This study examines Flemish teenagers’ perceptions and evaluations of linguistic accommodation in instant messaging: people adapting their language use to (that of) their interlocutor. We conducted a survey among 254 pupils in Belgian secondary education, and compare the results to teenagers’ online writing practices in a reference corpus. Our findings yield insight in the indexicality of accommodation, with (more) mirroring evoking (more) positive evaluations of the relationship between interlocutors. As for self-reported mirroring, the socio-demographic variable of education stands out: while the participants report a frequent online contact with people who differ from them regarding age, gender, or educational track, they only report to accommodate in the first two situations. Furthermore, they perform quite poorly at recognizing accommodative adjustments made by their peers, especially for mixed-education interactions. Finally, while teenagers appear to hold largely the same opinions on accommodation, the analyses reveal some socio-demographic variation.
AdamsA.MilesJ.DunbarN. E.GilesH. (2018). Communication accommodation in text messages: Exploring liking, power, and sex as predictors of textisms. Journal of Social Psychology, 158(4), 474–490. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.2017.1421895
2.
AndroutsopoulosJ. (2005). Research on youth language. In AmmonU.DittmarN.MattheierK. J.TrudgillP. (Eds.), Sociolinguistics: An international handbook of the science of language and society (Vol. 2, pp. 1496–1505). Mouton de Gruyter.
3.
BurgoonJ.DunbarN. E.GilesH. (2017). Interaction coordination and adaptation. In VinciarelliA.PanticM.Magnenat-ThalmannN.BurgoonJ. (Eds.), Social signal processing (pp. 78–96). Cambridge University Press.
4.
ChartrandT. L.BarghJ. A. (1999). The chameleon effect: The perception-behavior link and social interaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76(6), 893–910. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.76.6.893
5.
De DeckerB. (2014). De chattaal van Vlaamse tieners: Een taalgeografische analyse van Vlaamse (sub)standaardiseringsprocessen tegen de achtergrond van de internationale chatcultuur [Flemish teenagers’ chatspeak: A linguistic-geographic analysis of Flemish (sub)standardization processes against the background of international chat culture]. Doctoral Dissertation: University of Antwerp.
6.
De DeckerB.VandekerckhoveR. (2017). Global features of online communication in local Flemish: Social and medium-related determinants. Folia Linguistica, 51(1), 253–281. https://doi.org/10.1515/flin-2017-0007
7.
DoyleG.YurovskyD.FrankM. C. (2016). A robust framework for estimating linguistic alignment in social media conversations. In BourdeauJ.HendlerJ.NkambouR.HorrocksI.RhaoB. Y. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 25th international conference on world wide web (pp. 637–648). ACM.
8.
DragojevicM.GasiorekJ.GilesH. (2016). Accommodative strategies as core of the theory. In GilesH. (Ed.), Communication accommodation theory. Negotiating personal and social identities across contexts (pp. 36–59). Cambridge University Press.
9.
EckertP. (1997). Age as a sociolinguistic variable. In CoulmasF. (Ed.), The handbook of sociolinguistics (pp. 151–167). Blackwell.
10.
Flemish Ministry of Education and Training (2017). Statistisch jaarboek van het Vlaams onderwijs. Schooljaar 2015-2016. Department of Education and Training.
11.
FortmanJ. (2003). Adolescent language and communication from an intergroup perspective. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 22(1), 104–111. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X02250061
12.
FreyT. K.LaneD. R. (2021). CAT In the classroom: A multilevel analysis of students’ experiences with instructor nonaccommodation. Communication Education, 70(3), 223–246. https://doi.org/10.1080/03634523.2021.1903521
13.
GasiorekJ.GilesH. (2012). Effects of inferred motive on evaluations of nonaccommodative communication. Human Communication Research, 38(3), 309–331. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.2012.01426.x
14.
GilesH.GasiorekJ. (2011). Intergenerational communication practices. In SchaieK. W.WillisS. (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of aging (7th., pp. 233–247). Elsevier.
15.
HilteL. (2019). The social in social media writing: The impact of age, gender and social class indicators on adolescents’ informal online writing practices. Doctoral Dissertation: University of Antwerp.
16.
HilteL.DaelemansW.VandekerckhoveR. (2021b). Communicating across educational boundaries: Accommodation patterns in adolescents’ online interactions. Applied Linguistics Review, 1–29. https://doi.org/10.1515/applirev-2020-0140
17.
HilteL.DaelemansW.VandekerckhoveR. (2021a). Interlocutors’ age impacts teenagers’ online writing style: Accommodation in intra- and intergenerational online conversations. Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, 4, https://doi.org/10.3389/frai.2021.738278
18.
HilteL.VandekerckhoveR.DaelemansW. (2019). Adolescents’ perceptions of social media writing: Has non-standard become the new standard?European Journal of Applied Linguistics, 7(2), 189–224. https://doi.org/10.1515/eujal-2019-0005
19.
HilteL.VandekerckhoveR.DaelemansW. (2020b). Linguistic accommodation in teenagers’ social media writing: Convergence patterns in mixed-gender conversations. Journal of Quantitative Linguistics, 29(2), 241��268. https://doi.org/10.1080/09296174.2020.1807853
20.
HilteL.VandekerckhoveR.DaelemansW. (2020a). Modeling adolescents’ online writing practices: The sociolectometry of non-standard writing on social media. Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik, 87(2), 173–201. https://doi.org/10.25162/zdl-2020-0007
21.
IrelandM. E.SlatcherR. B.EastwickP. W.ScissorsL. E.FinkelE. J.PennebakerJ. W. (2011). Language style matching predicts relationship initiation and stability. Psychological Science, 22(1), 39–44. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610392928
22.
JonesS.CotterillR.DewdneyN.MuirK.JoinsonA. (2014). Finding Zelig in text: A measure for normalising linguistic accommodation. In TsujiiJ.HajicJ. (Eds.), Proceedings of COLING 2014, the 25th international conference on computational linguistics: Technical papers (pp. 455–466). ACL.
23.
KrollT.BraunL.-M.StieglitzS. (2018). Accommodated emoji usage: Influence of hierarchy on the adaption of pictogram usage in instant messaging. In Proceedings of the Australasian Conference on Information Systems 2018 (pp. 1–11). UTS ePRESS.
24.
MuirK.JoinsonA.CotterillR.DewdneyN. (2016). Characterizing the linguistic chameleon: Personal and social correlates of linguistic style accommodation. Human Communication Research, 42(3), 462–484. https://doi.org/10.1111/hcre.12083
25.
MuirK.JoinsonA.CotterillR.DewdneyN. (2017). Linguistic style accommodation shapes impression formation and rapport in computer-mediated communication. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 36(5), 525–548. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X17701327
26.
PalomaresN. A.GilesH.SolizJ.GalloisC. (2016). Intergroup accommodation, social categories, and identities. In GilesH. (Ed.), Communication accommodation theory. Negotiating personal relationships and social identities across contexts (pp. 123–151). Cambridge University Press.
27.
R Core Team (2022). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing. https://www.R-project.org/.
28.
RiordanM. A.KreuzR. J.OlneyA. M. (2014). Alignment is a function of conversational dynamics. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 33(5), 465–481. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X13512306
29.
RiordanM. A.MarkmanK. M.StewartC. O. (2013). Communication accommodation in instant messaging: An examination of temporal convergence. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 32(1), 84–95. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X12462695
30.
ScissorsL. E.GillA. J.GeraghtyK.GergleD. (2009). In CMC we trust: The role of similarity. In OlsenD. R. (Ed.), Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 527–536). ACM.
31.
ScissorsL. E.GillA. J.GergleD. (2008). Linguistic mimicry and trust in text-based CMC. In BegoleB.McDonaldD. W. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2008 ACM conference on computer supported cooperative work (pp. 277–280). ACM.
32.
VerheijenL. (2018). Orthographic principles in computer-mediated communication: The SUPER-functions of textisms and their interaction with age and medium. Written Language & Literacy, 21(1), 111–145. https://doi.org/10.1075/wll.00012.ver
33.
WilliamsA.GarrettP. (2012). Teenagers’ perceptions of communication and ‘good communication’ with peers, young adults, and older adults. Language Awareness, 21(3), 267–278. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658416.2011.604422
34.
WilliamsA.NussbaumJ. F. (2001). Intergenerational communication across the life span. Lawrence Erlbaum.
XuY.ReitterD. (2015). An evaluation and comparison of linguistic alignment measures. In O’DonnellT.van SchijndelM. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 6th workshop on cognitive modeling and computational linguistics (pp. 58–67). ACL.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
