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Many recent studies have recognized the ubiquity of multilingualism in a globalizing world (see e.g. Campbell-Kibler, Walker, Elward and Carmichael 2014). The increased mobility and migration of people of different nationalities and their languages across the last 30 to 50 years, has contributed to this. It is therefore not surprising to find that all around us individuals have different linguistic repertoires as speakers of different languages, or more interestingly for this study, of different mutually intelligible varieties of the same language. Regular communication and integration between such individuals with different repertoires, brings about language contact and mostly results in some transferal of linguistic features, which consequently affects linguistic behavior. In studying specific instances of language variation and change, researchers pay much attention to linguistic processes that take place in language contact situations, through which hearing the speech of another speaker influences one’s own speech production (Campbell-Kibler et al. 2014).

This project will reflect only on a restricted set of linguistic processes that can occur in language contact, namely speech accommodation, dialect shift, and dialect mixing. Its main interest is in those changes that occur as a result of contact between different dialectal varieties, thus it looks at language contact through which dialectal features are likely to be transferred from one group to another, so that new varieties are probably being formed. The socially determined processes which bring about language change overlap to a large extent. Three significant linguistic processes of language change have been identified here.

3.5.1 Speech accommodation

Speech accommodation coined by the social psychologist Giles (Auer and Hinskens 2005:357) is defined as a linguistic act by which an individual temporarily and selectively shifts their speech patterns in relation to that of their interlocutors during cross dialectal communicative

be towards (convergent) or away (divergent) from that of the interlocutors (Campbell-Kibler et al. 2014:21). Bigham (2008:77) writes that the direction and degree to which such a temporal shift is performed depends on one of either two models, which he identifies as the attitudinal model, and the frequency of interaction model. As specified by the attitudinal model, the more positive the individual’s views of the interlocutor and his/her dialectal variety, the more inclined he/she will be to accommodate in adjusting his/her own speech to fit the speech of the interlocutor more closely. The frequency of interaction model and additionally the core of the accommodation theory alternatively suggest that the more speakers of different dialectal varieties integrate and communicate, the more likely it is for such accommodation to take place. Trudgill (1986) further differentiates between short-term and long-term accommodation, defining short-term accommodation as a temporary shift in speech and long-term accommodation as a more permanent kind of shift. According to him, the semi-permanent shift during long-term accommodation may over time become fixed and result in dialect shift, denoting speech accommodation as an underlying force of dialect shift. The focal point of this linguistic process is however, that the shift is selective, temporal and in accordance to the speech patterns projected by the interlocutor during an extended communicative situation. An illustrative example of a case study investigating the short-term accommodation by a travel agency assistant of the dialectal variety spoken by her customers is given in section 3.6.2 below.

3.5.2 Dialect shift

Dialect shift, as already suggested above, involves the permanent shift of an individual’s dialectal variety towards a target dialectal variety. The individual completely loses his/her first dialectal variety by adopting another (Prince 1988:307).

Dialect shift and speech accommodation to some extent appear related. However, theoretically there are no necessary relations between the two processes. Within the theoretical view, the two processes are evaluated as separate. Speech accommodation are considered, a temporary and selective shift that occurs during a communicative situation between individuals with different dialects, whereas dialect shift is a complete and permanent shift that can occur even without having to be in a communicative situation with someone of the target dialectal variety (Prince 1988:307). With dialect shift, an individual may thus adopt the target dialectal variety through learning how to produce it from a book or other forms of media. A case study of an individual’s

gradual shift from the Philadelphia English dialect towards the English dialect spoken in Boston will be discussed, in section 3.6.2, as illustrative example of this linguistic process.

3.5.3 Dialect mixing

Dialect contact does not at all times mean the loss of language diversity, by which individuals drop their dialectal varieties to adopt a target dialect spoken by another. In actuality, new dialectal varieties3 _{are increasingly being developed as a result of dialect contact (Law, website}

printed page). A linguistic process that acts as driving force for such developments is what linguists refer to as dialect mixing (Auer, Hinskens and Kerswill 2005; Trudgill 1986; Chambers, Trudgill and Schilling-Estes 2004). Dialect mixing is thus, the linguistic process through which individuals from different dialectal varieties within a new community mix and simplify their speech in such a way that linguistic features from their different dialectal varieties coexist in a new, compromised dialectal variety (Kerswill and Trudgill 2005:198-199). Section 3.6.3 gives an elaborative example of a case study investigating the social grounds and outcomes of this dialect mixing in the Baggara dialect of Kordofanian in Sudan.

3.5.4 Dialect levelling

A linguistic process during dialect contact that is simultaneously seen as driving force for the development of new dialectal varieties and loss of existing varieties is, dialect levelling. Dialect levelling is the linguistic process through which individuals who speak different dialectal varieties assimilate their speech in such a way that former differences between their individual dialects disappear and distinct features of a new dialectal variety emerge among them (William and Kerswill 1999:149).

Dialect levelling is often considered to be partially synonymous to dialect mixing, however they are two distinct processes. The focal point is that dialect leveling does not necessarily take place between two dialects. It may occur between two dialectal varieties or between a dialect and a standard variety. Contrastingly, dialect mixing occurs strictly between dialectal varieties. Dialect mixing also results in the coexistence of different dialectal features within a new speech community with indifference to preference, while dialect leveling prefers eliminating marginal features selecting only the socially strong features of both dialects to coincide in the new dialect.

Milroy (2002:7) further distinguishes between these two processes, stating that dialect mixing involves the creation of linguistic variety due to language contact, whereas dialect leveling also involves the eradication of them.An illustrative example of a case study investigating dialect levelling between displaced Scottish and indigenous English inhabitants in a Scottish-English community will be given in 3.6.4.