Whenever two or more people meet and begin to communicate, subtle or not-so-subtle changes in speech patterns may emerge as a result – including switches to a different language, shifts in pronunciation, speech rate and utterance lengths, as well as non-verbal behaviours. Communication Accommodation Theory deals with interlocutors’ motivations for becoming linguistically more alike or less alike as well as their motivations for not changing their speech at all. As conation constitutes one of the components of language attitudes, these communicative strategies are considered to reflect – at least to a certain extent – the attitudes that interlocutors hold towards each other and their respective social groups. This chapter discusses how analysing communication accommodation as an indicator of language attitudes comes with both strengths (e.g. it reflects actual language use in daily communicative practice) and limitations (e.g. the remaining uncertainty of how affect and conation interact). Key practical issues of planning and research design are addressed, such as the all-important mitigation of the observer’s paradox, which may, by itself, trigger accommodation. The chapter then discusses the analysis of data resulting from communication accommodation studies. It concludes with a case study of communication accommodation between French and English speakers in Quebec’s urban centre, Montreal.

This chapter illustrates how computational models of ISA disambiguation havebeen improved and eventually applied to human-like robots in dailyinteractions, taking into account contextual parameters such as uncertaintyabout a speaker's intentions, hierarchical status and politenessexpectations.

Emotional influence not only depends on a person’s group membership, but also on their particular position within the group’s structured interpersonal relations. When the group is part of a wider organisation, additional regulatory regimes may constrain or afford particular forms of emotional conduct. This chapter focuses on how work roles shape emotion communication and regulation. Team leaders’ emotions can set the emotional tone of work-groups, encouraging solidarity and common purpose. In the service sector, clients and customers impose different kinds of emotional demand on employees. Workers whose jobs involve interacting with consumers present the company’s outward face, and are encouraged to regulate their emotional presentations accordingly (emotional labour). Caring professionals need to manage the potential personal costs of empathising with clients undergoing potentially devastating life changes. In all of these cases, employees’ emotions influence and are influenced by the people they deal with in their working lives.