Linguistic Mirroring

In my adolescence, as I was grappling with constructing a cohesive sense of self in light of the maelstrom of new emotions within me and the social difficulties I was encountering, I would often feel self-conscious about my speaking. I would wonder why I spoke differently depending on whom I was speaking to, and whether doing so compromised my authenticity. As it turns out, changing one's speech (dialect, language, tone, inflection, etc.) to match (or contrast with) the other speaker's is a perfectly normal phenomenon. Communication Accommodation Theory even has its own Wikipedia page!