Language, Culture and the Dynamics of Age / Edition 1

by Anna Duszak, Urszula Okulska

Overview

The book explores the role of age in communication under consideration of various age groups, genres, cultures and languages, and demonstrates the growing potential of age-related research for linguistic and social analyses that is founded on a more comprehensive and systematic basis than has been practiced so far. The volume establishes a point of contact with the work of Coupland, Giles and associates starting in the 1980s, and shows how it can be extended today to go beyond the early focus on detrimental aspects of aging. The contributors address social communication within and across age cohorts in all major age categories: the elderly, middle-aged, teenagers and children. The social skewing of the research presented explains the volume's focus on the discursive construction of social identities, with age implicated as a viable controller of how social action is strategically deployed for alignment and alienation, accommodation and divergence. The authors emphasize that a discourse construction of age and ageing is particularly important in the face of new challenges of globalization, increased human mobility and rising intergenerational conflicts.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783110238105
Publisher:	De Gruyter
Publication date:	11/16/2010
Series:	Language, Power and Social Process [LPSP] , #28
Pages:	388
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Anna Duszak and Urszula Okulska, University of Warsaw, Poland.

Table of Contents

List of contributors vii

Part I Introduction 1

Chapter 1 Age and language studies Anna Duszak Urszula Okulska 3

Part II Age and social identification 27

Chapter 2 Aging and sociolinguistic variation David Bowie 29

Chapter 3 Multiple identities of elderly Dutch-Australians Ingrid Seebus 53

Chapter 4 Narrative as snapshot: Glimpses into the past in Alzheimer's discourse Heidi E. Hamilton 77

Chapter 5 Alliance building and identity work in early adolescent girls' talk: Conversational accomplishments of playful duelling Angela M. Ardington 109

Chapter 6 Discursive construction of the JPII Generation in letters of Polish children and teenagers to Pope John Paul II Urszula Okulska 139

Chapter 7 Articulating male and female adolescent identities via the language of personal advertisements: A Malaysian perspective Bahiyah Dato' Hj. Abdul Hamid Kesumawati Abu Bakar 191

Part III Age in inter-generational communication 221

Chapter 8 Elder abuse and neglect: A communication framework Howard Giles Jill Helmle 223

Chapter 9 Discursive construction of (elderly) age-identity in Poland Agnieszka Kielkiewicz-Janowiak 253

Chapter 10 Alcohol as a way of "doing" adolescence: Perspective, stance and strategy in the discourse of Italian institutions Giuseppina Cortese 273

Chapter 11 "Old" and "young" in discourses of Polish transformations Anna Duszak 301

Chapter 12 "The regime of the adult": Textual manipulations in translated, hybrid and glocal texts for young readers Michal Borodo 329

Chapter 13 Age and the codification of the English language Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade 349

Index 375