Shedding Light on Language Accommodation of Native Dutch Lecturers in Response to Non-Native Student Linguistic Features.
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2025-07-13
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en
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This study examined conditions that lead to the divergence in linguistic styles between two interlocutors. In a between-subjects experiment, 68 native Dutch listeners evaluated staged post-lecture Dutch fragments produced by a non-natively speaking student. The recordings included non-native linguistic features: slight vs. strong foreign accent, grammar mistakes, code-switching (English words), and slow speech rate. Listeners evaluated the likelihood, politeness, and efficiency of a native Dutch lecturer replying to a non-native Dutch-speaking student in English, along with the student’s comprehensibility, nationality and accent strength. Results demonstrated that the linguistic features did not reduce comprehensibility or increase the likelihood of switching to English. Furthermore, the reply of a lecturer in English was not considered polite but efficient, especially in the code-switching condition. Future studies should utilise more grammar mistakes, code-switches and a stronger foreign accent to test the effect of reduced comprehensibility on the probability of linguistic accommodation, its politeness and efficiency.
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