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Dissociation as a Form of Language Change

The purpose of this paper is to examine to what extent one can recognise dissociation in the speech of a population’s members as a significant and quantifiable factor in language change. In a way, dissociation is the opposite of the linguistic bonding which has been repeatedly ascertained for closely knit social networks.1 It is reactive in nature, i.e. it implies that there is a variety or set of varieties with features intuitively recognisable to others in contact with it, and that these other speakers develop strategies to distance themselves linguistically from the group(s) showing distinctive features. It is important to stress that dissociation is a dynamic process, i.e. it does not consist solely of the avoidance of some salient features of a particular variety. The notion of dissociation is diametrically opposed to accommodation, the approximation of individuals to the speech of their interlocutors. The latter is taken to be – and has been – a powerful force in dialect differentiation, as repeatedly pointed out by sociolinguists, above all by Peter Trudgill.2 Dissociation gains support for its ontological status by the existence of accommodation. In both instances one is dealing with an alteration in the speech of a community in contact with another; the issue which separates them is that of direction. If the alteration can move in one direction, i.e. towards the second community with accommodation, then it is fairly likely that it can go in the opposite direction, unless there is some objection in principle to the occurrence of such a development. There would not appear to be any predisposition towards unidirectionality, as there is with language internal developmental clines. Furthermore, the phenomenon of dis-