Talk:Non-convergent discourse

Slavic
The first type of NCD is/was heavily wide-spread in some Slavic countries. In former Czechoslavakia, where I come from, hardly any Czech would communicate with a Slovak in a different way than described in the article (and of course, vice versa). By the way, the situations hasn't changed a bit since splitting of Czechoslovakia. As far as I know, the similar situation is for example in present-day Ukraine. Several years ago, in a pre-election political TV-discussion, one of the leaders (Yushchenko) spoke Ukrainian, whearas the other (Yanukovich) spoke Russian.

Reverse non-convergent discourse?
When I lived in France in 2005, I experienced this in reverse. I--a native speaker of American English--would speak to a French person in French, and they--native speakers of French in France--would reply to me in English-only. This type of reverse non-convergence accounted for about 15% to 20% of my interactions with French 'strangers'. We would conduct an entire conversation for as long as 10 or 15 minutes, with neither party 'joining' the other in a common language. But we were not speaking in our own language (i.e. expressing linguistic chauvinism) but rather we each were speaking in the OTHER person's mother tongue.

Upon examination of my own motivations, I find that I chose to continue in French because I went to France to perfect my French and felt very frustrated that so many European I met spoke to me in English. Sometimes I felt resentful that they were 'using me' to practice their English! I lived in a multi-lingual student household (German, Scottish, Polish, French and American) and the language everyone spoke together at home was English, not French! This added to my frustration as I wanted to practice my French. Also, I had been told time and again that it is rude to go to another person's country and 'force' them to accommodate your language; I was determined to not be the quintessential 'ugly American'. I'm not sure what the motivation was for the French speaker. Perhaps they started off trying to be polite (accommodate me) and then just continued in English without really thinking about it. Or perhaps my French was so poor that the French speaker instinctively stuck to English to keep the conversation moving!

I am not a linguist but I would like to see some discussion of this kind of phenomenon discussed here by experts. I think it is a common experience of American English-speaking travelers overseas now that English is growing in popularity as a more-international language in science, business, diplomacy, etc.


 * An advantage of the situation you describe is that it's more likely for the other person to understand you if you use their language - so if each conversation partner uses their second language (the other person's first), then communication may be more successful than if it were conducted only in one language, which one of the two may not understand as well (or as quickly) as their first language. -- pne (talk) 12:04, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Children of immigrants
I'm not sure this topic deserves a separate article, but if it does, maybe the conversations of children and their immigrant parents is worth mentioning. The parent often speaks their native language to the child, and the child (up until about the age of 9) replies in the language of their schooling. Gronky (talk) 02:56, 15 October 2008 (UTC)