Language choice and code switching of the elderly and the youth
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Maya Khemlani David
Abstract
The language of the aged has not been given as much attention as that of the youth. Hence, the aim of this research is to compare the language choices and discoursal features of the aged with that of the youth. This study focuses on the Chinese community from Tangkak, Johor, in Peninsular Malaysia, who use the Hokkien dialect. The older informants preferred to speak in their dialect while the younger informants preferred Mandarin. Older informants seldom code-switched but when they did, the codes in their mixed discourse were Hokkien and Mandarin, while that of the younger informants were Mandarin, Malay, and/or English. On the basis of an analysis of the audio recordings, observations, field notes, and informal interviews, the features are identified in the discourse of the aged, i.e., off-target verbosity (OTV), painful self-disclosure (PSD), and self-handicapping talk. The study shows that the discoursal features of the aged are clearly different from that of the youth.
© 2009 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin
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- Preface: commemorating the 200th issue of IJSL
- Introduction: aging and language
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- Gaelic on the Isle of Skye: older speakers' identity in a language-shift situation
- Language choice and code switching of the elderly and the youth
- Intergenerational phonological change in the Famagusta dialect of Turkish Cypriots
- First language attrition and reversion among older migrants
- Managing unavoidable conflicts in caretaking of the elderly: humor as a mitigating resource
- Beyond stereotypes of old age: the discourse of elderly Japanese women
- The multifaceted category of “generation”: elderly French men and women talking about May '68
- Positioning age: focus group discussions about older people in TV advertising
- Age categories as an argumentative resource in conflict talk: evidence from a Greek television reality show
- The politics of language and nationalism in modern Central Europe, by Tomasz Kamusella
Articles in the same Issue
- Preface: commemorating the 200th issue of IJSL
- Introduction: aging and language
- Age and speaker skills in receding languages: how far do community evaluations and linguists' evaluations agree?
- Gaelic on the Isle of Skye: older speakers' identity in a language-shift situation
- Language choice and code switching of the elderly and the youth
- Intergenerational phonological change in the Famagusta dialect of Turkish Cypriots
- First language attrition and reversion among older migrants
- Managing unavoidable conflicts in caretaking of the elderly: humor as a mitigating resource
- Beyond stereotypes of old age: the discourse of elderly Japanese women
- The multifaceted category of “generation”: elderly French men and women talking about May '68
- Positioning age: focus group discussions about older people in TV advertising
- Age categories as an argumentative resource in conflict talk: evidence from a Greek television reality show
- The politics of language and nationalism in modern Central Europe, by Tomasz Kamusella
