demonstrated that an operation like this is not impossible.

OK.

A very good discussion showing an above average capacity for introspection and observation. There is too little in this paper that connects it to Accommodation Theory Revisited. Since this was the position paper you were investigating, you should have cited it more and also mentioned specific affirmations.