Trader-Customer Communication Survival Strategies on the Kenya-Uganda Cross-Border Trade: A Communication Accommodation Theory Perspective

Abstract: Initial encounters with people from different linguistic and cultural affinities during trading activities are likely to cause anxiety, mistrust, and uncertainty that can compromise effective communication. Despite the ongoing trade in Busia town, invoking a theoretical framework may help develop strategies to improve communication by reducing misunderstandings. This paper examines how Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT) can provide insights for developing communication survival strategies for traders and customers during an initial intercultural business encounter. Data were collected through observations (non-participant) and recorded conversations from traders and customers who were purposively sampled and analysed using CAT’s five sociolinguistic strategies at the Kenya-Uganda cross-border trade. Results indicate that discourse management, interpretability, approximation, emotional expression and interpersonal control strategies are often employed by traders and customers during their interactions, respectively. Findings also revealed that traders applied more of the five sociolinguistic strategies than customers. As such, this accommodation stance allowed seamless interaction, which minimised communication frictions.  In view of these findings, this paper, therefore, affirms CAT’s utility in providing effective communication survival strategies to traders and customers to help them transcend intercultural communication problems, thereby enhancing cross-border trade.