Dialect contact—contact that occurs between speakers of mutually intelligible language varieties— can give rise to linguistic change at the individual and community level, just as contact between mutually unintelligible languages can bring about wider language change (Trudgill 1986). How- ever, because dialect contact does not require a speaker to adjust his or her speech to facilitate comprehension, other social forces are at work that may influence how and why a speaker adapts or maintain their speech variety. The most accepted explanation for speakers’ short-term and long-term adaptations in dialect contact is Accommodation Theory, originally proposed by so- cial psychologist Howard Giles (1973). These long-term accommodations by speakers of different dialects—both regional and social varieties—are what can lead to some kind of systematic lan- guage change, such as the creation of contact varieties (koines), dialect mixing, or overall dialect shift.
A koine, or “new dialect” (Trudgill 1986), is a “stabilized contact variety which results from the mixing and subsequent leveling of features of varieties which are similar enough to be mutually intelligible, such as regional or social dialects...in the context of increased interaction among speakers of these varieties” (Siegel 2001:175). Examples of koine formation discussed include Fijian Hindi (Siegel 1988), Japanese dialect contact on Hawai‘i plantations (Hiramoto 2006), and Chicano Spanish in Los Angeles (Parodi 2004) among others. Siegel (2001) and Kerswill (1998) provide examples of how dialect accommodation influences the formation of a koine at different levels of linguistic form.
Although koineization is not always the outcome of long-term dialect contact, some type change is expected to occur, such as a shift to a more prestigious dialect just as language shift occurs. How- ever, in the absence of a local norm or standard variety, children and sometimes adults are shown to acquire a mixture of the two dialects due to accommodation (Trudgill 1986). Dialect mixing refers to “the coexistence of features” within a new community’s language variety, while dialect levelling refers to the “selection of forms found in the mix” (Kerswill and Trudgill 2005:197). Manfredi (2013) illustrates this nicely in his description of a Bedouin Arabic variety in Western Sudan that exhibits dialect mixture in some linguistic variables but is undergoing a synchonic change of dialect levelling in several variables of the local prestigious variety.
One aspect of dialect contact that is not often addressed is the maintenance of dialectal features in cases where dialect leveling or mixing might be expected. This has been addressed in the urban-rural social class divide by Milroy (1980) and others, showing strong correlation of lan- guage attitudes and group solidarity with the ability to maintain a less prestigious dialect. Dialect maintenance was also, unexpectedly, the findings in a Mexican and Puerto-Rican Spanish-speaking context in Chicago, with the conclusion that integration of social networks is necessary in addition to increased contact in order for dialect change to take place (Ghosh Johnson 2005). Marshall (2004) proposes that a sociolinguistic model for dialect maintenance cannot rely only on social network integration, but must include other social factors for consideration such as attitudes, age, sex, location (urban/rural), social class, and other important factors for a particular community. While Trudgill (2004; 2008) maintains that dialect mixture is inevitable in dialect contact situa- tions, he strongly opposes the idea that speaker identity and attitudes alone can account for dialect change, citing case studies of the formation of colonial Englishes. This is similar to the mechanistic view of language change that Labov (2001) offers, recognizing that identity often, but not always, correlate with dialect change. Identifying and describing linguistic changes motivated by inter- nal and external pressures is not straightforward and has been the focus of many sociolinguistic studies of language contact (see Thomason 2011; Anderson 2008). Regardless, language accom- modation that takes place in face-to-face interactions as a precursor to wider systematic change, so understanding how social and group identity can motivate language use is an important aspect of any language contact research.
4.2.1.1 Accommodation Theory
Accommodation is the process in which speakers adapt their speech and communicative behaviors in an interaction in order to enhance or diminish their relationship with the interlocutor. Accom- modation Theory was developed to help explain the reasons why speakers of mutually intelligible dialects change their speech in different situations when not motivated by issues with compre- hension (Giles 1973; Giles, Coupland, and Coupland 1991). Accommodation Theory, which has
now emerged as the field of study of Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT), has largely focused on the strategies of convergence and divergence that speakers use to decrease or in- crease social distance with another person, respectively (Soliz and Giles 2014; Gasiorek, Giles, and Soliz 2015). Motivations and outcomes of using these accommodation strategies include ex- pressing desire to be affiliated with a person or group, seeking approval, negotiating common goals, and affirming social identites (Harwood, Soliz, and Lin 2006). Other important social psy- chological theories that have been developed with accommodation theory as part of the backbone are Social Identity Theory (Tajfel 1974) and Ethnolinguistic Identity Theory (Giles and Johnson 1987), both of which identify language as a core aspect of one’s identity and a tool that people use to negotiate their position in society. Although this dissertation does not use CAT methodology for investigating the Miqie-Geipo relationship, these social psychological concepts are relevant in the discussion of ethnic group relations, as represented through language use.