ACCENT ACCOMMODATION IN THE JOB INTERVIEW - IMPACT OF INTERVIEWER ACCENT AND GENDER

Using the framework of Communication Accommodation Theory, this study investigated the extent to which job applicants objectively and subjec tively altered their accents to converge to or diverge from the speech style of the interviewer Forty-eight male and 48 female job applicant s participated in two interviews for a casual research assistant posit ion. In one interview, the interviewer had a broad Australian English accent, and in the other one, the interviewer had a cultivated accent. Applicants showed broader accents with broad-accented interviewers th an with cultivated-accented interviewers. Applicants did not converge to the cultivated-accented interviewers, however and male job applican ts were more likely than mere females to diverge from the cultivated-a ccented interviewers. There were also discrepancies between objectivel y rated changes to applicants' accents and their subjective judgments about the extent of accent accommodation.