Contexts of Accommodation: Developments in Applied Sociolinguistics

The theory of accommodation is concerned with motivations underlying and consequences arising from ways in which we adapt our language and communication patterns toward others. Since accommodation theory’s emergence in the early l970s, it has attracted empirical attention across many disciplines and has been elaborated and expanded many times. In Contexts of Accommodation, accommodation theory is presented as a basis for sociolinguistic explanation, and it is the applied perspective that predominates this edited collection. The book seeks to demonstrate how the core concepts and relationships invoked by accommodation theory are available for addressing altogether pragmatic concerns. Accommodative processes can, for example, facilitate or impede language learners’ proficiency in a second language as well as immigrants’ acceptance into certain host communities; affect audience ratings and thereby the life of a television program; affect reaction to defendants in court and hence the nature of the judicial outcome; and be an enabling or detrimental force in allowing handicapped people to fulfill their communicative potential.