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:
“Establishing limits, structure, rules, and expectations takes self-confidence on the part of parents. Parents need to recognize that they are the legitimate authority figures in their households and feel secure in that role.”
—Karen Levine (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)
“Americans have internalized the value that mothers of young children should be mothers first and foremost, and not paid workers. The result is that a substantial amount of confusion, ambivalence, guilt, and anxiety is experienced by working mothers. Our cultural expectations of mother and realities of female participation in the labor force are directly contradictory.”
—Ruth E. Zambrana, U.S. researcher, M. Hurst, and R.L. Hite. “The Working Mother in Contemporary Perspectives: A Review of Literature,” Pediatrics (December 1979)