The way people copy each other's linguistic style reveals their pecking order
When I talk to people who have language problems (I was a TA at a US university, so I meet a diverse set of language skill levels in my students), I notice that I sometimes copy the amount of broken-ness in their language (involuntarily). This is not in a condescending way, because I can sense they become comfortable at once. To understand this in a different way, try to imagine one person speaking broken English and the other person just completely keeping up his fast fluent pace in all his replies. That would seem pretty rude.What I wanted to get at is this, pecking order might not be the only reason to copy verbal styles. Empathy might be one more reason. Does this study control for this?