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The Artifact: Steve Mclaren, et. al
In 2008, there was a YouTube video (supanovasky 2008) that went viral because of the ticklish surprise of many after watching the starkly fake Dutch accent of famous English football manager Steve McLaren during an interview. He was then the manager of the Dutch professional football team FC Twente and was then being interviewed after a respectable but losing game against the English team Arsenal. The sports press all over Europe followed suit in mocking McLaren.
Connecting McLaren to Inter-ethnic Accommodation
McLaren joined Twente after failing infamously to carry England to qualify in the 2008 European Championship. It was a low point that was followed by the invitation to manage Twente and one can assume that McLaren was feeling ingratiated. Consciously or not, he may have expressed this feeling by speaking English in a Dutch accent which surely appeared patronizing to the Dutch people.
The other possibility was that it was a premeditated act of bonding with his players. He could have meant it as a symbolic act of unity with them. The style appeared to may have had enough merit to be copied later in 2012 by an English player Joey Barton (Eathster5899 2012) who was playing with a French team. He also faked a French accent in also another interview.
In terms of attribution theory, these three football personalities were exercising a “pragmatic concern” in their form of communication accommodation. Trust and camaraderie are crucial within sports teams and it is doubly challenging if members belong to different ethnic groups. The ties between these personalities and players were being forged with the aid of a common linguistic accent. The display may not have looked proficient but the symbolic value is real. The coaches were applying a convergent strategy on their players. In terms of socio-psychological theories, this is a case for similarity-attraction whose use of accent mimicry is to curry social approval of the coach from his players. These coaches were forming their social identity with their teams by mimicking accent
The Possibility of Negative Attributions
If the situation in the team is problematic on the aspects of the game, the players’ expectations on the coach is to work on fixing those problems above all initiatives. In the light of difficulties currently being experienced, the coaches’ seemingly convergent acts may appear to be divergent for the players. What they expect as appropriate convergent behavior is for the coach to lead them in solving problems on their game; to do any other is to be divergent.
The attribution may also appear to be negative; the “pragmatic concern” may appear to be a selfish motive to look collegial to the media or to get into the good social side of the players so the chances of staying longer as a coach can be higher. At worse, it can be seen as manipulative behavior.
The target social identity may also be seen as pointing towards the Dutch people as a whole rather to just the team. They were public interviews so the intent is to perhaps get the approval of the sporting public and be a popular coach who will be difficult to remove because of a negative public reaction.
Evaluation from Psychological Studies
Subsequent events may have proven the convergent characteristic of McLaren’s behavior when his FC Twente welcomed his return after managing other teams after their championship run. If there any challenges to his act, it came out of the media who understandably found it comical but had hinted that it was misstep on McLaren’s part.
In fact, later psychological studies have shown evidence that copying accents may have an involuntary aspect. Researchers claimed that our brains have a strong natural urge to “emphatise and affiliate” and this reinforces the theory that McLaren and Barton were sincerely trying to bond with their teams and the public at large. They were talking to interviewers who were native speakers and of course would have been speaking in accented English. Their predisposition or “pragmatic concern” may well have been triggered by the interviewers’ speaking styles and thus made them comfortable to have spoken as such. In fact, the accommodation theory has a predecessor in the “chameleon effect” where listeners tend to copy the gestures and speech patterns of speakers. (Derbyshire 2016)
In practice, people should not feel embarrassed if the find themselves acting convergent when speaking with other people. They should feel heartened that they have the positive instincts to communicate and bond with others.
Works Cited
Derbyshire, David. "Talking double Dutch? Why we think it's polite to copy an accent". Mail Online, 6 Aug. 2010. Web. 26 July 2016. <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1300949/You-subconsciously-try-mimic-accent-person-speaking-researchers-find.html#ixzz4FRJXHHeB>.
Eathster5899. "Joey Barton Puts On French Accent After Debut For Marseille *Hilarious*". YouTube, 28 November 2016. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dovfYaQoPoY>.
Norrish, Mike. "Steve McClaren goes Dutch in TV interview". YouTube, 14 Aug. 2008. Web. 26 July 2016. <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/european/2557983/Steve-McClaren-goes-Dutch-in-TV-interview.html>.
supanovasky. "Shteeve Mclaren". YouTube, 16 Aug. 2008. Web. 26 July 2016. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZnoP4sUV90>.
