Speech Science Forum - Míša Hejná (Aarhus University)

Abstract:

This talk will focus on approaches to the variable of age which are found in the field of sociolinguistics. More specifically, it will compare chronological age with biological and social aspects of ageing and highlight potential disadvantages of the mainstream approach to age as established via date of birth. I will then proceed to an introduction of the ‘Ageing in LVC’ Project (2018-2022), which uses phonetic variation to shed light on our understanding of age in (socio)linguistics. Our conclusions so far are that it can be beneficial for the phonetician (and the linguist) to operationalise age through proxies other than date of birth: a multifaceted approach provides us with more explanatory power. However, multidimensional approaches also necessarily present us with more methodological challenges.