Anecdotes about roommates who change their usual voice, vocabulary and even grammar structure when on the phone with their parents. Social media threads discussing whether it is normal to unconsciously mimic the dialect or accent of the person you are talking to. Blogs focused on professional development giving advice on how to drop local accents. We take it as given that people from different backgrounds sound a bit different, but there is a certain feeling of surprise when we suddenly hear someone we know speaking in a different way than usual. So why do these shifts happen?

Why study language in a social context?

The intersection of language and society is a complex and fascinating topic, as the way we speak is not just a reflection of our individual backgrounds, but also of the social and cultural context in which we find ourselves. This is why studying language is crucial for understanding who we are as social beings – and it is here that sociolinguistics comes into play.

Sociolinguistics, a subfield of linguistics, delves into how our use of language is shaped by society, social groups, and social situations. Language – both spoken and written – is part of a larger picture of society: we use it for sharing information and making friends, but also for defining national borders and making guesses at a person’s background.

To understand why and how there are so many ways of speaking the same language, sociolinguists compare its use by different social groups as well as conventions associated with particular contexts. From vocabulary and grammar to pronunciation, pitch, and even gestures and body language, we often adjust the way we speak to suit different people and situations to gain social approval, match our audience, or draw on stereotypes. Linguists call this ‘style-shifting’ and the reason we do it is, simply put, social: we change the way we talk, consciously or unconsciously, because we hope to be perceived in a certain way.

Style-shifting reason 1: Matching our audience

The first reason we style-shift is to try to sound more similar to the person we are talking to in order to gain social approval. This idea was introduced by Howard Giles and Peter Powesland (1975) as the ‘Communication accommodation theory’. It draws on social psychology and remains a popular theory for explaining why we might change not just our way of speaking but behaviour in general. Matching our style to our listener suggests similarity, solidarity, and openness, which can encourage the listener to see us in a positive light.  

When we are not sure what the person we are talking to sounds like, or we are addressing a larger heterogeneous audience, we might make an educated guess about the preferences of our target audience. The audience design theory was developed most notably by Allan Bell (1984) to explain why radio newsreaders would switch accents depending on the network they were airing on. Despite the recordings happening in the same studio, the radio broadcasters opted for a cleaner standard accent when talking for a prestigious national network than for a local community station. They made an educated estimate of the audience’s demographics and style-shifted accordingly.

Style-shifting reason 2: Drawing on associations and stereotypes

Sometimes we do not accommodate our speech to a specific hearer but instead work with stereotypes associated with particular ways of talking. Speaking a certain way can be part of our act or the persona we are trying to project. As explained by Penelope Eckert, Stanford Professor Emerita of Linguistics, style is a performative strategy that can be “more economical, more strategic, more believable, and more deniably intentional” than an outright assertion about who we are.

Mate choice and attractiveness might have biological evolutionary explanations, but gender and sexuality – including LGBTQ+ identities – can be “performed” through our style of speaking whenever we want to emphasise certain facets of our identities. For example, style-shifting plays a role in the heterosexual dating scene, where men and women shift their own pitch to communicate certain qualities, such as men speaking in a lower pitch to women they judge as potential mates. As male speakers tend to have deeper voices than female speakers, pitch can thus say something about our gender personae. Funnily, this can sometimes backfire: while women judge males with low-pitched voices to be more attractive, they are also deemed more likely to cheat on their partner!

What about other features? Are there ways of speaking that make you sound less intelligent? More approachable? Many studies document both negative and positive stereotypes associated with certain language styles. Take, for example, Received Pronunciation (RP), a.k.a. “BBC English” or “posh British English”. You can take a moment to listen to some RP speakers to get an idea of what it sounds like. What personality characteristics would you associate with the accent purely based on their voice?

For class-conscious Brits, Received Pronunciation is associated with an educated and wealthy upper class. Speaking this way will not make you part of the British elite, but it does make you sound more educated than if you spoke in accents associated with lower socioeconomical classes or regional accents.  Another example is ‘uptalk’ – the rising intonation at the end of a sentence even when it is not a question. Listen to a sample and think about how it makes you feel. Pleased? Neutral? Annoyed?

This speech feature is often associated with young, white speakers, especially women who fit the “valley girl” stereotype. In stark contrast to RP, uptalk is condemned as annoying, unprofessional, and a sign of nervousness or insecurity. The stereotypical speaker is thus not only young and female but also probably “ditzy” or “vapid”. Somewhat similarly, in Finland, an “s” sound that is fronted and “hissy” is falsely associated with Helsinki’s urbanity, female celebrities, and improper femininity of vapid teenage girls.

RP, the Valley Girl accent, and the fronted “s” sound are all ‘enregistered’ linguistic features, that is, associated with a certain group of people and, by extension, with their characteristics. Speaking as these groups do makes it seem like you, too, possess their traits, whether good or bad. The linguistic features signal, or ‘index’, non-linguistic personal traits of the speaker through cultural associations, such as RP being associated with sophistication.

In one study, Finns were asked to describe in their own words what different Finnish dialects sounded like, but the answers did not necessarily characterise particular sounds or word usage. Instead, dialects were associated with personality traits such as “serious”, “self-important”, “good-natured”. In other words, in the minds of the interviewees, dialects indexed a region, which in turn indexed stereotypes about the people from the region: but whereas word choice and grammar might actually correlate with personality (or the performed personality!), the link between personality and dialect – a marker of regional, ethnic or socioeconomic background – is yet to be confirmed.

Given these kinds of stereotypes of language varieties, it is not surprising that speakers tap into the power of switching accents. This is why people going to job interviews are often given the advice to drop their uptalk and style-shift to the standard educated variety. Adjusting the pitch of one’s voice may also be helpful: speakers with lower pitched voices are perceived as stronger, more competent or possessing leadership qualities. Of course, there is no reason why voice pitch would determine competence or vice versa, but the lower pitch is here, too, associated with maleness, which in turn links to the traditionally desirable leadership qualities, such as strength and decisiveness.

Stereotypes are unfortunately hard to get rid of, because they are omnipresent in society and transmitted to children at a young age. Parents, schools, and even children’s television, give examples of girls talking ‘femininely’ or portray good guys with standard accents and villains with non-standard accents. In one study, researchers played recordings to a test group of children in the US, and showed that children as young as nine and ten already believe speakers of Northern (Illinois) accent, closer to the typical General American accent, sound “smarter” and more “in charge” than do speakers with a Southern US accent – although the latter were reported to sound “nicer”.

Style-shifting reason 3: Fitting in a group

“You sound like you are from…” Fitting in is a common reason for people to switch accents or dialects between their workplace and their home – or between their current city and their childhood hometown. Just like insider jargon in a professional group or among friends, shifting to the local accent shows that we are “in the know”. Even outside of the local community, local speech patterns may have an advantage. Regional accents or foreign accents, that is, so-called non-standard accents, are frequently reported as “nicer” – recall the children’s perception of Southern US speakers mentioned above? Another example is how RP-like English, which is associated with London and southern UK, is not perceived as likeable in Northern England, Wales, or Scotland, where speakers prefer their local accents. While the prestigious standard may be appropriate in the workplace, elsewhere it may be seen as pompous, out-of-touch or otherwise disingenuous.

It should be noted that negative stereotypes are often created by outsiders, by people who do not use the style of speaking themselves. Within the community that actively uses the linguistic feature, it can mark solidarity and relatability. For the speakers who actually use the abovementioned uptalk, it is not so much a sign of insecurity or ditziness but rather intended to maintain solidarity and a way of checking that the listener understands and pays attention to the speaker. Speakers may also stick to their native language and accent to maintain their cultural ties. For example, a Punjabi speaker in the UK may be fluent in English yet stick not only to the Punjabi language but to a Punjabi English-accent to maintain their Indian ties.

It’s all about context

Sometimes we change our way of speaking not because of the people we are talking to but because of the setting, that is, who we are talking with and where. Most settings come with social norms of what is appropriate or expected behaviour. Breaking the rules may have social sanctions, especially in formal, professional, or institutional settings. It is therefore unsurprising if you talk to your boss or supervisor in a formal manner when you have a meeting to discuss your work performance, but in a more casual manner when you bump into each other on the street. In the former setting, you are speaking as an employee or subordinate, whereas outside of the work environment, the workplace hierarchy might not matter as much.

These kinds of social rules are learnt explicitly or by experience, and when performed daily, they can easily become automatic behaviour. Most of us can name some grammar, pronunciation, or vocabulary rules that guide how we are expected to speak. For example, our parents might have told us how we should address our elders. In many European languages, we are expected to use different alternatives for the you pronoun depending on how close we are to the person we are speaking to (for example, in Spanish this distinction is tu (informal) vs usted (formal)). Meanwhile, in East Asian languages, good manners can mean using a completely different grammar and vocabulary with people of higher status. Moreover, throughout our education and professional careers we are taught – explicitly or implicitly – to associate formal essays with standard grammar and a standard structure. In school, our “intelligence” is not judged (only) by our accent but by our ability to use academic vocabulary. These rules are very language and culture specific, having to do with the language(s) spoken in the environment as well as cultural norms associated with gender, social hierarchy, dominant institutions, and more.

Linguistics goes beyond grammar and vocabulary to uncover the mechanisms and motivations behind speech, offering a deeper understanding of human communication. As language users ourselves, language might seem intuitive to us, but systematic analysis – through questionnaires, surveys, and documentation of language and its users in action – shows that many of our gut-feeling associations and assumptions about style-shifting are anything but. In a sense, changing language styles is like changing clothes. We make an effort to dress according to an event we are attending because we make assumptions about people based on what they wear, and we know that we, in turn, will be judged by them. Given a certain audience, it thus makes sense that we not just walk the walk but also talk the talk that benefits us the most.

Next time you find yourself style-shifting, or see it in someone you know, apply what you now know about the field of sociolinguistics. By recognizing how we adapt our language to fit different social situations and work with different audiences, we can gain a deeper appreciation for the nuances of language and the way it shapes our perceptions and interactions with the world around us.

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