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Little chance for divergence: The role of interlocutor language constraint in online bilingual accommodation
Author(s) -
Vincze László,
Gasiorek Jessica,
Dragojevic Marko
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
international journal of applied linguistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.712
H-Index - 39
eISSN - 1473-4192
pISSN - 0802-6106
DOI - 10.1111/ijal.12164
Subject(s) - accommodation , psychology , mediation , cognition , competence (human resources) , social psychology , divergence (linguistics) , developmental psychology , linguistics , sociology , social science , neuroscience , philosophy
Drawing on communication accommodation theory, the present paper explored how affective (i.e. identity related) and cognitive (i.e. comprehension related) motives drive young Swedish‐speaking Finns to use Swedish in online communication when interacting with Finnish speakers. Questionnaire data were collected among Swedish‐speaking secondary school students ( N = 124). A Bayesian moderated mediation revealed that the use of Swedish was guided both by cognitive and affective motives. Furthermore, affective motives were stronger predictors of language behaviour in cases where participants did not perceive they were restricted by interlocutors' competence in Swedish. However, a similar effect was not detected for cognitive motives. Findings and their theoretical implications are discussed with respect to bilingual accommodation.