Introduction

In this chapter, we will discuss the available evidence for Niedzielski and Giles' claim that ‘accommodation theory should be one of the major frameworks to which researchers in language change should turn’ (1996: 338). We will investigate the validity of a model of the implementation of structural language change which is intricately linked to verbal communication in face-to-face situations, and which, if only for this reason, is highly appealing. In its prototypical version, the model stipulates the following (hierarchically ordered) components.

1st component. In face-to-face communication between speakers with more traditional speech habits and those who use an innovative form, the former accommodates to the linguistic behaviour of the latter. Accommodation may consist of either the adoption of the new feature and/or the abandonment of the older one(s). It is the first case which may, in the long run, lead to the expansion of the innovation in geographical and social space. Thus, interpersonal accommodation is seen as the root of any structural convergence or advergence (as it should more correctly be called since in the prototypical case it is unilateral). However, interpersonal accommodation does not always lead to language change, since it is restricted to the interactional episode at hand, i.e. it does not always have a lasting effect on the accommodating speaker's linguistic ‘habits’. In order to have such an effect, two further steps are necessary.

2nd component. Short-term accommodation becomes long-term accommodation as soon as it permanently affects the accommodating speakers.