Jessica Gasiorek

Intergenerational Communication Practices

Publisher Summary This chapter explores important parameters of intergenerational communication, with a focus on older people being targets of overaccommodation, also known variously across studies as patronizing talk, elder speak, or infantilizing talk. The latter are considered as (interchangeable) forms in that they can be subsumed under or treated as exemplars of the more superordinate category of over accommodative moves. Overaccommodation is a construct derived from communication accommodation theory that has been operationalized in terms of a speaker perceiving to exceed or overshoot the level of implementation of communicative behaviors necessary for a smooth and successful interaction. The chapter begins with considering the different forms overaccommodation can take. Following this, it sheds light on its social effects and describes the variable ways it can be managed by recipients. It also presents the theoretical mechanisms proposed to underlie this process. Furthermore, it considers other forms problematic intergenerational communication may, including elderly-to-young overaccommodation, painful self disclosures, and off-target verbosity. Finally and consequentially, this chapter concludes with a discussion of how communicative practices are endemic in the social construction of successful and unsuccessful aging.

Celebrating Thirty Years of the JLSP Analyses and Prospects

The Journal of Language and Social Psychology has been publishing articles for 30 years. In this article, three different kinds of analyses (viz., content codings, word clouds, and a textual procedure) examining trends over and between the three decades are reported. Drawing on these, future directions for the journal and the field in general are anticipated and proposed.

The Role of Communication in Aging Well: Introducing the Communicative Ecology Model of Successful Aging

This study introduces the communicative ecology model of successful aging (CEMSA). The CEMSA is predicated on the belief that individuals have agency over the aging process and, through communicative practices, construct ecologies within which they are able to age more successfully. According to the model, uncertainty about aging stimulates affective and communicative responses, and, in turn, perceived efficacy to manage growing older. These feelings of efficacy are hypothesized to determine the judgment that one is aging successfully. Hypotheses were tested via structural equation modeling using data from 458 middle-aged and older New Zealanders. Three of seven communicative behaviors investigated had significant indirect effects on successful aging via affect and/or efficacy. This study concludes by suggesting a future research agenda and theoretical refinements relating to the role of uncertainty which, although predictive of affect and efficacy, was less effective as a predictor of communicative behavior.

The Role of Inferred Motive in Processing Nonaccommodation: Evaluations of Communication and Speakers

Building on recent revisions to communication accommodation theory (CAT), we propose and test a model relating inferred motives, perceptions of accommodation, and evaluative responses to nonaccommodation. In a vignette scenario, inferring a positive (i.e., helping) motive was found to influence evaluative responses to nonaccommodative communication, and the same communicative behavior was experienced as more accommodative (i.e., appropriately adjusted) to the extent that it was seen as more positively motivated. Our results also indicate that the consistent differences in evaluations of over versus underaccommodation found in previous research can be a result of listeners’ inferences about speakers’ motives.

Modeling Motives for Bilingual Accommodation by Minority and Majority Language Speakers

Within the framework of communication accommodation theory, this study examined how self-reported motives for linguistic convergence and divergence by speakers of majority and minority languages (in demographic terms) predict language use in Finland, a bilingual country. In so doing, we also offer a novel approach to modeling motivation for linguistic accommodation. For majority language speakers, motives to converge, but not motives to diverge, were significant predictors of linguistic convergence to the outgroup. However, the opposite pattern was found for minority language speakers. To our knowledge, this is the first study to model how multiple self-reported motives for language use theorized by communication accommodation theory jointly map onto linguistic behavior in a bilingual setting.

Perspective-Taking, Inferred Motive, and Perceived Accommodation in Nonaccommodative Conversations

Recent extensions of communication accommodation theory have emphasized the importance of inferred motives in understanding and predicting responses to nonaccommodation. This study explored the association between perspective-taking, motive inferences, and perceptions of accommodation in recalled conversations (N = 193). Higher levels of self-reported perspective-taking were found associated with more positively valenced motive inferences. Higher levels of perspective-taking also predicted more positive perceptions of accommodation for overaccommodative conversations, but not for underaccommodative conversations.

Depressive symptoms, excessive reassurance seeking, and relationship maintenance

Using a sample of 143 heterosexual, ethnically diverse couples, we explored the consequences of individuals’ depressive symptomology and excessive reassurance seeking (ERS) for (a) the efforts they and their partners make to maintain their relationship and (b) the satisfaction reported by each relational party. Data were analyzed using an extension of the actor–partner interdependence model. We found actor effects of depression on satisfaction and on relationship maintenance behavior. We also detected significant actor effects of ERS on relationship maintenance behavior. There was inconsistent evidence of partner effects and of the predicted indirect effects. Results suggest that depression and the tendency to engage in ERS may exert countervailing influences on the enactment of relationship maintenance: For both men and women, depression was a negative predictor of self-reported relationship maintenance, whereas ERS was a positive predictor. We suggest that ERS could be considered a form of relationship maintenance in its own right.

Profiling Younger Adults’ Communication About Aging

According to the Communicative Ecology Model of Successful Aging (CEMSA), how people talk about age can have implications for how they cope with aging later in life. However, most research on communication and successful aging has focused on older adults. In this study, we use latent class analysis to profile how younger adults (age 18–39) communicate about aging and examine how these profiles relate to their attitudes toward aging (affect, efficacy, anxiety, and perceptions of successful aging). Consistent with past research on older adults, we found three distinct profiles of communication behavior (disengaged, engaged, and bantering). An engaged profile was clearly associated with the most positive attitudes toward aging, while a disengaged profile was associated with the least positive attitudes. These findings suggest that patterns of talk about aging may start early in life, underscoring the importance of studying communication about aging across the lifespan.

Complex Considerations in Couples’ Financial Information Management Extending the Theory of Motivated Information Management

Using Time 1 to Time 2 data from 387 adults, we examine the effectiveness of the theory of motivated information management (TMIM) in accounting for the various processes by which adults in committed romantic relationships manage financial uncertainty via communication with their partners. Our results indicate that the TMIM operates well in this context. We also contribute to the theoretical development of TMIM’s revised theoretical framework in three ways, namely, by (a) examining the joint operation of positive and negative emotions (anxiety and optimism, respectively) on information management, (b) testing two types of outcome expectancies (knowledge and relationship), and (c) testing the model’s prediction of multiple information management strategies (i.e., direct and indirect information seeking, avoidance, and cognitive reappraisal). Findings indicate that both (a) anxiety and optimism, and (b) knowledge outcome expectancies and relationship outcome expectancies differentially contributed to information management decisions.

The moderating effect of valenced contact: Slovak language media use, acculturation and L2 confidence among young Hungarian speakers

ABSTRACT Integrating the tenets of the social context model of L2 acquisition with insights from the parasocial contact hypothesis, the present paper addresses the role of mass media in L2 acquisition and acculturation among young Hungarian speakers in Slovakia. Questionnaire data were collected among Hungarian-speaking secondary school students (N = 310). The results indicated that integrative orientation guided individuals to seek media content in L2, and that L2 media use was associated with a higher L2 confidence and acculturation. Additionally, and in contrast to our expectations, L2 media use had a greater effect on acculturation and L2 confidence among those who had higher levels of positively valenced contact and lower levels of negatively valenced real-life contact with L2 speakers.