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Community Relations and Policing: A Communication Accommodation Theory Perspective

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Police Conflict Management, Volume I

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Abstract

Police worldwide face the ongoing challenge of forging positive and mutually beneficial relationships with the communities they serve. However, these relationships are sometimes strained and even violent, particularly in certain impoverished, indigenous, or minority communities with a long history of tension and conflict with the police. Communication mediates these relationships and can play a significant role in improving or diminishing them. Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT), which falls within the sub-discipline of intergroup communication, provides an explanation for how and why individuals adjust their communication across various contexts, and the social consequences of such adjustments. CAT provides a potent framework for understanding the dynamics of police–community relations. This chapter underscores the real potential for how theory and research on intergroup communication accommodation can help police and the public establish stronger, safer, more meaningful relationships which benefit the quality of life for both groups.

Reviewer: Silvia Staubli

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See, also, the notion of “speech maintenance” (e.g., Bourhis, 1979) where individuals can maintain their valued social identities by not converging to what they believe to be others’ communicative practices.

  2. 2.

    That is, respectively, when both parties mutually accommodate each other or when only one does so, but the other does not.

  3. 3.

    All this notwithstanding, CAT acknowledges that any decision (conscious or otherwise) to accommodate another can be fraught with risks and uncertainties about just how to behave, thus leading to so-called “accommodative dilemmas” (see, e.g., Gallois & Giles, 1998; Maguire et al., in press). Furthermore, individuals may need to manage multiple (and even competing) goals in some interactions (see Bernhold & Giles, 2022; Wilson, 2019) that can induce them to simultaneously converge on certain communicative features, while diverging on others. This balancing act can, in turn, often be somewhat disconcerting and confusing for those involved and, if the circumstances are angstful enough, lead to what has been termed, more emotively, “accommodative turbulence” (Giles, 2008).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Communication, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

    Shawn L. Hill & Howard Giles

  2. School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Arizona State University, Phoenix, AZ, USA

    Edward R. Maguire

Authors
  1. Shawn L. Hill
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  2. Howard Giles
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  3. Edward R. Maguire
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Correspondence to Shawn L. Hill .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Applied Sciences for Police and Public Administration North Rhine-Westphalia, Cologne, Germany

    Mario S. Staller

  2. German Sport University Cologne, Cologne, Germany

    Swen Koerner

  3. Aurora, ON, Canada

    Benni Zaiser

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Hill, S.L., Giles, H., Maguire, E.R. (2023). Community Relations and Policing: A Communication Accommodation Theory Perspective. In: Staller, M.S., Koerner, S., Zaiser, B. (eds) Police Conflict Management, Volume I. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41096-3_13

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