Date of Award

1-1-2012

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Specialization

Communication and Leadership

School or Department

School of Leadership Studies

First Advisor

Dr. Nobuya Inagaki

Abstract

Immigration to the United States presents difficulties to culturally diverse communities because of various customs, beliefs and languages. Daily social interaction and differing behavioral norms in these communities harbor positive and negative interethnic interactions. English as a second language (ESL) classrooms are common places in which people of numerous nationalities meet and work. The goal of this ethnography study is to observe the students’ and teachers’ interactions within an ESL classroom aided by Howard Giles’s communication accommodation theory (CAT) as a lens through which to view these issues. The communication interaction patterns and themes are divided into groups based on CAT’s inherent categories of converging (adopting a similar style), diverging (adopting a different style), or maintaining (non-accommodation of different styles) linguistic and nonverbal features. By drawing on these observations, ESL instructors can scrutinize and enhance their own classroom lectures to not only teach English, but also to raise cultural awareness and help reduce prejudice and undeserved preconceptions of other ethnicities. The findings show strong convergence by the students to teacher speech pauses and hand gesture explanation. Non-accommodation’s strongest example dealt with native language usage in the classroom, as advanced ESL students depended on English much more than the beginners.

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