Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface to the second edition
- 1 Introduction: notions of language
- Part I Micro-choices
- 2 Standard and dialect: social stratification as a factor of linguistic choice
- 3 Gendered speech: sex as a factor of linguistic choice
- 4 Communicating across generations: age as a factor of linguistic choice
- 5 Choice and change
- 6 Politeness: cultural dimensions of linguistic choice
- Part II Macro-choices
- Glossary of terms
- References
- Index
- References
4 - Communicating across generations: age as a factor of linguistic choice
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface to the second edition
- 1 Introduction: notions of language
- Part I Micro-choices
- 2 Standard and dialect: social stratification as a factor of linguistic choice
- 3 Gendered speech: sex as a factor of linguistic choice
- 4 Communicating across generations: age as a factor of linguistic choice
- 5 Choice and change
- 6 Politeness: cultural dimensions of linguistic choice
- Part II Macro-choices
- Glossary of terms
- References
- Index
- References
Summary
You’ve had your time, I’ll have mine.
T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land… a fashionable old man is almost a contradiction in terms.
Dwight Bolinger, Language – The Loaded WeaponOutline of the chapter
This chapter presents age as one of the principal factors of sociolinguistic variation. Life stages from early socialization to adolescence, adulthood and old age are reviewed, as are theoretical and methodological issues of relating linguistic performance to speaker age and discovering age-specific language patterns. The sociolinguistic significance of age is then discussed in regards to the demographic imbalance of declining languages and language attitudes separating the younger and older age cohorts.
Key terms: age, age grading, age specific language use, ageing, intergenerational communication
Time depth
People come and go; words come and go; and languages come and go. How are these processes connected? Connected they are, for how could words be coined, passed on and discarded if there were no speakers to do the coining, passing on and the discarding? Language is a tradition; otherwise we would not understand one another. It must be handed down from one generation to the next in a way that allows members of coexisting generations to communicate. But it is not handed down unaltered. For each generation recreates the language of its predecessors. Cases of language demise – the discontinuation of a tradition – provide compelling evidence of the intergenerational gap.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- SociolinguisticsThe Study of Speakers' Choices, pp. 61 - 78Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2013