Beliefs regarding accommodation of dialects

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to investigate non-linguists' ideas about dialect accommodation. That is to say, the research questions concern people's beliefs about whether they accommodate their dialects to their interlocutors. In addition, one research question concerns people's suggestions as to why they adjust their speech and if differences between native and foreign languages can be found.   The investigation was carried out as an informant survey and a total of 26 participants, between the ages 20 and 30, answered the questions. The data were analysed and discussed from a sociolinguistic and a sociopsychological perspective, with the theory CAT as a foundation for the interpretations.   The results show that people believed they change their speech depending on conversation partner. This was thought of as subconscious behaviour and was mainly reflected upon afterwards. Furthermore, comments from the questionnaire concern changes in speech when talking to friends, when the interlocutor's dialect is distinct and when the informants visit a different geographical area. In addition, the informants have ideas about efficient communication when it comes to comprehensibility between the conversation partners' vocabularies as well as being on the same communicative level.   The results from a native language accommodation situation and a foreign language accommodation situation showed similar ideas. That is to say, people's perceptions about accommodation did not differ much depending on what language they used.