“Your Ship Was a Sheep?”: The Role of Phonetic Convergence in Interactions Between Mismatched Interlocutors – MacKenzie Gentz (Pennsylvania State University)

Event details

Phonetic convergence, a process in which interlocutors’ phonetic characteristics become more similar over time, plays a role in successful communication (Pardo, 2006). Yet, few studies have focused on phonetic convergence between interlocutors with differing language backgrounds—a more common situation given the world’s multilingual baseline (Samuel & Larazza, 2015). In this talk, MacKenzie Gentz presents evidence from two interactionist studies that demonstrate how interlocutors employ phonetic convergence and other strategies dynamically, depending on communicative demands. She revisits the theoretical underpinnings of phonetic convergence and proposes how to reframe them to support a multilingual baseline. Overall, the emerging evidence points toward phonetic convergence as one tool interlocutors can use as they adapt to the demands before them in situ.