English or Spanish?! Language accommodation in New York City service encounters

Speak my language or look like me? – Language and ethnicity in bilingual customer service recovery

“…As a result, the receiver rates the interaction more favorably. Callahan (2006) explains that language accommodation occurs and solidarity emerges, when the speaker uses conversational language, and so converges to the other person in the exchange. However, when the speaker uses a language other than the interlocutor's primary language, divergence occurs in a way that creates a distance between the receiver and the sender (Holmqvist, Guest, & Grönroos, 2015).…”

Examining the relationship between language divergence and word-of-mouth intentions

“…Service encounters might be more complex if the consumer and service provider do not speak the same language. Sociolinguistic research indicates that the most powerful party in a conversation expects the other party to converge to their language (Callahan 2006). The consumer is often the most powerful party in a service encounter (Grönroos 2008), consumers consequently may expect to be served in their native language.…”

“…Speech accommodation occurs when a speaker adapts his or her speech to approximate the speech of an interlocutor, in the form of minor adjustments, such as adapting speech rates, pauses, or pronunciation, or more drastically, such as switching language (Callahan 2006). In addition to being particularly important in the context of bilingual countries or regions, where interactions with speakers of different languages are common, speech accommodation can influence any encounter that involves native speakers of two different languages.…”

“…Intuitive as this proposition might seem, Study 2 shows that language divergence is quite common. Many markets around the world are multilingual (Comrie 2011), and consumers often must interact in a language other than their native language (Callahan 2006). Thus, identifying and avoiding the negative effects of language divergence represents an important managerial goal.…”

“…Despite this recommendation, in interactions between buyers and sellers with different native languages, consumers may not always be able to use their native language (Callahan 2006;Schau, Dellande, and Gilly 2007). This is a problem that is particularly prevalent in countries with more than one official language as well as in spreading international contexts due to increased globalization and tourism (Duchêne 2009).…”