Age as a Sociolinguistic Variable
Aging is central to human experience. It is the achievement of physical and social capacities and
skills, a continual unfolding of the individual's participation in the world, construction of personal
history, and movement through the history of the community and of society. If aging is movement
through time, age is a person's place at a given time in relation to the social order: a stage, a
condition, a place in history. Age and aging are experienced both individually and as part of a cohort
of people who share a life stage, and/or an experience of history.
The study of age in relation to language, particularly the study of sociolin-guistic variation, lies at the
intersection of life stage and history. The individual speaker or age cohort of speakers at any given
moment represents simultaneously a place in history and a life stage. Age stratification of linguistic
variables, then, can reflect change in the speech of the community as it moves through time
(historical change), and change in the speech of the individual as he or she moves through life (age
grading).
Much of the work that focuses on age in the field of variation concerns the disambiguation of age-
stratified data, determining when change in apparent time, or time as reflected in age, is a reflection
of historical change in real time and when it represents age grading. On the one hand, historical
change will inevitably be reflected in age stratification. But for change in apparent time to regularly
reflect change in real time, the speech of an age group would have to correspond in a predictable way
to the state of the language at some fixed life stage. This means that the individual's linguistic system
would have to remain relatively stable throughout life, or any changes in the linguistic system during
the life course would have to be regular and predictable. Yet progress through the life course involves
changes in family status, gender relations, employment status, social networks, place of residence,
community participation, institutional participation, engagement in the marketplace – all of which
have implications for patterns of variation. It is unlikely that speakers pass through all the identity
changes of a lifetime without making any changes in their use of sociolinguistic variables.
Yet although age is one of a
small number of social variables routinely included in community studies, there has been no
concerted study of variation from a life-course perspective. Like gender, age correlates with variation
by virtue of its social, not its biological status (although biology of course is part of the social
construction of age and gender). The study of age as a sociolinguistic variable therefore requires that
we focus on the nature and social status of age and aging. A life-course perspective raises some new
issues in the study of variation, and points out blank spaces in our knowledge. The following
Linguistics » Sociolinguistics discussion will begin with an examination of the reflection of linguistic change in age stratification,
and move on to an examination of the social nature of age and its relation to variation.
Apparent and Real Time
Community studies of variation frequently show that increasing age correlates with increasing
conservatism in speech. With just the evidence from apparent time, it is ambiguous whether the
language patterns of the community are changing over the years or whether the speakers are
becoming more conservative as they age – or both. Without evidence in real time, there is no way of
establishing whether or not age-stratified patterns of variation actually reflect change in progress.
Several kinds of evidence have been called upon to provide real-time evidence: A number of studies
have sought to approach real time by combining data on variation in apparent time with general
sources on earlier stages of the language. Sources such as old recordings , geographical evidence , and historical accounts of the
dialects under study have been used to contextualize contemporary data, and to establish the
possibility that current age differences represent a continuation of an ongoing change process.
The validity and interpretability of evidence in real time depends on the extent to which the samples
representing different time periods are comparable: How close is the match between communities,
and between the speaker samples across and within communities? Replications of community studies
at some time distance are obviously the best source for evidence in real time. Such studies are still
relatively rare, but the lengthening history of the study of variation, particularly since Labov's 1966
New York City study, is beginning to produce replications. Two kinds of re-study of the same
community are possible: studies of age cohorts as they pass through time, and studies of life stages
as they are occupied by successive age cohorts. Studies in real time can also either follow the same
individuals (panel study) or they can collect samples of comparable but different individuals at
successive points in time (trend study). A trend study with an age-graded sample is the only kind that
can unequivocally show change in progress as it shows successive cohorts at each life stage. A panel
study is the only kind that can unequivocally show change in the individual lifetime, as it sees the
same people at different life stages. Trend studies, however, can yield convincing evidence of both
kinds of change.
Most community studies of change in real time have been trend studies, such as Hermann in
Charmey , Cedergren in Panama, Fowler in New York, and Trudgill
in Norwich. These studies confirm that many, but not all, age-stratified variables represent
change in progress. Gauchat found apparent time evidence of five changes in Charmey. Over
20 years later, Hermann revisited Charmey and compared the speech of 40 speakers with
Gauchat's evidence. From these comparisons, Hermann found evidence of change for four of the five
changes in apparent time reported by Gauchat. Bailey and others ( compared apparent time data
from the Phonological Survey of Texas, gathered in the late 1980s, with data from the Linguistic Atlas
of the Gulf States (Pederson et al., 1986), gathered in the mid-1970s. While this study covered a wider
geographical area and hence cannot be considered a re-study of a community, it targeted a fairly
specific area and population. Indications of change in progress from the apparent time data in the
later sample were confirmed by differences between the two samples. Trudgill (1988), revisiting
Norwich at 20 years’remove, found that variants occurring only in the speech of young people at the
earlier time had caught on as changes and were spreading through the earlier age groups.
Other studies in apparent time have found evidence not only of historical change, but of age grading.
Cedergren , in her trend study of Panama City, compared two age-graded samples with a time
depth of 20 years. In a comparison of equivalent age-graded samples at two points in history,
differences due to change in real time are reflected in differences between successive cohorts at the
same age, while differences due to age grading are reflected in differences within cohorts between the
two times. Cedergren's data show a clear increase in the
lenition of /tG/ between successive cohorts at the same age, indicating a progress of change across
the community. At the same time, in the middle-aged groups (roughly 30 to 70 years of age), the
speakers increased their use of lenition over the 20 years between studies. Thus the same change that
affected the community as a whole affected the speech of individuals in their lifetimes, showing that
adult speakers can be active participants in sound change.
Paunonen separated men and women in a study that combined a trend study and a panel
study, comparing three age cohorts, at two different points in time, of men and women who were
young, middle-aged, and old in 1970 and 1990. One change examined in this study, the replacement
of synthetic with analytic possessive constructions, showed change across cohorts but little change in
the speech of individuals. The other, however, the reversal of a normative insertion of /d/, showed
both community and individual change, both of which showed important gender effects. The trend
study showed that women in general were becoming less normative through time. The panel study
found older women mirroring this trend within their own lives: Those who were middle-aged in the
1970s were less normative in the 1990s, when they were old
On the other hand, men, and women who were young in the 1970s, became slightly more normative as they aged. Paunonen's finding that gender interacts with age is most likely not unusual particularly, perhaps, in
times of change in gender norms and practices. Labov has emphasized that uncovering
patterns of change requires isolating segments of the community that participate differently in
change. It has been established that women commonly lead in sound change, as do the upper
working and lower middle classes. The progress of sound change can best be traced by separating
these groups out in age stratifications. Studies that separate age stratification by class and by gender have shownthat grossly combined age figures can mask specific group effects. If speakers are combined in agegroups without attention to such effects, what might look like an overall age difference could actuallybe more specifically located.
Approaches to Age
Community studies of variation rely overwhelmingly on chronological age to group speakers; indeed
to the Western social scientist, chronological age is age. However, inasmuch as social and biological
development do not move in lock step with chronological age, or with each other, chronological age
can only provide an approximate measure of the speaker's age-related place in society. To the extent
that age stratification reflects historical change alone, the date of acquisition would be sufficient to
group speakers in relation to time. And since individual differences in that age are relatively small in
relation to the life span, chronological age would be an adequate measure. However, evidence that
some kind of individual change takes place throughout life necessitates a longer view of development,
and investigation of the social changes that underlie correlations with chronological age.
Because the span of ages is so great, it is difficult for community studies to achieve fine-grained age
differentiations with any statistical significance. This necessitates the grouping of speakers,
frequently in fairly broad age ranges or cohorts. Community studies have defined cohorts etically and
emically. The etic approach groups speakers in arbitrarily determined but equal age spans such as
decades while the emic approach groups speakers according to some shared experience of time. This shared experience can be related to life stage or to history.
Some studies have grouped speakers according to general life
stage, particularly childhood, adolescence, young adulthood.
In all societies, age has significance because the individual's place in society, the
community, and the family changes through time. The marking of maturation, whether by
chronological age or by life event or stage, is regulatory, involving both authorization and control.
The accomplishment of particular age-related landmarks authorizes the individual to assume
particular roles, freedoms, and responsibilities. At the same time, it obligates the individual to give up
old ones. Age systems, then, serve to mark not only an individual's progress in the life trajectory, but
the individual's progress in relation to societal norms. Age systems often involve sanctions to enforce
age-appropriate behavior; to enforce the normative timing of life events (such as the pressure on
women to marry before a certain age), and life-stage or age-appropriate comportment.
In industrial society chronological age, measured as an accumulation of years since birth, serves as an
official measure of the individual's place in the life course and in society, by reference to a societal
dating system. But while chronological age lays out age as a homogeneous continuum based on
calendar time, it is imbued with meaning by a variety of life landmarks, which are not necessarily
evenly distributed over the life course. Certain birthdays are associated with transformations of
personal (e.g., sweet sixteen) or institutional (e.g., legal majority) status. Simple decades can also
have major social significance – unrelated to official landmarks, they serve more to mark a
homogeneous passage of time as well as transformations in general life stage. Other aspects of the
passage through life are less specifically tied to chronological age and more tied to life events, such
as changes in religious status (bar and bat mitzvah, baptism), institutional status (first day of school,
retirement), family status (marriage, first child), legal status (naturalization, first arrest).
These events in turn are associated with life stages: childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, middle age, old age. It is these general life stages that are most frequently invoked to explain behavior.
Differences in age systems across cultures can have important sociolinguistic implications. Cross-
cultural differences may show differences in life events, in the domains that are significant for the
definition of those events, in the relative importance of generation and birth order, in the construction
of cohorts, etc. An age-set society, for example, which groups people born within a period that can
be as long as ten years, emphasizes solidarity within that set, frequently in opposition to other sets.
In such a society, one might expect to see less continuous age stratification of variables than in an
age-graded society in which the individual progresses according to personal developmental
landmarks.
The relation between age and other social factors will also differ across cultures. Age systems do not
affect people identically across the board. For example, the restriction of age sets in an age-set
society to males, while women's age is treated more fluidly, no doubt could also have implications for
interactions between gender and age in variation. Indeed, gender is quite explicitly constructed
partially in its interaction with age. Certain landmarks, such as coming of age across societies, are
gender-specific, and family, legal, and institutional status are commonly different for males and
females. Guttmann (1975) even hypothesized a universal crossover between gender and age, claiming
that while women become more autonomous, competitive, aggressive, and instrumental with aging,
men become more dependent, passive, and expressive. Ethnic differences in industrial society may
well juxtapose different age systems within a single community, so one cannot necessarily expect
chronological age to correspond uniformly to social age even within a speech community. Class
differences in industrial society also involve differences in age systems, since many aspects of the life
trajectory are class-based.
The emphasis on adult socioeconomic class and on the standard language marketplace as tying class
to language puts an adult focus on variation studies. Researchers tend to see adult patterns as
defining variation, hence as constituting the sole target of development. Thus the development of
patterns of variation is viewed as subsequent to early language development, and dependent on the
development of adult-like social awareness. In other areas of language development, however,
researchers have taken the integration of language
development and socialization as fundamental. And inasmuch as the input for language development
is itself variable , it would be ludicrous to believe that children ignore variability only to
“acquire” it later on. The focus on adult social practice in the study of variation may well obscure age-
specific use and interpretation among children. For this reason, a balanced view of sociolinguistic
aging must merge a developmental perspective with a mature-use perspective for all age groups.
The developmental perspective recognizes that development is lifelong: Indeed, life is about change.
Throughout the life course, speakers have a sense of moving forward in years and in maturity,
anticipating the next developments in their lives and assuming new ways of being – and perhaps new
ways of talking – as they go.
An important factor in children's lives is a developmental imperative (Eckert, 1994): an emphasis on
growing up, on being age-appropriate, or not being a “baby.” This imperative continues in other
forms throughout life, but is particularly intense and foregrounded in the earlier years. Emotional
issues associated with maturation, and the relation between age-appropriateness and social status at
all early ages is likely to be the ground on which children begin to develop a sense of the relation
between linguistic features and social identity and status. The use of baby talk marks a developmental
stage, but it also constitutes an important register (Andersen, 1990; Ferguson, 1977; Gleason, 1973)
for a wider age group. Baby talk is clearly linked with small children's social identities, and it is only
reasonable that the transition from baby talk as one's sole competence to baby talk as a stylistic
device for children who are no longer limited to that way of speaking would be seamless. Baby talk is
also not childbound. It serves not only as a register to use when speaking with small children, but
features of baby talk are used among speakers of all ages, including mature adults.
While we are used to thinking of social maturation as age-related in the early and the late years, we
are less likely to think of similar changes in mid-life as age-related. But it is difficult to find a
difference between anticipating a promotion from elementary school to junior high, and anticipating a
promotion from manager to vice president. In both cases, the individual anticipates and is concerned
about the challenge of new experiences and expectations, and with honing new skills as he or she
moves into a new life stage. A study of age as a sociolinguistic variable has to include perspectives
based in a broader range of life stages.