Forms of Accommodation in 8 Mile Movie: How the Characters Implement Communication Accommodation Theory as an Affective Function

I Made Chandra Arya Putra, Kamaludin Yusra

The University of Mataram, Indonesia

Albeit there are several studies invoking CAT as a framework, there are still limited studies wherein analyses the motives through the accommodation’s forms. Therefore, this research examined the affective motives by analyzing the accommodation’s forms in the characters of 8 Mile considering socio-historical context. To gather the data, this research took several stages including watching the movie, dialogue transcription, conversation listing, and utterances symbolization. Data analysis, moreover, consists of data reduction, data display, and data conclusion. This research found that downward convergence becomes the most frequent form with no upward divergence. In a circumstance where upward divergence is expected, i.e. conflict situation, the white character does the trans-convergence. This novel finding indicates that according to his social value, the white character with SE tends to trans-converge to AAVE dialect in order to achieve social validation and self-verification. Moreover, asymmetrical accommodation occurs within greater extent than symmetrical accommodation. This signifies that there appears an imbalance of perceived value to particular cultural background. Further, for both modality and duration, multimodality appears 24 occurrences pursued by unimodality in 21 occurrences. Finally, long-term accommodation happens with greater frequency than short-term accommodation. The former was 41 occurrences and the latter with only 4 occasions.

Article link: https://www.asianinstituteofresearch.org/EQRarchives/forms-of-accommodation-in-8-mile-movie%3A-how-the-characters-implement-communication-accommodation-theory-as-an-affective-function