4 Communicating across generations: age as a factor of linguistic choice You've had your time, I'll have mine. T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land 4a fashionable old man is almost a contradiction in terms. Dwight Bolinger, Language ~ The Loaded Weapon 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. In the event, speakers of generation G,,, fail to use language L, in the same way generation G, did. When this happens there is often a continuum of decreasing use and proficiency in that language that correlates with succeeding generations of speakers. Eventually, Ly ceases to exist as a spoken language because no one chooses to speak it and no one can speak it anymore.! This is the outcome of inter- generational progression only in extreme cases; the general point to note is that there are differences in the speech of G, and Gys1. Generations, or age cohorts, each have their own language world. Two functional explanations for this are as follows. (1) In the course of time communication needs change, forcing each new generation to adjust the language to suit the changing world of their experience. (2) At a set time the communication abilities and needs of contemporaneous generations differ, hence the young and the old speak differently. These are not conflicting but complementary and interlocked explanations both of which account for age-specific variation within a language. 52Communicating across generations 33 ‘Every living language has time depth, which is not the same as orical language change. For the purpose of the present chapter it means that words wither; that teenagers don’t speak like octogen- ; that every language comprises expressions, constructions and enunciations that have been there for a long time and others of more sent origin; and that these expressions, constructions and pronunci- are chosen by speakers of different generations at different quencies. What is more, there are parts of the language, more so ‘the lexical and syntactic level than in pronunciation, that are felt by speakers to be fashionable or outdated. Both may be used with a pose in mind — to make fun of the ‘olde worlde’, to make a claim for enity, to show that we are up-to-date or loathe the trendy. Whatever reason for using archaisms and modernisms, both remind us of the ot that a language is not a monolithic formation clearly differentiated m what was and what is coming, but a system in permanent flux h includes elements of variable durability. At any given time, chaisms are not reserved for use by the older generation or mod- ms for the young, but there are tendencies in these directions, if because older speakers are more likely to know archaic expres- . While the modern is by definition associated with the young. ome modernisms gradually lose the taste of newness and gain a more anent place in the language, others are ephemeral; and con- esely, some archaisms are on their way out of the language, while 's may stay there as archaisms indefinitely. What is in and out is a er of degree and, to some extent, a matter of intergenerational On the level of linguistic expression, time depth means that words d other expressions are introduced into the language at one point and ntinue to be used for variable lengths of time. On the level of speakers means that at any time several generations coexist who share a ommon language but whose share of that language is not identical, gure 4,1 schematically depicts a set of expressions first used by peakers of the young generation who continue using them as they ow older. Figure 4.2 indicates that the linguistic systems of three time elderly... middle-aged ...... adolescent young “(Ey } Figure 4.1 Dynamic model of age grading of speakers and temporal dimension of language. {E1) is a set of expressions first used by members of the young generation who continue using it as they grow old.54 Sociolinguistics G, ned Figure 4.2 The language of three successive generations, Gy—~Gy+2 successive generations, G,,~G, +2 overlap, but also include generation- specific parts. We will put the question of what the linguistic differences between the generations have to do with language change aside until the next chapter. In this one we will concentrate on the variable linguistic choices of coexisting generations of speakers. Age cohorts Like sex, age is a biological fact that is basic to human experi- ence. At the same time, its effects on human behaviour are mitigated by social and cultural notions of the lifespan and its stages. Childhood, youth, middle age and later life are not objective, immutable stages of human existence, but affected by sociodemographic changes and cul- turally shaped classifications. In some cultures, age cohorts are marked by very pronounced divisions concerning social roles, rights, obliga- tions and behavioural patterns that are considered appropriate. In traditional societies the transition from one stage to the next is marked by rites of passage. Modern industrial societies generally rely less on community rites for social control, but there are still many ceremonies that accentuate stages in a member's lifespan, such as first communion, bar mitzvah, graduation, coming of age and retirement. Chronological age is an important principle of social organization with numerous legal implications, such as school-age, military service, driving licence, active and passive voting rights, juvenile courts, majority, X-rated movies, senior citizens’ privileges, etc. Not surprisingly, therefore, notions of proper comportment, physical appearance and dress relative to a person’s age remain strong. Speech, too, is one of the characteristics which reveals age-grading and is expected to differentiate one age cohort from another. Keeping in mind that these are relative rather than absolute divisions exhibiting cultural and historical modulation, we can divide the lifespan into fourze cohorts, infancy, adolescence, adulthood and old age. They differ om each other in various ways, not least with regard to language use. Infancy scams memassnes SmRMSE Age differentiation of speech begins at the very beginning. aturally, babies don’t speak like grown-ups because they don’t have capacity to do so. Language socialization takes time. At the outset, e communication between those involved, the infant and the caregiver, characterized by extreme inequality in the range of possible choices. The latter has full control of the target language, the former none. Anguage socialization is the process that eliminates this disparity. It is sed on social interaction rather than deliberate instruction, although oth sides devote considerable effort to the task. Children acquire aguage by using it, but to use it they depend on those who provide input, the talk they hear around them and directed at them. In onolingual environments what children will hear people say and say them is the same language, yet there are stylistic differences between ese two sources of input. Language acquisition research has found lots evidence that parents and other adults who interact with babies and ng children systematically modify their speech while talking them.” Speech directed to children by adults tends to consist of short and mple grammatical constructions delivered slowly with careful articula- on and clear pauses at the end of utterances. Subordinate clauses ane, vided, the vocabulary is restricted, and intonation is emphatic. The emantic content is limited to the here and now. The stylistic register that adults use in talking with young children has been given the felicitous ame ‘parentese’, nay ‘motherese’. It is also referred to as ‘child-directed +h’. ‘Baby-talk’ is an exaggerated form of parentese, but as Menn ad Gleason (1986) have noted, this term lacks a clear definition. They istinguish four different meanings of baby-talk: (1) the social stereotype how babies talk: (2) the stereotype of how adults talk to babies; (3) the by-talk register, that is, the actual language adults use when talking to bies; and (4) the way infants actually speak. The difference between seotypes on one side and registers on the other is a point of general enificance. People entertain ideas about their own speech, but these deas do not always reflect actual usage but are distorted by stereotypical notions of what ought to be, or is assumed to be, the case. Adults are ware that babies do not speak like adults, and they are aware that they djust their own speech when they talk with children, but they are not ically aware of the fact that the way they speak to children is a ‘oduct of their own individual stylistic choice and of the stereotypes ‘ent in their society. Communicating across generations 5556 Sociolinguistics From a sociolinguistic point of view, parentese is interesting as a stylistic register which is chosen by its speakers to manage a particular kind of social interaction, that between adult and child. It exhibits features of child speech, such as reduplication, choo-choo, onomato- poeia, bow-wow and simplified grammar, but it must be noted that this register is learnt by its speakers from other adults, not from children. Parents evidently believe that by giving feedback in the form of features characteristic of the early speech of children they help the child to build up communicative competence. On the basis of an empirical study of language acquisition in a Tamil-speaking family, Narasimhan (1998: 83) suggests that the features that characterize parentese are ‘precisely the ones that are needed to enable the child to segment and schematize the utterances and relate them to the behavioural aspects’. There is wide agreement among child language researchers that in this sense parentese facilitates language learning, at least in the earliest phase. Another sense in which a simplified input fosters the development of the child’s communicative competence is less frequently noted and not intended by the speakers of parentese. It teaches children to adjust their own speech to their interlocutors, and that for this adjustment age is a critical variable. This can be concluded from the fact that not just adults but children, too, use simplified speech when talking to younger children. For instance, 4-year-old children were observed to use sim- plified speech when talking to 2-year-olds but not when talking to adults (Steinberg, Nagata and Aline 2001: 38). Once their language learning has progressed beyond the stage where simplified speech is effective in communicating with them, children retain the ability to use this variety when needed, that is, when socially expected. In the course of language learning children replace simplified speech when talking to adults and converge towards the adult norm. Some cultures actively promote this transitional step. For instance, the Comanche of the North American Plains have been observed to teach their children a rich vocabulary of special baby-language words. But only a short while after they had mastered these words, the children were told not to use them and encouraged to switch to normal language (Casagrande 1948). If they failed to make the transition at the expected age, they were ridiculed. In other societies where the shift away from child-like speech is not so explicitly prompted by adults more indirect mechanisms are at work. Children are taught by casual remarks to avoid the risk of being regarded as babies by older children and adults. The important point is that children learn to take both their own age and the addressees into account in selecting appropriate speech forms. The ability to do so is an integral part of language socialization acquired at an early age. Language learning means, among other things, expanding the range of stylistic choices and shifting from one style to another.In a longitudinal study of preschool children’s linguistic choices in ‘Trinidad, Youssef (1993) found that all children exhibited stylistic rariation. She used a scheme called ‘audience design’ first developed Allen Bell in order to account for the factors that are operative in ‘style shift. The name reflects the underlying assumption that speakers design their utterances with an audience in mind. Trinidad is a socio- ‘Fnguistically complex environment where Trinidad Creole (TC) and Standard English (SE) are used side by side with differential social functions. TC is the language of emotion, kinship and solidarity, while SE is associated with formality, education and officialdom. At the same ame, there are social and individual preferences for TC and SE. Some families use more SE at home than others, However, the children ‘oussef studied were confronted with both varieties from an early ge and were found to differentiate between them in their own ‘oduction. Audience design proved to be a useful concept to explain the chil- en's style shifting according to addressee. In a multilingual environ- ment such as Trinidad, language choice is rooted both in society and he individual, and the extent to which individual and social factors are stlective is itself variable. Youssef's study presents evidence that small ildren learn to adjust their speech to their audience early on, and that cial norms determine individual expectations and choices. Children f sensitive to role relationships expressed through language, and the ial system underlying these relationships influences children’s peech from their earliest childhood.* In another study of a group of children between ages 4 and 6, Andersen (1992) investigated children’s ability to use speech appropri. fe to certain roles. She collected data by means of a methodology she is ‘controlled improvisation’ that engages the children in role play. he children were given puppets designated as father, mother, child, octor, patient and foreigner (the controlled part) and were then ncouraged to play these roles impromptu. The results of the study how the developing ability of children to make lexical and paralin- suistic choices to fit different roles. For example, she found that the hildren never used well as a discourse marker, except when playing oles associated with authority. Detailed lexical choices of this sort ify to great sensitivity on the part of the children for role-specific nd, in the event, by implication, age-graded language use. To sum up this section, parentese reflects certain features of child nguage. It is conducive to the development of communicative com- etence in two ways, (1) in the earliest phase it facilitates language carning, and (2) it shows the youngest generation that members of the community are differentiated by age and that speech forms are to be chosen accordingly. Communicating across generations 3738 Sociolinguistics Adolescence The language of adolescents is perhaps the most thoroughly investigated of all age-specific varieties. Characteristic features of ado- lescents’ speech have often been described. The question is how such features can be accounted for. Some researchers hold that a distinct youth register differentiates the language of adolescents from that of children, on one hand, and adults, on the other (Widdicombe and Wooffitt 1995). Publications such as the German Lexikon der Jugendsprache (Dictionary of youth language] (Miiller-Thurau 1985) suggest that such a register is an identifiable entity, but because of the short half-life of many of the entries listed this notion is not uncon- tested.’ Other researchers prefer the distinction between age-exclusive and age-preferential features of the language of all age groups. Age- exclusive features are used only during a certain stage of life. An example will be discussed below. Age-preferential features exhibit noticeable differences in frequency of use across age cohorts. In many cultures, age-preferential features in the language of adolescents are very conspicuous, a phenomenon that demands explanation. For, unlike young children, adolescents are competent speakers of their language, unrestricted in their linguistic choices by incomplete acquisition. While they continue to appropriate the language by expand- ing their vocabulary and their stylistic range, they have full control of it, Yet they often choose their words in ways that deviate from adult usage By so doing the young demonstrate that the language they received from their seniors is theirs, and that they use it as they see fit. For example, in English-speaking communities adolescents use double and multiple negatives more than adult speakers of the same social class (Holmes 1992: 184). Romaine (1984) in a study of Edinburgh school children found that during adolescent years the use of substandard forms was at its maximum. Rampton (1995) observed that in multicultural settings in Britain, adolescents, in marked contrast to their elders, use words of a language not usually associated with their ethnic group, a phenomenon he calls ‘lexical crossing’. Danish youths have been observed to make use of quotations as a dramatizing feature of speech in ways distinctly different from adult usage (Moller and Quist 2003). In recent years the language of Japanese adolescents has attracted some attention. It is documented on many private homepages, dis- cussed in letters to the editor and investigated by sociolinguists. The expressions in question are summarily referred to as kogvaru kotoba ‘high-school-girl language’. As suggested by this name, this variety is characterized by both age-exclusive and sex-specific features. It is girls rather than boys who have created it and use it along with other non-linguistic features, especially dress, hairstyle and makeup, to setthemselves off as a group from the rest of society. With their choice of words, Japanese teenage girls exemplify the general function of the language of adolescents to signal membership of a closed social group. Many kogyaru kotoba expressions are unknown to adult members of society and, if they hear them, incomprehensible. Acronyms and other abbreviations abound. Slang expressions and fanciful neologisms pro- liferate, many of them extremely short-lived. The term kogyaru itself is an example. It is composed of ko < katégakko ‘high school’ and gyaru, the Japanized rendition of English ‘girl’. Exemplifying a general feature that distinguishes adolescent speech, kogyaru kotoba is much more prone to rapid change than adult speech. The fast turnover of these expressions makes it difficult to keep track of how the variety evolves. Dictionaries bank on time, but records of the language of adolescent are likely to be outdated upon publication, However, the transitory nature of the expressions that function as code words of adolescent trendsetters and followers doesn’t make the variety less real. In the Japanese speech community of the 1990s, kogyaru kotoba was recog- nized, and disliked, as a genuine variety of the language. It was disliked because it manifested not just creative unconventional language use ut contempt of traditional notions of propriety. Some conspicuous features of kogyaru speech are monotonous pronunciation without ress accent; word truncation (kimoi < kimochi warui ‘disgusting’); xmation of hybrid Japanese-English compounds (cho SBS < clio ultra’ + super beautiful sexy); avoidance of honorifics. especially the ‘use of last names for address without any of the obligatory suffixes san, neutral, -kun, for boys, -chan, for girls, and -sensei ‘teacher’, At the time of writing, none of the expressions listed in table 4.1 were in standard Japanese or vernacular varieties of adult speech, and it med unlikely that they ever would be. Not only that, most of them yuldn’t be passed on to the next generation of adolescents. Kogyaru 1oba is a recent phenomenon. Wakamono kotoba, ‘the language of the yung’, of which it can be considered a subvariety has long been recog- ized as a variety of Japanese characterized by many age-preferential pressions, substandard pronunciation and the absence of honorifics.> it kogyaru kotoba made its appearance only in the mid 1990s. The term first attested in 1994° and has since captured the attention of ‘Japanese jolinguists and sociopsychologists. Their task is to explain why female uth language emerged as a distinct variety in Japan when it did. In Japanese society, the seniority principle fulfils important functions of ial organization. Even slight differences in chronological or institu- ail age (the length of time one belongs to an institution) determine the ure of social relationships. Age is a defining criterion of social groups. embers of the same school interact as seniors and juniors. Companies it new employees once a year who are initiated together, proceed Communicating across generations 5960 Sociolinguistics Table 4.1 Kogyaru kotoba, the language of female Japanese high-school students Kogyaru kotoba composition translation choberiba cho ‘ultra’, beri ‘very’, worst baddo ‘bad’ choBM cho ‘ultra’, baka obvious fool ‘fool’, marudashi ‘bare’ deniru Deni(su), -ru ‘finite g0 to Denny's verb ending’ (fast-food restaurant) makuru maku (donarudo), -ru ‘finite g0 to verb ending’ McDonald's (fast-food restaurant) karipaku karita mono ‘borrowed item’, not return a borrowed. pakupaku ‘grasp’ item kinpa kinpatsu “blond” someone with blond hair | keronpa kaminoke ‘hair’, rongu ‘long’, a boy with long kinpasu ‘blond’ (dyed) blond hair kimai i ‘feeling’, mazui ‘unsavoury’ bad feeling kiwai kiwadoi, ‘dangerous’ precarious together through a series of responsibilities, and for a long time follow parallel career paths. Higher rank often goes with higher age. Respect for the elderly is valued, and the young are expected ‘to wait for their turn’. Another feature of traditional Japanese society is the subservient role of women. Although female participation in the labour market is on a par if not higher than in other industrialized societies, notions of distinct gender roles are strong. Taken together, these two features, seniority and gender inequality, put female teenagers in a socially special position at the fore- front of societal change. Kogyaru kotoba can be understood as a con- comitant of social developments which challenge traditional assumptions of Japanese society. The mannerisms that characterize it must furthermore be understood as an expression of lifestyle and a means young people use to define themselves and construct their identity. Let us now summarize the features and functions that characterize adolescent speech. Use of substandard, dialectal and vernacular forms, slang and innovative, often very short-lived expressions serves three main functions: (1) to appropriate the language for the speakers’ own purposes; (2) to manifest group membership and construct a distinct identity; and (3) to indicate the speakers’ willingness to resist the pressure to conform to societal norms.Communicating across generations Adulthood sasscmcmncmmascs DEE SSR TTT ‘The language of children and adolescents has been investigated extensively, but studies of age-cohort-specific language do not usually include a chapter about adults. This is so because, in terms of social strength, young and middle-aged adults form the dominant age cohort in most societies investing their behaviour including speech with norm- setting potential. Adult language is the norm, as it were the unmarked choice for all age groups. Young children who speak of their ‘chron- ometer’ will be precocious, but ‘watch’ will be inconspicuous, while an adult who says ‘tick-tock’, not to a child, will be decidedly infantile. And when middle-aged and elderly adults speak like adults it will go unnoticed. Adolescents will likewise attract little attention outside their wn group when they follow adult usage. On the other hand, it will be noticed when adults garnish their speech with up-to-the-minute expres- sions which recognizably belong to an adolescent subculture. Thatisa marked case. Two things follow from this, one, adolescent speech is more restricted, and, two, adults are seen as the norm guarantors. They command maximum societal strength and at the same time experience maximum societal pressure to conform to existing norms As people grow older, their speech becomes less dialectal and con- verges toward the standard. A decrease with age in the use of socially stigmatized features can be observed in most industrial societies. Between the ages of 25 and 60 people choose standard as opposed to Sialectal forms most frequently. Figure 4.3 displays this tendency. It also shows that, with advancing age, the Pressure of societal norms, or the willingness to conform, decreases. In this sense young and middle- aged adults form an age cohort between adolescents and the elderly, but since their speech is the yardstick of what is socially acceptable, they are not perceived as a distinct group. ‘Vernacular Standard Age 0 30 50 70+ Figure 4.3 Age and standard speech (adapted from Downes 1984: 191) 612 Sociolinguistics Yet, young and middle-aged adults are set off from the other age groups in various ways, some of which are linguistically encoded. For example, in languages with complex personal pronoun systems, such as Russian, French and German,’ the transition from adolescence to adulthood is often marked by a change of pronominal address. Differences of one or more generations call for different pronouns, that is, second person plural, French and Russian, or third person plural, German, rather than the more intimate second person singular. However, as will become clear in chapter 6, more is involved than age in the appropriate choice of pronouns. In the present context it is suffi- cient to note that pronominal address systems are used, among other things, to give expression to the social meaning of difference in generation. Old age me The last phase of the lifespan brings with it a weakening of the pressure to conform to societal norms. For example, a return to more dialectal speech forms after retirement has occasionally been observed; however, the social reasons that might underlie changing preferences of elderly speakers have been much less investigated than actual and presumed age-related changes in language ability. To the extent that the language of the elderly has been investigated at all, it has come into focus mainly from a clinical perspective where various sorts of defi- ciencies ranging from hearing loss and reduced speech-recognition ability to word-finding difficulties, aphasia, Alzheimer’s disease and other geriatric communication disorders are dealt with. Outside these areas of physical and mental health, detailed analyses of the speech of. elderly people are sporadic. Characteristics of elderly speech forms are not seen as a matter of choice, but as a natural concomitant of ageing which implies progressive decline of competence. This perspective, which has dominated research on language behav- iour in later life, has been criticized by Coupland, Coupland and Giles (1991: 13) for its ‘ageist ideological slant’. They emphasize the import- ance of considering the possibility that ‘the deficit tradition in language research [of the elderly] is just another branch of cultural prejudice against the elderly, with its selective design and pervasive concern with linguistic decrement’ (1991: 13) Speech forms and communication disorders that result from age- induced deterioration of communication are of little sociolinguistic interest, because the underlying restrictions on elderly speakers’ choices are biological rather than social. Nevertheless there are important issues for sociolinguists to investigate in cross-generational talk with older people. Applying a research paradigm developed by HowardCommunicating across generations 63 iles and his associates, Kemper (1994) has described a special speech register, termed ‘elderspeak’, as an accommodation to communicating with older adults. The gist of accommodation theory is what Yukichi Fukuzawa in his observations of the dialects of Osaka, reported in japter 2, so deplored (see pp.17-18): rather than being immutable and sistent in their stylistic choices, speakers accommodate to their terlocutors. In so doing, they cannot but rely on their own image of ir interlocutors which more often than not is shot through with ietal stereotypes. Hence they do not necessarily accommodate to e communication needs of their interlocutors, but to their own ideas ‘of these needs. The characteristics of elderspeak, for example, slow ‘duction, simplified syntax, avoidance of difficult words, and exag- rated prosody, testify to this tendency. They are reminiscent of other iplified speech registers such as those directed at babies, foreigners, id pets. It has, therefore, been characterized as the result of over- ommodation and aptly labelled ‘secondary baby-talk” (Coupland, ‘oupland and Giles 1991: 20). A behavioural feature elderspeak shares with baby-talk is the patron- ‘ing attitude its speakers often display toward elderly people, both those sho are cognitively impaired and those who are not. Especially in stitutional settings, such as hospitals and nursing homes for the elderly, simplified speech varieties are routinely employed in cross-generational talk regardless of whether or not circumstances require such a stylistic choice. Many elderly people find it distressing to be addressed in this way, a problem that in ‘greying’ societies is beginning to be noted by a growing number of people and, therefore, opens up a new field of sociolinguistic research. Elderly speakers and declining languages soso At the beginning of this chapter we have mentioned one area of research where elderly speakers have captured the attention of linguists ‘not because they are old, but because there are no others. In the event, it is elderly speakers’ proficiency rather than their declining competence that is of interest, since they are the last generation of speakers of a waning language. For example, in 1997, the Administration for Native Americans reported 22 first speakers of Potawatomi, an Algonkian language. The average age of the group was 78. Whoever wants to study Potawatomi, as well as many other endangered languages, will have to rely on elderly speakers as informants. This raises the intriguing and methodologically problematic question of whether or to what extent a parallel must be assumed to hold between the fading competence of, elderly speakers and the declining expressive power of a language which is about to fall into oblivion. As Dorian (1989) and others have shown,64 Sociolinguistics language obsolescence involves both diminishing numbers of speakers and language contraction. In terms of linguistic choices this means that as a language is chosen less frequently for communication, the range of. expressive choices it affords its speakers shrinks. The problem of contracting languages is directly related to the theme of this chapter, age differentiation in language. For, when only old people speak a language its survival chances are not good, and the very fact that it is spoken by old people only is one of the reasons. This is not primarily because they are going to die, but because young people are disinclined to speak like old people. Bolinger’s remark quoted at the beginning of this chapter that ‘a fashionable old man is almost a contra- diction in terms’ comes to bear here. Once a language has become associated with the elderly, it is an up-hill battle to shed this image. Like a bear market where no one wants to buy because no one wants to buy, a waning language is chosen by no one because no one chooses it. In monolingual communities, adolescents deviate from the adult norm, but in many cases their deviant choices are innovative and reinvigorate the language. In multilingual communities, however, adolescent minority- language speakers’ deviant choices often amount to a choice against the language of their elders. The general lesson to be learnt from this most dramatic instance of intergenerational linguistic gap is that linguistic choices are driven among other things by beliefs and attitudes about age divisions and notions of age-specific suitability. Beliefs and attitudes Coexisting generations not only use language differently, they also have beliefs about, and attitudes toward, their different speech varieties. Such beliefs and attitudes reflect social power relations and, being as they are inextricably interwoven with language socialization, perpetuate the age modulation of language. Childhood, adolescence and old age are often singled out as problematic life stages separated from normal social life. Grown-ups constitute the mainstream who are expected to take care of those too little or too frail to manage their own affairs. More generally, those who control the material resources of society determine what is and what isn’t deviant. Their pivotal position of social strength finds expression in age differentiation of language behaviour and in social attitudes toward age-specific speech varieties. The natural process of ageing is thus given a social form which impacts on speech behaviour from birth. Many observations testify to the contingent nature of the resulting differentiations. For example,sumptions about the age at which children are able to understand +h vary across cultures. The Ashanti of Ghana interpret infants’ alizations as manifesting a special language which is quite different m adult language and used only to communicate with other chil- . According to this belief, the native language is a second language ‘everyone (Hymes 1974: 31), In some societies ‘children are to be seen, t heard’, while their active participation in adult talk is encouraged in ers. Just as different cultures take different positions on language ‘ialization (Schieffelin and Ochs 1986), attitudes and ideas about itergenerational linguistic differences are variable. For example, the clash between the upcoming generation of adoles- nts and the adult establishment typical of the dynamic societies of the fest seems to find expression in the notion that language is always jing down the drain. From the point of view of the adults there is no \certainty about who is to blame. That ‘they can’t even say it properly yw’ is a complaint that reverberates through the ages, and they are wariably the young who are accused of sloppy pronunciation and isregard for grammar and good taste.” While people get more respect- ble with growing age, language seems to be deteriorating all the time, r does anyone remember the language of the young being praised for beauty and refinement? “Youngspeak’ is liable to be branded as viant, obscene, unsophisticated, if not an insidious attack on the guage itself, while ‘oldspeak’ needs not fear a more serious reproach om being quaint. Certain aspects of youngspeak are designed 10 distinguish the speakers from their elders. Fed by the past, they don’t want to swallow it whole, but appropriate it, make it their own. The young have reasons, other than incompetence, for choosing their words as they do. The perennial generation conflict is played out on the stage of language. Youngspeak is designed to threaten time-tested ways which the older generations want to retain. It has many ephemeral ‘elements, like a fad, but is also an expression of creativity and innova- tion. There is always a tug of war between progress and decay. Language acquisition, it must be remembered, is not copying, but reconstruction of a system which overlaps with the previous genera- tion’s system but never completely duplicates it. Like the relative brevity of adolescence, the language that charac- terizes it is transitory. It is often ahead of codified norms; the young leave the old behind, but intergenerational differences are kept in bounds by the individual need to communicate with one’s parents and children. This’ necessity can be understood as constraining the tange of deviant choices. Age-cohort stereotyping thus contributes to the self-regulation of language as it moves through time, by assigning to the young the role of making adjustments and to the old that of preventing dysfunctionally rapid change. How this complex interplay Communicating across generations 6566 Sociolinguistics between coexisting generations can be interpreted as evidence of lan- guage change in progress is the question we will discuss in the next chapter. Questions for discussion : (1) What is it that makes an expression archaic or modern? Make a list of such expressions and discuss their properties. (2) What general conclusions can be drawn about speech behaviour from the phenomenon of parentese? @) How is baby-talk different from parentese? Discuss different meanings of the term. (4) Make a list of age-exclusive and age-preferential expressions and discuss the differences. (5) Do you have a pet or know someone who does? Do you, or does the pet owner, speak to the pet and if so, how? (Hint: is there anything that babies, foreigners and elderly people in need of care share in common?) Notes : 1, In recent decades an increasing number of publications have dealt with language obsolescence, indicating both growing awareness and the urgency of the problem. See, e.g., Dorian (1989), Grenoble and Whaley (1998), Krauss (1992), Robins and Uhlenbeck (1991). The activities of the Foundation of Endangered Languages are documented at http://www.ogmios.org/home.htm The literature on first language acquisition in psycholinguistics and developmental psychology is vast. See Fletcher and MacWhinney (1995) and Steinberg, Nagata and Aline (2001) for an overview. Menn and Gleason (1986) have studied adult beliefs about the ways in which different age groups talk. They found that children acquire these strongly stereotypic notions current in their society at an early age. Adult communicative competence includes beliefs about age differentiation in speech which they acquired as infants. 4, For an in-depth discussion of stereotypes about, and the empirical investigation of, speech styles of German youth subculture see Schlobinski (1995), 5. Honorifies are an important stylistic device for the expression of politeness. See chapter 6 below for a discussion of linguistic politeness. 6. Gendai yogo no kiso chishiki (Tokyo, 1994: 1093). This is an annual publication that follows social trends and records new terms that receive attention in the media, 7. Cf. Head’s (1978) survey of pronominal address in 100 languages. Muihlhausler and Harré (1990) offer a critical discussion of the sociolinguistic issues involved in personal pronouns which covers a wide canvas but is not always reliable. 8. The similarity of baby-talk and talk directed to elderly speakers was first pointed out by Ferguson (1977) who characterized both as simplified registers. 9. To borrow the title of Baron’s 1982 bookCommunicating across generations ‘67 and, Nikolas, Justine Coupland and Howard Giles. 1991. Language, Society and the Elderly: Discourse, Identity and Ageing. Oxford: Blackwell. » Monica. 1991. Baby Talk. The Art of Communicating with Infants and Toddlers, New York: Plenum Press Penelope (ed.) 1991. New Ways of Analyzing Sound Change. San Diego: Academic Press, ine, Suzanne, 1984. The Language of Children and Adolescents. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. effelin, Bambi B. and Elinor Ochs. 1986. Language Socialization across Cultures, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.