Language coordination is the tendency of people to mimic the language of others. The coordination occurs when one person responds to another using similar vocabulary, or word or sentence structure. Language coordination can also be applied to individuals, who linguistically coordinate to a group. As suggested by the

communication accommodation theory Communication accommodation theory (CAT) is a theory of communication developed by Howard Giles. This theory concerns "(1) the behavioral changes that people make to attune their communication to their partner, (2) the extent to which people percei ...

, this is often used as a way to reduce social distance (convergence). Language coordination often occurs unconsciously.

References

* K. G. Niederhoffer and J. W. Pennebaker. Linguistic style matching in social interaction. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 21(4):337–360, 2002. * Cristian Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil, Lillian Lee, Bo Pang, Jon Kleinberg, Echoes of power: Language effects and power differences in social interaction, CoR

Psycholinguistics Sociolinguistics {{sociolinguistics-stub