ERIC Number: EJ1489069
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025-Dec
Pages: 28
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0039-8322
EISSN: EISSN-1545-7249
Available Date: 2025-07-18
Effects of Language Status and Interlocutor Familiarity on Linguistic Alignment in L1 and L2 Dialogues
Furong Wang1; Min Wang2; Julie Boland3
TESOL Quarterly: A Journal for Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages and of Standard English as a Second Dialect, v59 n4 p2206-2233 2025
Native speakers tend to mirror the phrases and structures of interlocutors, which is known as alignment. Alignment is likely the result of an automatic process that facilitates speakers' mutual understanding as well as a strategic process influenced by social affective factors, such as the level of familiarity between interlocutors. However, the extent to which second language (L2) learners exhibit these effects remains unclear. Additionally, there is limited knowledge about how L2 alignment behavior relates to L2 learners' interaction patterns in their mother tongue. This study aimed to address these gaps by comparing the alignment of bigrams (word pairs) and task-oriented structures between familiar and unfamiliar peers in map task dialogues. We tested three groups of speakers (i.e., Chinese native speakers, English native speakers, and Chinese-speaking learners of English). Both native speakers and L2 learners aligned with their interlocutors, but L2 learners exhibited greater bigram alignment and L1 speakers displayed greater alignment of task-oriented structures. Furthermore, L2 learners were more likely to reuse unfamiliar interlocutors' bigrams as compared with familiar interlocutors. Interlocutor familiarity did not modulate the alignment rate in either L1 English or L1 Chinese. We conclude that L2 alignment might be strategic to some extent, whereas native speakers' alignment may be highly automatic.
Descriptors: Native Speakers, Second Language Learning, English (Second Language), Chinese, Familiarity, Social Behavior
Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www-wiley-com.bibliotheek.ehb.be/en-us
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: 1School of Foreign Studies, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, P.R. China; 2School of International Studies, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, P.R. China; 3Department of Psychology, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

Peer reviewed
Direct link
