The delicate constitution of identity in face-to-face accommodation: A response to Trudgill

In sociolinguistics, where identity tends to be our first explanatory resource, Peter Trudgill's claim that identity is “irrelevant” as a factor in his area of interest is particularly striking. There are at least three questions here. The first is Trudgill's direct concern: whether identity considerations impinged on the development of new national colonial varieties. The second is the underlying question of whether identity, in itself and in general, can stand as a motive for sociolinguistic action and change. The third is whether face-to-face linguistic accommodation, which Trudgill invokes as the core process through which new dialects come to be, can and does function in the absence of identity considerations.