Explanation
Pragmatic accommodation is the incorporation of a previously unshared assumption into the conversational background so that an utterance can receive an appropriate interpretation. A hearer of “Lea’s brother is waiting outside” may provisionally add that Lea has a brother even if this was not previously common ground. The adjustment is often tacit and retrospective: the utterance projects a background that its interpretation simultaneously helps to create. Accommodation is neither automatic agreement nor arbitrary repair; problematic, contradictory, or strategically smuggled assumptions can be challenged. It must also be distinguished from sociolinguistic accommodation, in which speakers adjust style or variety. The concept reveals that understanding does not merely use shared ground but continually remodels it under context-sensitive and contestable conditions.
Movement of thought
1. An utterance first treats some information as already available even though it is absent from the documented conversational background. 2. The hearer recognises the gap and seeks a compatible addition under which the utterance's form and communicative action make sense. 3. The new assumption is provisionally entered into common ground although it may never have been explicitly asserted or negotiated. 4. A counter-test checks prior knowledge, contradiction, rejection, and agreement and separates pragmatic accommodation from stylistic convergence. 5. The sentence acquires the ground it presupposed: understanding becomes a movement that changes its own conditions while it proceeds.
Scientific use case
Formal pragmatics, discourse semantics, and psycholinguistics test presupposition triggers, common-ground models, projection, and rejection. Experiments and interactional data compare accommodation across contextual conditions.
Example
During a meeting someone says, “The second reviewer also agreed.” With no earlier mention, listeners may provisionally infer a first reviewer while retaining the ability to question that assumption.
Counterexample
If all participants already know that Lea has a brother, “Lea’s brother is waiting” activates shared information. No previously missing presupposition is accommodated.
Distinction
Distinguish accommodation from presupposition as assumed content, common ground as shared background, assertion, agreement, repair, and sociolinguistic accommodation as adjustment of speech style or variety.
Effect on thought and perception
Accommodation explains how utterances can establish new assumptions as background and sharpens attention to tacit changes in what participants proceed as though they jointly know.
Resonance
A sentence enters shared space and moves its walls while being understood; the altered background answers a presupposition that has only just appeared.
Cite this entry
Reich, Michael (Hrsg./ed.): „Accommodation“. Atlas der Sprache, AT-PRA-W0169. ATLAS 260, data model 1.6.0. https://atlasoflanguage.com/concept/AT-PRA-W0169The address remains stable; editorial content may evolve. Editorial reading state: 2026-10-15. Include your access date for precise references.
Historical background
Giles, Taylor and Bourhis’s 1973 publication locates an interpersonal approach. Lewis’s 1983 reprint addresses changes to conversational score, including presupposition. These are separate technical traditions, not one continuous mechanism. The former was checked bibliographically, the latter through its publisher abstract. [GILES-1973] [LEWIS-1983]
How conceptual history changes the analysis
Determine whether speech form or mutually accepted background is being adjusted.
Refined short definition
Accommodation can concern interpersonal adjustment of speech or contextual adjustment to presupposed information; these are distinct senses.
Further explanation
Adjustment of vocabulary differs from taking an unstated premise on board. In either case, preserve room for disagreement. Conversational ease is not unexamined consent, and silence does not invariably establish acceptance.
Additional example
Original contrast: Rewording a technical term adjusts delivery; “My brother arrives later” may update background knowledge. “You have a brother?” exposes the new presupposition.
References for the historical section
- David Lewis: Scorekeeping in a Language Game, in Philosophical Papers I (1983), 233–249 · Verlagsabstract zur Anpassung des conversational score und zu Präsuppositionen.
- Howard Giles, Donald M. Taylor, Richard Bourhis: Towards a theory of interpersonal accommodation through language: some Canadian data (1973) · Bibliografischer Eintrag zum sprachlichen Akkommodationsansatz.