Lang Soc. 2, 177-192.

Printed in Great Britain

Towards a theory of interpersonal accommodation through language: some Canadian data1

HOWARD GILES
University of Bristol

DONALD M. TAYLOR AND RICHARD BOURHIS

McGill University2
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. 5s heard on tape a French-Canadian describe a picture and they were required to sketch this while listening. 5s 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: (1) French, (2) Mix-mix, (3) Fluent English and (4) Nonfluent English. 5s 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 5s' tapes, the hypotheses were confirmed and different types of accommodation 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 &
[1] 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. [2] Howard Giles and Richard Bourhis are now at University College, Cardiff, South Wales, U.K.

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Powesland, in preparation). The bilingual's and bidialectal's choice of language and dialect respectively have been shown to be a function of these three factors (e.g. Herman 1961; Rubin 1962; Blom & Gumperz 1972) as has the monolingual's choice of speech style (e.g. Brown & Gilman i960; Labov 1966; Giles 1973). Indeed, 'Fishman, Hymes and Gumperz also stress the further point that both bilingualism and diglossia are best not considered in isolation, but rather as salient examples of a capacity for code variations which is also found among monolinguals' (MacNamara 1967). It is, according to Hymes (1972), this notion of code variation and speech diversity that has been singled out as the hallmark of sociolinguistics. The models of speech dynamics that have emerged in sociolinguistics (ErvinTripp 1964; Hymes 1967) have relied on a descriptive approach in terms of presenting a taxonomy of factors influencing code variations, such as topic, setting and so forth. This initial work has been extremely important since 'the work of taxonomy is a necessary part of progress towards models (structural and generative) of sociolinguistic description, formulation of universal sets of features and relations, and explanatory theories' (Hymes 1972). However, since our taxonomies have changed little over the past few years, the present writers have felt the need to develop a tentative, explanatory sociolinguistic theory to account for at least certain specific types of speech diversities. The strategy at this initial stage was to formulate a theory which focused on one taxonomic level, in this case, the interpersonal aspects of speech diversity. Most of the research at the interpersonal level in multi- and bi-lingual societies has been concerned with suggesting that social norms are operative in the choice of a language or code depending on the characteristics of the participants such as sex and status (e.g. Herman 1961; Sechrest, Flores & Arellano 1968; Kimple, Cooper & Fishman 1969). Certain studies of monolinguistic code variation can also be understood within a framework of normative behavior. For instance, it has been shown that a speaker makes linguistic adjustments depending on such perceived characteristics of the listener as social status (Slobin, Miller & Porter 1968), sex (Benney, Reisman & Star 1956), age (Granowsky & Krossner 1970) and presumed knowledge about the conversational topic (Ratner & Rice 1963). Therefore, certain shifts in speech style can be the result of complying with social norms. In other words, it is expected that we should speak in a particular manner to a certain type of person. However, a great deal of work on monolingual speech diversity at the interpersonal level has been more concerned with demonstrating that often speakers adapt or accommodate their speech towards that of their interlocutors when social norms in all probability are not operative. Such accommodative behavior has been termed 'response matching' by Argyle (1969) and may be a subtler, and perhaps more unconscious speech shift than those hitherto mentioned. This phenomenon has been demonstrated in a number of studies on at least one member 178

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of an interactive dyad where a speaker tends to adopt the speech patterns of the person to whom he is talking. It has been studied on a range of linguistic levels including speech rate (Webb 1970), vocal intensity (Black 1949), regional accent (Giles 1973), speech durations (Matarazzo, Weins, Matarazzo & Saslow 1968) and speech silences (Jaffe & Feldstein 1970). Other studies (Lennard & Bernstein i960; Welkowitz & Feldstein 1970) have shown that speech accommodation between members of a dyad can often be a mutual process increasing each time the participants interact. Unfortunately, however, little work has been conducted into the process whereby members of entirely separate ethnolinguistic groups attempt to accommodate to each other. Giles (1971; 1973) has attempted to formulate a model for accent change in social interaction and has termed such accommodative speech strategies 'convergent' behaviour. But he has pointed to the fact that accommodative speech is unlikely to occur in all interpersonal situations. For instance, Giles hypothesized that if a speaker does not require this interlocutor's social approval and finds the latter somewhat distasteful (maybe because of his personality or attitudes), he may modify his accent in a direction opposed to that of his partner 'divergence'. Little work has been conducted as yet demonstrating the existence empirically of divergent speech patterns either bi- or monolingually (Bourhis, Giles & Lambert 1972). Nevertheless, work on the language and code loyalty of a minority group who retains its code as an expression of group or national identity in the face of the majority culture's language could be regarded as a form of divergent behavior (e.g. Gumperz 1964; Fishman et al. 1966). Thus, one may identify at least three forms of speech modifications in interpersonal situations; namely normative, accommodative and divergent code variations. But it is clear that even this may be too broad an area to initiate model-building at this stage, and so our emphasis will be on only one form of interpersonal code shift - accommodation. The aims of this paper then are twofold. First, we shall attempt to provide a theory for interpersonal accommodation in speech hoping that, like the previous taxonomies, it may be flexible enough to cope with both mono- and bilingual accommodation. Secondly, as part of ongoing research into the theory, another aim of the paper was to test it in one very specific bicultural setting with its own peculiar history - Quebec, Canada, The essence of the theory lies in the social psychological research on similarityattraction (see review of Simons, Berkowitz & Meyer 1970). This work suggests that an individual can induce another to evaluate him more favorably by reducing certain dissimilarities between them. The process of speech accommodation of course operates on this principle and as such may be a reflection of an individual's desire for social approval. In exchange theory terms (Homans 1961), it seems likely that the accommodative act may involve certain costs for the speaker, that is in terms of identity change and expended effort, and so such behavior may only 179

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be initiated if potential rewards are available. Thus, if one can accept the notion that people find social approval from others rewarding, it would not seem unreasonable to suppose that there may be a general set to accommodate to others in most social situations. This, set is of course not insensitive to the demands of the specific occasion as can be inferred from the reference to speech divergence earlier. Moreover, it can be proposed that the amount of accommodation a person exhibits may in part be a function of the strength of his need for social approval from the other. Many other factors could affect the intensity of this need including the probability of future interactions, the extent of the accommodatee's social power and the perception of prior accommodation from that person. Nevertheless, not all examples of response matching (or convergence) can be understood within this accommodation framework and hence it seems important to consider a distinction made by Giles (1971) between 'positive' and 'negative' response matching. The studies cited so far have all been examples of the former and may be explainable in terms of the model proposed. Negative response matching on the other hand, was the term introduced to denote certain types of modelling which appear more plausibly explainable within a fabric of social retaliation. Such behaviour may be exemplified in situations where one person reciprocates the other's use of interruptions (Argyle & Kendon 1967) and verbal aggression (Mosher, Mortimer & Grebel 1968). As previously stated, little work has been conducted into the process whereby members of entirely separate ethnolinguistic groups attempt to accommodate to each other. What then are the likely speech modifications or adjustments (if any) that a person from one language background will make when interacting with a representative from another linguistic milieu? Is it likely that bilinguals from one ethnic group will use both languages when interacting with bilinguals of another ethnolinguistic group? Or alternatively, must accommodation with regard to bilingual behavior be an all-or-none process? If the latter were to be the case, is it possible that an English-Canadian (EC) bilingual who had just been provided with information in English by a French-Canadian (FC) bilingual would accommodate back to that person by replying in his second language (French)? The present empirical study was designed in an attempt to answer these questions in the context of a bicultural setting, Quebec, and also to test certain assumptions of the general accommodation model suggested above. These assumptions relate to the listener's evaluations of the accommodator and also to a greater desire to accommodate to those who have previously shown willingness to accommodate to oneself. It must be stressed that the authors are fully aware of the fact that the study can in no way be thought of as a valid test in itself of the theory. Rather, the study is conceived of as an attempt to establish preliminary support for hypotheses derived from the theory in one of many possible cultural contexts available. The following hypotheses were proposed: 180

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I. The greater the amount of effort in accommodation that a FC bilingual is perceived to put into his message, the more favorably he will be perceived by EC bilingual listeners. II. When accommodation by a FC speaker is perceived by EC listeners, the latter will respond in an accommodating manner. III. The greater the amount of effort that a FC speaker is perceived to put into accommodating towards an EC bilingual listener, the more effort he in turn will put into accommodating back to him.
METHOD

Subjects

The Ss for this experiment consisted of 80 ECs (43 female and 37 male) who claimed to possess at least a 'working knowledge' of French. Ss were students at McGill University, Montreal, and volunteered for the study thinking it was concerned with the effectiveness of communication between French- and EnglishCanadians. Their self-evaluation scores for their own French skills (using 9-point rating scales where 1 indicated native usage) were 4.21 for comprehension and 4.95 for speaking fluency. 5s were randomly assigned to one of four experimental conditions while at the same time equating the subgroups for sex. There were no significant differences (one-way analyses of variances) between the four groups in their self-rated French skills. Materials The materials for this experiment included two scenic pictures, paper and pencil, tape-recorded descriptions, tape-recording equipment and series of rating scales. Tape recordings. A 380-word English description of a very simple harbour scene was composed in such a manner that another person could draw it while listening to the description; verbal repetitions of the objects in the picture and their positions were abundant. A male FC bilingual student tape-recorded four versions of this passage. (1) Totally in French (duration 2 mins 47 sec). (2) Mixed French and English (duration 2 mins 56 sec). To make this mixture sound realistic, the body of the passage was spoken in French whilst the repetitions were in English; English accounted for about 1/3 of the passage length. (3) Fluent English (duration 3 mins 12 sees). The description was spoken in fluent, grammatically-perfect English but with a distinct FC accent. (4) Non-fluent English (duration 5 mins 10 sees). This passage was produced by the speaker as though he was not really fluent in English and it contained many filled and unfilled pauses, speech disturbances and a few grammatical errors (e.g. misuse of tense markers). Nevertheless, the description was fully comprehensible. It was thought that descriptions (i)-(4) would be considered by EC bilinguals as reflecting a series of messages increasing with regard to their effort in perceived accommodation. Each of these four versions was preceded on the tapes by exactly the same 40181

LANGUAGE IN SOCIETY

second recording. In this extract, the 5 apparently hears the FC speaker at PUniversite de Montreal (a French-speaking institution) being given his instruction for describing the picture by the experimenter. The substance of this predescription recording was as follows. The speaker could be heard being told (in French) that his recipient would be an EC bilingual. The FC was then heard to enquire of the experimenter which language he should use for his audience. The experimenter asked (in English) whether he could speak English - the reply was affirmative (also in English) - and then told him he could speak in the language of his choice. The purpose of this procedure was to ensure that EC listeners were made fully aware of certain features of the situation even though these were made explicit and stressed in the listening instructions. These features were (a) that the 5s' speaker was known to be a FC bilingual, (b) that 5s were aware of the fact that their speaker knew that they themselves were bilingual, and (c) that 5s were aware that their speaker's language form on tape was the result of a conscious choice on the part of the FC. Rating scales. There were three separate sets of scales used in the study, all of which consisted of nine rating points. Four pre-instruction scales were administered to 5s on arrival in the testing situation. These were concerned with 5s' reported skills in speaking and understanding both French and English. Seventeen post-drawing scales were used and these were concerned with the Ss' assessments of the FC speaker and his descriptive performance. They related to (a) the quality of the speaker's description, (b) ease in reproducing the picture, (c) task enjoyment, (d) likelihood that the speaker would be a friend, (e) desire to have the same speaker as a future experimental partner, (f) speaker's attachment to FC values, (g) speaker's effort in bridging the cultural gap between FCs and ECs. From the data of a study by Aboud and Taylor (1971), three scales strongly stereotypical each of FCs (colourful, emotional and talkative) and ECs (logical, stable and egotistic) were used such that 5s were required to rate to what extent these traits represented their particular speaker. In addition, 5s were required to rate how likeable, friendly, considerate and narrow-minded they considered their speaker to be. 5s were also given an opportunity of providing any further comments they might care to make. Finally, 5s were required on seven post-speaking scales to rate how they felt in the role of the speaker. They were asked to rate how much they enjoyed giving their description and to what extent they had felt unsociable, relaxed, uncomfortable, happy, active, weak and unfriendly when recording their description. In addition, 5s were asked to state which languages they had used and why they had chosen them. Again, 5s were asked if they would like to make any further comments. 182

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Procedure

The testing procedure lasted about 25 minutes per 5 and was conducted in English by a FC experimenter. All 5s were thus individually-tested and before they were read the standard instructions, they were required to rate their ability in French and English on sheets provided. 5s were told that it had been hoped that a face-to-face situation could have been created but because of the enormous difficulties involved in transporting FCs to McGill University and EC students to l'Universitd de Montreal at convenient times for all, taped messages were being used. They were told that bilingual FC students had been recorded at PUniversite de Montreal in which they had been describing a picture for bilingual EC students. 5s were told that they would each hear one of these FC bilinguals, and from his taped description were expected to draw the picture he was talking about. Later, they were informed, they would be given the opportunity of recording a description for that same FC to draw. 5s were assured that the quality of their drawing was completely unimportant as we just wanted to see if the message had been effectively communicated. 5s were then provided with paper and pencil and told to draw the picture as the speaker was describing it. The experimenter turned on the tape recorder when 5s were ready, but apparently did so a little too far back on the tape (and apologized) as the FC speaker was heard receiving his instructions in French. During this 'mistake', 5s heard the FC speak English and be given the opportunity of choosing the language in which to describe the picture for an EC bilingual. Members of any one subject group heard the same description by the same male FC stooge but in one of the four different guises mentioned above. After drawing the picture from the F C s description, 5s were presented with a questionnaire on which they were required to rate their reactions to their speaker and his performance. The 5s were then presented with a similar picture to the one they had just drawn and asked to describe this one for the same FC bilingual whom they were told would draw it the following week; 5s were handed a microphone and were then tape-recorded giving their description. This completed, 5s were asked to fill in another short questionnaire on which they were required to give reasons for choosing the language(s) they had, and also to rate how they felt giving their message.
RESULTS

In order to determine whether perceived effort in accommodation by the FC speaker affected listeners' evaluations of him and how they felt talking to him, one-way analyses of variance were computed from the questionnaire data. Very few of the 5s' ratings yielded significant trends, but those that did can be found in Table 1. It can be seen from the mean ratings that a speaker's perceived considerateness and effort in bridging the cultural gap are a function of his perceived effort in accommodation. Table 1 also shows that 5s consider the mixed 183

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French and English situation to be the most difficult decoding and encoding condition. As expected, 5s in the four conditions did not differ in their selfrated English language skills, nor as reported earlier, in their French skills. Fourteen different categories of speech accommodation were identified from the ECs' tape-recorded messages and these appear together with their frequencies of occurrence under the four conditions in Table 2. From this table, it can be seen that various amounts of speaking the two languages did in fact occur
TABLE 1. Mean ratings of Ss and their F values on four scales Rating scales I N = 80 Stimulus conditions MixFluent French English mix
(n = 20) (n = 20) (n = 20)

Nonfluent English
(n = 20)

F values (df = 3, 76)

Ease in reproducing drawing Effort in bridging cultural

gap made by FC speaker FCs' considerateness

5-93 1.30 1.67 2.16

6.20 1.70

2.85
2.15 2.00

4.3
3.65 2.90

13.04** 9.71** 3-22* 4.23*

ECs' relaxation when giving description to FC

i-95 3.65

1.80

3.65

The higher the mean ratings the more ease, effort, considerateness and relaxation was felt by 5s. **p<o.oi *p<o.o5

in individual messages from speaking totally in French down to merely providing key lexical items in that language. Other important categories of accommodation were observed, including what shall be termed 'listener-oriented regrets'. This form of accommodation occurred where the EC speaker expressed apologies on tape to his supposed FC listener for the fact that his French skills were not adequate enough (at least for him) to present the description in that language. The 'mildest' form of accommodation observed (or rather realized) was the expressed intention on tape of slowing down one's speech rate for the listener. Indeed these categories, and probably others not found in this specific study, could be considered as occupying relative positions along a continuum of accommodation-nonaccommodation. Nevertheless, a category such as listeneroriented regrets may be difficult to assign exactly, since it may be that apologizing for inadequate proficiency in the code of another ethnic group to a member of that group may be more of a concession emotionally, than actually attempting to adopt the other's language. Nonaccommodation was, of course, described as speaking totally in English without any expressed regrets on tape to the listener for doing so. Regrets at not having spoken French which appeared however on the questionnaire - 'experimenter-oriented regrets'- were considered within the 184

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nonaccommodation classification since they were not directed towards the recipient himself. Thus it was possible to classify the amount of accommodation in the four stimulus conditions by means of a 2 x 4 frequency matrix. These data appear in Table 3 and it can be seen that there is a greater likelihood of a speaker from one ethnolinguistic group accommodating to the speech patterns of a listener from
TABLE 2. Categories of ECs' messages and their frequency of occurrence under the four stimulus conditions Categories of ECs' messages Stimulus conditions Mix]Frer Nonfluent Fluent mix English English
8
i i

:. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

Totally in French >5O% in French 50-50% approx. in French-English 50% in French and expressed intentions of slowing speech rate 25-50% in French Salutation and benediction in French Key isolated lexical items in French Listener-oriented regrets in French Salutation in French and listeneroriented regrets in English Listener-oriented regrets and expressed intentions of slowing speech rate and experimenter-oriented regrets Listener-oriented regrets and expressed intentions of slowing speech rate Listener-oriented regrets and experimenter-oriented regrets Listener-oriented regrets Expressed intentions of slowing speech
rate

4
I I

3
0 i 0 i 0

o 6
i 2 O O O

o o

o o
i i i

o
I 0

o o 1 0 0 0 o o
O

o 0 0 1 1
1

1 0 2 1 1
1

o o
1

15. Experimenter-oriented regrets 16. Totally in English with no expressed regrets and no other concessions

2 4 2

3 7

0 15

another, provided that the latter had previously accommodated to him (X2 = 12.81, df = 3; p<o.oi). However, the extent of perceived effort in accommodation afforded the speakers previously does not seem to affect whether a speaker will accommodate or not, but it does seem to affect the type of accommodation he makes. From Table 4 it would seem that the greater perceived effort in accommodation a speaker previously received from his listener, the more likely it will be that he willfully (rather than 'partially') accommodate back to him (X2 = 8.13, df = 2; p<o.o2). Unfortunately, the open-ended questionnaire items yielded very little valuable 185

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TABLE 3. Number of Ss accommodatingjnonaccommodating as a function of the stimulus conditions

Nature of ECs' messages Nonfluent English Accommodating messages Nonaccommodating messages 14 6* Stimulus conditions Fluent . MixEnglish mix 15 5** 13 7

French 5 15

2/6 Ss gave experimenter-oriented regrets. * * 3/5 5s gave experimenter-oriented regrets.

information except for certain reactions from Ss in the Fluent English stimulus condition. 5s here, who did not accommodate at all together with those that did but by means other than the use of French, tended to justify their English language maintenance by reference to the fact that they considered their FC speaker's command of English to be far superior to their own French language skills.
TABLE

4. Type of accommodation by ECs as a function of the 3 accommodating FC stimulus conditions

Stimulus conditions Nonfluent Fluent MixEnglish English mix 8 4 1 12

Nature of ECs' accommodated messages Fully accommodated messages (i.e. spoken in French) 'Partially'accommodated messages

11

DISCUSSION

All three hypotheses were to a large extent confirmed. The data suggest that a speaker will be perceived more favorably the more effort he puts into accommodating with his listeners. For instance, accommodating FC speakers were perceived to be more considerate, and more prepared to bridge the cultural gap than a nonaccommodating FC speaker. It is interesting to note that EC listeners did not find the FC speaker any more friendly, likeable or less narrowminded when he accommodated than when he did not. Speculatively speaking, the fact that no evaluative trends emerged with these traits might indicate that EC students could, particularly in the light of the current sociopolitical climate in Quebec, feel that an FC is fully justified in preferring to use his own language in a choice situation. The stereotype scales also did not differentiate between the stimulus conditions. It is possible that these students were too sophisticated to use the scales in any sense naively particularly when the target person was known to be 186

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another student. Moreover, it is possible that this sample of 5s, which was composed of volunteers thinking the study was concerned with intergroup effectiveness, was biased not only in favour of potential accommodators but also in favour of sympathizers of FC language maintenance. Nevertheless, the results of this study and that of Dabbs (1969), do support the notion subscribed in the model earlier that accommodating individuals induce their recipients to evaluate them more favorably, and that this phenomena can be viewed as a reflection of an individual's desire for social approval. This finding complements that of Feldman (1968) who found that certain cultural groups are more favorably disposed towards assisting foreigners who accommodate to their language than those who do not. Accommodation through language by a FC speaker towards EC listeners seems from the results to be reciprocated by the latter group when given the opportunity to return a communication. Listeners who have not perceived accommodation by their speaker will not be so disposed to accommodate when the roles become reversed. Support was also found for the third and last hypothesis in that the more effort that is perceived in accommodation from one individual the more effort in accommodation that will be returned from the other, as more 5s were prepared to reply totally in French in the non-fluent English stimulus condition than any other. It is also possible that more 5s were prepared to fully accommodate in this condition since their FC speaker's 'poor' English may have reduced social embarrassment at airing their own 'poor' French. It has been proposed that speech accommodation may occur out of a desire for social integration between speakers. From these results, it can be suggested that in somewhat neutral situations, the perception of accommodation from one speaker may be a salient cue as to whether integration and a strong desire for.social approval should be features of the interaction for the other. It has already been suggested that the sample may have been biased in terms of inadvertently selecting potential accommodators. Nevertheless, even if this were the case, nonaccommodation by a bilingual member of one ethnic group can still be an important cue for maintaining the language of one's own group despite any predispositions towards accommodation. It was expected (see Table 1) that EC 5s would have most difficulty decoding the French-content message, yet 5s appeared to experience most difficulty when the languages were alternately mixed. Indeed, 5s were also less relaxed in this condition and it produced the greatest amount of mixing of the languages by the EC 5s (9 cases) of any stimulus condition. It would seem that encoding and decoding messages where languages are alternatively mixed provides the individual with a certain amount of cognitive overloading, perhaps in the form of having to make unexpected linguistic switches (McNamara & Kushnir 1971). Thus, it can be suggested that some reduction of dissimilarities between two ethnic groups on certain linguistic levels (cf. Triandis, i960) may indeed evoke positive attitudes 187

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between them, yet this may be achieved at the expense of communicational efficiency in certain situations. Some studies have shown (Ervin 1964; Botha 1970) that language switching involves the speaker in cultural value shifts towards the group whose language he is adopting. Nevertheless, 5s' rating as to how attached they thought the speaker was to FC values suggests, by the fact that no significant trend emerged, that language shifts do not inevitably alter the perceived ethnicity of a member of one ethnic group by members of another. What would be predicted had the stimulus accommodator been an EC bilingual and the 5s been FC bilinguals? The general accommodation model would indeed predict, and it would be expected, that FC 5s would evaluate an EC more favorably the more effort he puts into accommodating to them in terms of their language. However, the present political scene which cultivates French language maintenance is such that FC 5s found in this situation may be more reticent in reciprocating accommodation than the EC 5s had been found to be. d'Anglejan & Tucker (in press) have shown that students tend to be more loyal to their linguistic heritage than workers, so it could be hypothesized that bilingual workers would be much less reticent in reciprocating accommodation by means of language than their student counterparts. Thus, although the accommodation model would seem a viable startingpoint for studying FC to EC accommodation, maybe theoretical modifications would have to be made to account for EC to FC accommodations. Perhaps one of the modifications in the theory should allow for a historical perspective of intergroup accommodation in the light of current sociopolitical trends. Implicit in the theory is the assumption that accommodation is one of the primary factors in interpersonal communication; in some cultures, it may be of secondary importance. For instance, Hymes (pers. comm.) has provided just such an example by means of a Westerner accommodating to a Tanzanian official in Swahili. According to the model, such an initial linguistic strategy should bring the accommodator glory in the eyes of the official. However, such accommodation signifies to the official that the Westerner considers him not capable of speaking English - an insult. In Tanzanian officialdom, accommodation to Swahili would be a compliment from a Westerner only in a definite sequence. This sequence would be for the Westerner to use English first, thereby allowing the official to demonstrate his knowledge of English, and then to proceed in Swahili. Nevertheless, it is possible that the model advocated may still be viable in this context to explain the secondary accommodation. In some cultures, accommodation to values other than the accommodatee's native language may take priority. Certainly, it is clear that many more cultures need to be studied with the goal being that of formulating an adequate general theory, of interpersonal accommodation which may eventually lead to a more global sociolinguistic theory of speech diversity. 188

INTERPERSONAL ACCOMMODATION THROUGH LANGUAGE

But how do the results of this study relate to social reality in Quebec? Obviously, future research on accommodation needs to concentrate on face-to-face interactions with naive representatives from both cultural groups. Indeed, equally if not more useful information could be collected in a less structured intergroup situation in the community through the collection of observational data. Nevertheless, the results could suggest several parallels to everyday inter actions. It can be suggested that if two balanced bilinguals from the French and English communities in Quebec interact, accommodation by one's use of his second language may be reciprocated by the other. However, beyond this first demonstration of their mutual willingness to accommodate, it may be deleterious for reasons of communicational efficiency for them to continue with such patterns of accommodation. As Homans (1961) has stated, 'the profits from exchange decrease with the number of exchanges'. It could be that the interactants would agree to adopt the language of the initial accommodator as somewhat of a reward for his being first to reveal his willingness to adjust to the other. Simmel (1950) took the view that the first kindness of a person can never be fully repaid because it alone was a spontaneous gesture of goodwill, whereas any future favour can be attributed to the obligation to reciprocate. However, the present discussion would extend this view such that there may be considerable value for the individual who initiates bilingual accommodation since it is likely that this person will have earned the right for the interaction to proceed in his native tongue beyond their first exchange of second languages. The situation becomes more complex with imbalanced bilinguals, nevertheless certain clues can be provided from the present investigation. In the event of imbalanced bilinguals from these two ethnolinguistic groups interacting, a conversational feature of their intercourse could be the use of an alternating mixture of languages by both participants. On the other hand, should a balanced bilingual from the one group interact with an wwbalanced bilingual from another, the latter may still attract the former's approval simply by expressing his regret for not being able to fully accommodate by means of his second language to the same extent as the other person. The interaction could then continue comfortably in the second language of the balanced bilingual since both speakers have accommodated to each other but on distinctly different linguistic levels. Language accommodation then has been seen to be more than just wholly an all-or-none process - at least in this experimental situation. Some EC 5s in the sample were prepared to alternately mix the two languages, thereby shifting the emphasis from one code towards another (a phenomenon akin to the modifications apparent in response matching). Indeed reciprocal accommodation can function to lessen both speakers' losses in ethnic identity since each have smaller distances between them in which to accommodate. Furthermore, accommodation other than language switches was seen to be in operation such as verbally-expressed regrets at not being able to master the other's language.

LANGUAGE IN SOCIETY

A study by Taylor & Simard (1972) conducted in Quebec has shown that communication can be effective and positive attitudes engendered to the same extent in mixed-ethnic and same-ethnic dyads. The present study would suggest that reciprocal accommodation could be a strategy employed which could enhance these positive attitudes between members of conflicting groups, thus' helping to alleviate intergroup tensions further. Worthy of much more intensive study is of course the different types of accommodation (displayed in Table 2) that bilinguals emit in an interpersonal situation. But what factors are operative which make one individual accommodate in a particular manner while another accommodates by the use of quite a different linguistic strategy? Are the strategies meaningfully related to individual differences in personality or cognitive style? Nothing thus far has been said about optimal levels of accommodation. Surely in some social situations too much accommodation could be detrimental to the sender in that the act may be interpreted by the receiver as patronizing or over-ingratiating. Thus, it would seem important to determine in different contexts what constitutes an optimally effective accommodative act. Moreover, perhaps there are individual differences in terms of what people consider these optimal levels to be in any given situation. This could explain the different types of accommodation found in this study. Therefore, accommodation through language in a bilingual society can be seen to be an extremely complex process but one which appears to share many similarities with speech accommodation among members of the same ethnolinguistic group. Future research will enable us to determine not only whether the model advocated for accommodation is adequate in other cultural contexts and what theoretical modifications will need to be made, but also whether it really is tenacious enough to explain both within- and between-code accommodations.

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