My competence, your competence, and the language we use: the moderating effect of interlocutor language constraint in bilingual accommodation

Abstract

This paper examines the interactive effects of motives and contextual constraints predicting linguistic convergence with Finnish speakers among a small group of Swedish-speaking Finns. The data were collected among university students in Helsinki (N = 82). A moderated mediation analysis demonstrated the primacy of speakers' competence motive for linguistic convergence to Finnish. However, this relationship was moderated by interlocutors' competence in Swedish (i.e. interlocutor language constraint): speakers' competence motive was a weaker predictor of convergence to Finnish when their interlocutors' competence was low. The theoretical implications of these findings for accommodation in bilingual contexts are discussed.

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