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. Adapted from the source document.