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Towards a Theory of Interpersonal Accommodation through Language: Some

Canadian Data

Article  in  Language in Society · October 1973

DOI: 10.1017/S0047404500000701

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 Lang Soc. 2, r77-r92, Printed in Great Britain

Towards a theory of interpersonal accommodation

through language: some Canadian datat
HOWARD GILES
Unioersity of Bristol

DONALD M. TAYLOR AND RICHARD BOURHIS

McGill (Jnioersityz

ABSTRACT

The study was designed to investigate the process of speech accommodation

between bilinguals from two ethnolinguistic groups. It was hypothesized
that the greater the amount of effort in accommodation that a bilingual
speaker of one group was perceived to put into his message, the more
favourably he would be perceived by listeners from another ethnic group,
and also the more effort they in turn would put into accommodating back
to him. Eighty bilingual English-Canadians were divided into four groups
and individually tested, Ss heard on tape a French-Canadian describe a
picture and they were required to sketch this while listening. ^Ss were made
fully aware that their speaker had a choice of language for his description.
The four groups heard the same male speaker describe the drawing but each
in a different guise: (r) French, (z) Mix-mix, (3) Fluent English and
(4) Nonfluent English. ,Ss were then requested to rate their speaker and his
performance, and to record a description of another picture themselves for
that same French-Canadian to draw later. From analyses of the ratings and
the Ss' tapes, the hypotheses were confirmed and different types of accom-
modation noted. A theoretical framework for these results and other forms
of interpersonal accommodation was suggested. (Bilingualism; social
interaction; accommodation theory; Canadian French, Canadian English.)

Much research has accrued recently which demonstrates that an individual's

speech patterns are in part dependent on the person to whom he is talking, the
topic of the discourse and the setting in which it takes place (reviewed by Giles &

[r] The present investigation was supported by a grant from the Canada Council. The
authors wish to express their gratitude to Marc Leroux for his excellent voice recordings
and to Professor Dell Hymes for his extremely useful comments on an earlier version of
this paper.
An abridged version of this paper was delivered at the Annual Conference of the
British Psychological Society in April 1972, at Nottingham.
[z] Howard Giles and Richard Bourhis are now at University College, Cardiff, South
Wales, U.K.

177

GILES, H., TAYLOR, D.M. & BOURHIS,R.Y. (1973). Toward a theory of interpersonal accommodation through
speech: Some Canadian data. Languaee in Society,2, 177-192.
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