LANGUAGE AND AGE

It is a well-known fact that language is constantly changing. The

speakers of a language are aware of this, as over the years they
witness these changes, some of which may be more noticeable than
others, in their language around them. Without exception, all
languages change over time.
These changes may become apparent at a particular moment, even if
they have been incubating for centuries, waiting for the time to be
ripe for them to emerge. The agents of a change in a language are,
without doubt, its speakers.

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The history of a language is the result of the linguistic and cultural
history of countless generations. For this reason, out of scientific
curiosity, in line with developments in other fields, linguists in the
late 19th and early 20th century set themselves the task of
reconstructing earlier languages and investigating how linguistic
change takes place. It was a time in which there was a great deal of
interest in reconstructing protolanguages and establishing the main
language families. And it meant recognising something that had
always been known intuitively: that languages too have an age and
ancestors, an age that to some extent runs parallel to the sum of
generations of their speakers.

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Languages may not have changed in the Middle Ages the way they can
today, when the media amplifies and makes global what used to be local.
Nevertheless there are also changes that can be traced over the course of
just a few decades. And they relate to the way time passes for individual
speakers and how they talk.
Most of the changes arise out of this tension between “old” and “new”
which is undoubtedly related to speakers’ ages, as although the mother
tongue is passed on in childhood by contact between the generations, it
takes on a different hue in each stage of life. Obviously, for reasons
related to how the brain works, infancy is the stage at which linguistic
capacities are greatest in terms of everything to do with the process of
language acquisition. Families and the community are witnesses to this
rapid process and the enormous brain plasticity of children up to a certain
age, enabling them not only to learn their mother tongue, but any others
they are in contact with, thus the undeniable importance of early teaching
of other languages to make children bilingual or trilingual. Like so many
other skills, children’s linguistic capabilities develop out of contact with
older speakers who already master the language. Thus, little by little they
acquire the mother tongue, as historically it has been mothers, or other
women entrusted with bringing up the children, who have played the role
of language educators in the family, and even at school.

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Age is one of the variables the sociolinguist takes into account,
because, from the moment speakers are socialised to behave in a
particular way, the way they speak tends to fit in with what is
expected of a certain age group. Scientific studies show that the age
variable should not be taken in isolation, but correlated with others
such as education, sex, etc. because, it does not affect uneducated
rural speakers in the same way as urban speakers embedded in a
multitude of social networks.

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Time and age are therefore decisive factors. For this reason,
depending on their degree of development, linguists talk about
processes of change that are recent, in progress or obsolescent; and
they study them in apparent time, comparing how speakers of
different ages address them, to simulate what their recent history
might have been; or real time, to identify how they might be like in
the future. To do so, they resort to setting generations, or at least,
establishing age groups, because there are normally language
differences between them, as the experience of any language speaker
attests.

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Apparent time studies of language change focus on a comparison
between the speech patterns of different age groups (i.e. younger
and older speakers) within the same speech community at a certain
moment in time. If younger speakers show linguistic differences to
older speakers in a speech community, this can be interpreted as an
indication of linguistic change taking place in this community.
However, in the course of such a comparison it is important to make
a distinction between linguistic differences that are based on speaker
age (thus due to the stable variable of age-grading) and differences
that truly reflect language change in progress.
Real time studies of language change focus on detecting change
not in apparent time but in real time. The speech of different age
groups is compared at different moments in time in order to
detect historical change in the community, i.e. to find out
about linguistic change in a community as it progresses through
time. Language change in real time can be illustrated by the
repetition of a community study. That is, the linguistic variation in a
speech community is reinvestigated in a new study undertaken after a
certain amount of time. Significant deviations from the originally
found speech patterns within this community are interpreted as signs
of linguistic change over time.

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As to the question of the age at which individuals master the rules,
although language learning begins intensively in infancy, it is in late
adolescence and youth that stable characteristics emerge, although it
is worth noting that there are speakers who can adopt certain changes
at any time in their life to adapt to usages considered prestigious.
Moreover, the cut off points between ages that once made up rigid
stages have become a much more flexible continuum, with fuzzy
edges: today, adolescence spills over into the end of what was once
considered childhood, and youth stretches well into what was once
adulthood, while maturity has also been shifted, with a delay in old
age.

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Young people’s language reflects part of this path towards linguistic
maturity at a life stage that is highly receptive to any social label
enabling identification with their peers. Specialists have come to consider
it a group language, a language that plays at breaking away from the
community, is especially receptive to fashions, slang and expressiveness,
with its own hallmarks that are willfully rule-breaking and
countercultural. Looking at the issue scientifically, there have been
studies measuring the lexical availability of school children in an attempt
to determine —and potentially correct— their active or passive mastery
of words and culture. Throughout history it has been a constant that the
older members of the community consider youth to have an alarming
linguistic poverty, because they use the same words over and over
without conceptual precision and use fashionable new coinages, catch
phrases, colloquial appellatives, swear words, and phatic connectors
(although in the later stages of youth, these signs tend to disappear).
Older people also accuse the young of losing many of the linguistic
formulas of courtesy that are part of established good manners, while
young people tend to consider the old, despite their mastery of the
language, to be using words and turns of phrase that are out of date, that
belong to another age, and that they do not identify with. It is this tension
that, little by little, drives linguistic evolution.

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Between the young and old there is an intermediate group, young
people who have reached maturity, who are linguistically mature but
conserve some of the manners of speech that were once innov­ative,
breaking away from the norm, and which characterises them as a
generation. Because one should not forget that linguistic attitudes
change with age, although they are driven by the shifting concept of
prestige. The evolution is clear: the older the individual, the more
linguistically conservative, and the more sensitive to the norm; the
younger, the more receptive to innovation. Older people tend to
follow what they consider the norm more closely than young people,
who are more inclined towards innovation, rule breaking or adopting
traits that identify them as a distinct group from adults.

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AGE PATTERN: LANGUAGE
AND AGE
The age pattern is a typical sociolinguistic pattern based on the age of
a speaker. It describes a characteristic type of age-graded linguistic
variation and describes change in the speech behaviour of individual
speakers as they get older. General linguistic tendencies can be
determined for different life stages: adolescence – younger adults (up
to 50 years of age), older adults (over 50 years of age).
In linguistics, age-graded variation is differences in speech habits
within a community that are associated with age. Age-grading
(class) occurs when individuals change their linguistic behavior
throughout their lifetimes, but the community as a whole does not
change.
Age grading: Each generation of speakers modifies its linguistic
behavior at a particular stage in life – sometimes well into adulthood.
But the language itself does not change across generations.

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DOES AGE AFFECT
LANGUAGE LEARNING?
A plethora of elements can influence language learning: biological
factors, mother tongue, intelligence, learning surroundings,
emotions, motivation and last but not least: the age factor.
Consider 3 life stages: Young children, teenage years, the elderly
They concluded that the ability to learn a new language, at least
grammatically, is strongest until the age of 18 after which there is a
precipitous decline. To become completely fluent, however, learning
should start before the age of 10.

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INTERESTING PHRASES
(FROM A SURVEY)
“I slept through the reveal.” (reveal as a noun – 1950s)
“Could you please xerox this?” (brand name Xerox as a verb –
1960s)
“The results will impact our decision.” (impact as a verb –
1970s)
“I’m trying to develop my skillset.” (compound noun skillset –
1980s)
“My omelet morphed into a scramble.” (morph as a verb outside
the context of computer animation – 1990s)
“Did he medal?” (medal as a verb – 2000s)
“I’m lowkey annoyed by her response” (lowkey/low-key as an
adverb -2010s)
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CHILDREN YEARS
Language development is a critical part of your child’s overall
development.
It supports your child’s ability to communicate, and express and
understand feelings. It also supports thinking and problem-solving,
and developing and maintaining relationships. Learning to
understand, use and enjoy language is the critical first step in
literacy, and the basis for learning to read and write.

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TEEN YEARS
Across generations, teenagers have always had their own teen words.
What was once 'cool', 'ace' or 'groovy' may now be 'sick' or 'amaze',
meaning it can sometimes be hard to understand teenagers (which, of
course, is often what they want!).
Using a language particular to your tribe and time is part of
developing self-esteem, confidence and a sense of identity and
belonging.
Teenagers are trying to find their way in the adult world and often
feel most comfortable with their peers. Having their own language
helps them bond with other teens and build confidence.

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TEEN YEARS
Social language skills are of huge importance to adolescents. For
instance, the ability to detect and respond to sarcasm from peers is a
critical skill that teenagers with typical language development find
difficult to learn.

The problem, of course, of not possessing good social language

skills, is that students who can't adequately respond to teasing or
bullying become the target for more of the same.

Children with language difficulty generally have problems with most

aspects of social language, including having adequate conversation
skills, and knowing social rules.

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SENIORS

What are you views on seniors whom you know

or have come across?
Do they communicate well?
What is the difference between the seniors and
today’s young generation?

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THANK YOU

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