I started this chapter by presenting a general overview of the concept of DL and an exploration of different social and linguistic factors that can contribute to this phenomenon. I gave a review of the situations that can be described by an increased diffusion of linguistic forms as an outcome of people mobility. I then provided an overview of a number of processes that are identified in the literature on language variation and change to contribute to DL, such as supralocalisation, levelling, convergence, and feeling of self-identity. In conclusion, it is clear that the majority of sociolinguistic studies on DL in Arabic dialects identified factors similar to those highlighted worldwide. In the Iraqi context, social aspects leading to DL, such as spatial mobility and diffusion of linguistic forms did not receive as much attention as the typological mapping of IA dialects, which tend to be the only model adopted in previous sociolinguistic studies on these dialects. Despite the fact that Iraq has witnessed significant
social changes since the 1980s, the sociolinguistic situation in Iraq is still poorly understood. Understanding the importance of the social meaning of linguistic changes in a situation to DL could be crucial. No previous study demonstrated the degree to which the spread of linguistic features are based on social networks combining people of different regions or lifestyles in Iraq, a problem that may arise because each region comprises different sub-dialects that people evaluate being more prestigious, which do not have clearly defined as motivations for the acquisition of new dialect forms. Therefore, I aim through this study to use these factors in a comprehensive view of DL in HIA, combining a qualitative study of the social value of linguistic features and language attitudes with a quantitative study of linguistic data derived from spontaneous informal speech. The present study contributes to, and different from the previous literature in that: 1- it will highlight the effect of people’s mobility on their language behaviour, and 2- a special attention will be given to particular kinds of social considerations that underlie people’s language choices. A brief description of the phonology of HIA will also contribute to the dialect mapping of IA. By so doing, the present study will show how HIA is distinguished from other IA dialects, and try to put it somewhere in this mapping.
Chapter Three: Communication Accommodation Theory and Dialect
Contact
3.1 Introduction
In this chapter, I give an account to the main variationist studies conducted within the Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT) and dialect contact. Firstly in § 3.1, I present a sketch to the CAT as a theory adopted in variationist studies. Secondly in § 3.2, I provide an overview of the main studies conducted within the dialect contact framework. Thirdly in § 3.3, I discuss the studies that sociolinguists employed following the CAT theory. In § 3.4 I summarise the whole chapter.
Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT) investigates ‘motivation, communication strategies, and reactions to the behaviour of others that characterise communication across all kinds of intergroup encounters’ (Gallois et al., 1995: 116). In line with this theory, which is adopted by Giles (1973) and his associates, accommodation results from individuals adapting to the speech of others by reducing the differences between varieties and creating new forms. In contrast, speakers might move away from the speech of others by using linguistic features not found in their native variety. In situational settings of short-term accommodation between speakers of different social dialects (Giles, 1973), or long-term accommodation between speakers of different regional varieties (Trudgill, 1986), it is more likely that speakers adopt each other’s behaviour, including language patterns, to attain specific goals (Giles, 1973: 90). Prince (1988: 307) views accommodation as a change in the linguistic output of a speaker resulting from the linguistic output of the interlocutor.
Three strategies of accommodation are recognised as used by speakers: convergence, divergence, and maintenance. With regard to communicative principles, it is predicted that convergence strategies are psychologically positively evaluated by receivers. On the other hand, divergence and maintenance trigger negative evaluations due to ‘dislike’ (Coupland and
Coupland, 1988: 7). Convergence is the strategy where speakers adapt to each other’s communicative behaviour, including linguistic settings, in order to reduce the differences with their interlocutor’s behaviour (Coupland and Giles, 1988). The motivation for a speaker’s convergence is to gain ‘social reward, represented by increase of attraction and approval’ (Boronti-Ricardo, 1985; Coupland, 2007). For example, Abd-el-Jawad (1987: 366) found that among the motivations of speakers’ adoption of other local prestigious features is to ‘share with those of other dominant groups, an act of integration and a desire for upward social mobility’. According to Giles and Smith (1979), Accommodation Theory is most closely concerned with how individuals modify their speech to gain social approval from other groups. The degree of convergence depends on the extent of one’s need to seek approval. This process is what Giles and Smith (1979: 47) term the ‘Similarity-Attraction Process’, which follows the notion that ‘the greater one’s need for approval, the greater will be one’s tendency to converge’.
The second strategy of accommodation is divergence. Speakers signal a psychological movement away from others within the same social interaction (Coupland, 2010). In contrast to convergence, divergence reflects individuals’ desire to distance themselves from another group and to index their own identity. Therefore, the engagement in this form of accommodation can be motivated by the desire to assert identity. It was found that divergence involves extensive use of new language features, which speakers perceive to be modern. For example, Labov (1962) reported that in Martha’s Vineyard, local inhabitants of the Vineyard resisted the values of the mainland and identified themselves as ‘Vineyarders’.
The third general possibility of accommodation is speech maintenance, which refers to continuing in one’s own style either away from parents’ speech, or as a deliberate reaction to it (Gallois et al., 1995). It is the strategy in which a person ‘persists in his or her original style, irrespective of the communication behaviour of the interlocutor’ (Gallois et al., 1995: 127).
According to Coupland and Coupland (1988: 7), this strategy is able to indicate significant ‘psychologically dissociative interpersonal meanings’.
A distinction should be drawn between short-term and long-term accommodation (Trudgill, 1986: 3, 11). Short-term accommodation is a person’s adaptation to an interlocutor in a particular context and on a specific occasion. It takes place in various interactional situations, such as a discourse between a student and a teacher, between a worker and his boss, and a discourse, which takes place in public places and is typically motivated by social differences between parts of the contact situation, involving either single individuals or whole groups. An example of short-term accommodation is the case where, in inter-communal contexts, Christians in Baghdad, who use the qiltu dialect spoken by Christians in Baghdad (CB), accommodate to the speech of the gilit dialect of the spoken by Muslims in Baghdad (MB) by using it (Abu-Haidar, 1991). Likewise, Jews in Baghdad speak the qiltu dialect of the Jews in Baghdad ( JB) at home and with same-religion peers i.e. in-group contexts, but they speak the MB dialect when they communicate with Muslims i.e. out-group contexts (Abu-Haidar, 2006: 231). Short-term accommodation is considered a transitory adjustment above the basic level in response to a particular social circumstance (Chambers, 1992: 675), but in contrast to long-term accommodation, it does not function as evidence of Dialect Levelling (Trudgill, 1986).
On the other hand, long-term accommodation, which refers to a change in an individual’s speech habits, appears to be a sort of certain degree of dialect adjustment maintained by the individual in all situations in the contact domain (Chambers, 1992: 675). Auer and Hinskens (2005: 335-336) propose a hierarchically ordered set of stages of accommodation. The early stage is represented by face-to-face communication, characterised by the adoption of new features, and/or the loss of older ones. The second stage involves short-term accommodation, where accommodating speakers transfer their innovation from the direct interactional episode with the innovating speakers to habitual individual innovation. The third stage is diffusion,
where innovating speakers spread the features they acquire into their community with whom they have multiplex and dense networks. It is the third stage that brings about language change. Viewing this process in relation to the Social Network structure of speakers, Auer and Hinskens (2005: 353) claim that weak and strong SNs for linguistic accommodation are best tested in terms of internal migration. This stems from the fact that, while accommodating, migrants break down old networks and create new networks.