Accommodation—changing our communication behavior to adapt to the other person—can help us communicate with individuals from different cultures or co-cultures (Giles & Smith, 1979). Code switching and style switching are types of accommodation in which communicators change their regular language and slang, as well as their tonality, pitch, rhythm, and inflection, to fit into a particular group. These language accommodations may be ways to survive, to manage defensiveness, to manage identity, or to signal power or status (Bourhis, 1985). As mentioned, police officers use this type of accommodation when they adopt the street slang or foreign phrases used by citizens in the neighborhoods they patrol and when they use more formal, bureaucratic language when interacting with superiors, filling out reports, or testifying in court.