Verbal adaptive strategies in U.S. American dyadic interactions with U.S. American or East-Asian partners

This study explored verbal adaptive strategies that communicators employ for mutual orientation and management of role relationship in dyadic conversations. "Get-to-know-each-other" dyadic conversation data were collected in a lab situation involving Americans communicating with other Americans (A-A) or with East-Asian (A-E) partners who were nonnative speakers of English. The study focused on verbal adaptive strategies in alignment talk and was designed to determine whether there are differences or similarities between intercultural and intracultural communicators in the use of these strategies. Also examined were the extent of interaction involvement in the A-A/A-E dyads and the relationship between use of adaptive strategies and the extent of interaction involvement. The dyad types were differentiated by significantly different levels of interaction involvement, by different amounts of alignment talk, by different patterns of alignment talk, and by differences in use of five of seven alignment strategies. Correlations between use of various alignment strategies and measurement of interaction involvement were found.