title: Audience Design and Social Relations in Aging.
abstract: This study asks two questions: (1) Do older adults modify their language based on age of the listener (audience design)? (2) Does social contact affect audience design in older adults? Older adults (n = 34; mean age = 82) engaged in an instructions task with two fictive listeners (a child and an adult) to test these questions. Results show that older adults used a greater total number of propositions and rapport-building devices and a lower type-token ratio when giving instructions to the child compared to the adult listener. Adults with more social interactions used more propositions when talking to a child. In addition, satisfaction with interactions was significantly positively related to task-tracking devices and negatively related to rapport-building devices by older adults. These results suggest that audience design and social relations are worth further study in language maintenance in older age.
authors: Institute for Research on Women and Gender, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA dkc@umich.edu.
authors: Deborah
authors: D
authors: Keller-Cohen
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D015146:Midwestern United States; D012931:Social Environment; D013060:Speech
keywords: aging; audience design; social relations