I thought that those chapters from Language were very interesting, but rather revealing of our human tendency to be jerks (to put it bluntly). It's difficult, despite my recent education, to not "gather information" from others based on their dialects, but I guess that's reflective of 21 years of training. I guess that that my question is trying to tease out some of why such a high percentage of people dislike or admire others, based solely on their vernacular. I know there are elements of "I vs. thou" and group inclusiveness and all that. I was thinking that maybe the phenomenon of "picking up accents" from spending time with people from other speaking backgrounds may reflect a need to bond with the person you're speaking with (since, in this case, you're bothering to talk to this person for extended periods of time) and not merely some form of "prosody training" (although they're not mutually exclusive). In the chapter, Speech Communities, Paul Roberts takes the reader through some of the mini-revolutions of language that most American children undergo as they grow up. Sometimes the accent the person grows up with isn't something he/she is all too proud of, but most people don't go out and just "pick up" a new one (unless you count Madonna). Is this out of a loyalty to those he/she grew up with? I'm not saying that anyone should have to change the way they speak to get along, but some people have a discomfort with their accent. With everything else in language seemingly so automated to make us successful socially, accent switching isn't really such a mechanism.