Language style as audience design in Greek and Cypriot interaction

This study investigates how different situations and audiences establish different speech styles in the speech of Cypriot Greeks (CG) who are bilingual in the Cypriot dialect and demotic Greek. Particularly we examine linguistic accommodation in the speech of CG towards the Greek use of clitic pronouns as objects. Linguistic accommodation towards the Greek variants is examined in the speech of CG in two situational contexts: (a) in a situation where Greeks are energetically participating in the conversation, and (b) in a situation where Greeks are present but asked not to participate in any way in the conversation. In order to investigate the effect of audience in the speech of CG, they are recorded when addressing three different audiences where the importance of Greeks is increasing from the first to the second and third audience.