Investigating the lifespan perspective

Gerstenberg, Annette; Voeste, Anja

doi:10.1075/impact.37.01ger

Cited by 7 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…This vague definition requires further explication. In current research, there is a broad discussion on the classification of adulthood (e.g., adolescence, early, middle, and late adulthood), as well as on changes during adulthood (e.g., concerning personality, see Srivastava et al, 2003, or language across the lifespan, see Beaman & Buchstaller, 2021;de Bot & Schrauf, 2009;Gerstenberg & Voeste, 2015). The changes people undergo are not precisely predictable; they depend on individual factors, such as lifestyle, socioeconomic status, and biological components (e.g., cognitive or general health peculiarities), which we must consider.…”

Section: Adult Participant (Consequences For Testing)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Adapting MAIN to eliciting stories from adults and in a remote context: What do we have to consider, and what do we know?

Karl¹

2023

Zaspil

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The present study suggests guidelines for the successful elicitation of adults’ narratives using an online remote design. In doing so, I have adapted the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS MAIN) to an adult population and specify possible applications in a remote context. Hereby, I elaborate on various features that impact the elicited data and the testing context. I also report results from a pilot study with 10 adults telling MAIN stories using three different testing methods (two moderated methods using PowerPoint or an external link and one unmoderated) to argue that different methods of remote narrative elicitation do not influence the macrostructure of the narratives. However, by extending the analysis to the context of the testing and including the experimenters’ and participants’ assessments of the testing situation, we can see differences that lead me to recommend the so-called Link method (a moderated remote testing method with a certain degree of autonomy) for remote testing with adults.

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Section: Adult Participant (Consequences For Testing)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Adapting MAIN to eliciting stories from adults and in a remote context: What do we have to consider, and what do we know?

Karl¹

2023

Zaspil

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“…Because cognitive impairment and social isolation are more prevalent among older adults than other age groups (see Sections 2 and 3), these speaker characteristics must be part of the sample design calculus. Unfortunately, interviewing large numbers of older adults at baseline to facilitate sufficient sample size and representative sample constitution at follow‐up is time‐ and cost‐intensive, and conflicts with the pressure to conduct low‐cost studies and produce quick results (see also Gerstenberg & Voeste, :4). Variationists might adopt gerontologists' and geriatricians' established techniques for mitigating attrition on follow‐up, such as interviewing participants in mobility‐friendly environments, allowing time prior to interview to establish rapport, or sending out birthday cards and annual newsletters (von Strauss, Fratiglioni, Jorm, Viitanen, & Winblad, ; Wadsworth et al, ).…”

Section: Old Challenges and New Opportunities: Approaches To Studyingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Old‐age language variation and change: Confronting variationist ageism

Pichler

Wagner

Hesson

2018

Language and Linguist. Compass

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The speech of older adults (65+ years old) is a rich resource for a wide range of researchers, including oral historians, developmental psychologists, health communication scholars, speech and hearing specialists, and discourse analysts. Yet in variationist sociolinguistics—the study of language variation, language change, and their social motivations—older adults have fallen afoul of a kind of scholarly ageism. Often consigned to the status of a historical benchmark against which the speech of younger people is compared, and with only rare acknowledgment of their biological, psychological and social diversity, old‐age speakers deserve greater attention. This article provides linguists with an overview of relevant conceptualizations of age and ageing in gerontology, explains why a focus on older speakers is critical to the advancement of the study of language variation and change, and offers practical suggestions for overcoming some of the challenges associated with old‐age research.

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“…Picking up on authors like Trudgill (1986) , Siegel (2010 , p. 133) even argues that “in order to be acquired, a variant must be salient enough to be noticed.” 1 Methodologically speaking, these are no-nonsense approaches and they are not unrelated. Following individuals longitudinally is a notoriously difficult and costly task ( Gerstenberg & Voeste, 2015 ; Sankoff, 2018a ), not to mention the logistic challenge of recruiting speakers who are about to move or have just done so ( Nycz, 2015 ). Concentrating on large differences allows researchers to quickly tap into phonetic characteristics that mobile speakers are likely to have changed, and in the absence of longitudinal data, might be the only way of investigating SDA.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using Mahalanobis Distances to Investigate Second Dialect Acquisition: A Study on Quebec French

2022

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Second dialect acquisition (SDA) can be defined as the process through which geographically mobile individuals adapt to new dialect features of their first language. Two common methodological approaches in SDA studies could lead to underestimating the phonetic changes that mobile speakers may experience: only large phonetic differences between dialects are considered, and external sources are used to infer what should have been the speakers’ original dialect. By contrast, in this study, we carry out a longitudinal analysis to empirically assess the speakers’ baseline and shift away from it with no priors as to which features should change or not. Furthermore, we focus on Quebec French, a variety with a relatively crowded vowel space. Using Mahalanobis distances, we measure how acoustic characteristics of vowels produced by 15 mobile speakers change relative to those of a control group of 8 sedentary speakers, with the mobile participants recorded right after they moved to Quebec City, then a year later. Overall, the results show a reduction of Mahalanobis distances over time, indicating convergence toward the control system. Convergence also tends to be greater in denser areas of the vowel space. These results suggest that phonetic changes during SDA could be finer than previously thought. This study calls for the use of methodological approaches that can reveal such trends, and contributes to uncovering the extent of phonetic flexibility during adulthood.

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Investigating the lifespan perspective

Cited by 7 publications

References 11 publications

Adapting MAIN to eliciting stories from adults and in a remote context: What do we have to consider, and what do we know?

Adapting MAIN to eliciting stories from adults and in a remote context: What do we have to consider, and what do we know?

Old‐age language variation and change: Confronting variationist ageism

Using Mahalanobis Distances to Investigate Second Dialect Acquisition: A Study on Quebec French

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