Expectations
The theory views language expectancies as enduring patterns of anticipated communication behavior which are grounded in a society's psychological and cultural norms. Such societal forces influence language and enable the identification of non-normative use; violations of linguistic, syntactic and semantic expectations will either facilitate or inhibit an audience's receptivity to persuasion. Burgoon claims applications for his theory in management, media, politics and medicine, and declares that his empirical research has shown a greater effect than expectancy violations theory, the domain of which does not extend to the spoken word.
LET argues that typical language behaviors fall within a normative "bandwidth" of expectations determined by a source's perceived credibility, the individual listener's normative expectations and a group's normative social climate, and generally supports a gender-stereotypical reaction to the use of profanity, for example.
Communication expectancies are said to derive from three factors:
- The communicator – individual features, such as ethos or source credibility, personality, appearance, social status and gender.
- The relationship between a receiver and a communicator, including factors such as attraction, similarity and status equality.
- Context; i.e., privacy and formality constraints on interaction.
Read more about this topic: Language Expectancy Theory
Famous quotes containing the word expectations:
“True balance requires assigning realistic performance expectations to each of our roles. True balance requires us to acknowledge that our performance in some areas is more important than in others. True balance demands that we determine what accomplishments give us honest satisfaction as well as what failures cause us intolerable grief.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)
“I anticipate with pleasing expectations that retreat in which I promise myself to realize, without alloy, the sweet enjoyment of partaking, in the midst of my fellow citizens, the benign influence of good laws under a free government, the ever favorite object of my heart, and the happy reward, as I trust, of our mutual cares, labors, and dangers.”
—George Washington (1732–1799)
“I don’t know what immutable differences exist between men and women apart from differences in their genitals; perhaps there are some other unchangeable differences; probably there are a number of irrelevant differences. But it is clear that until social expectations for men and women are equal, until we provide equal respect for both men and women, our answers to this question will simply reflect our prejudices.”
—Naomi Weisstein (b. 1939)