LING20010 Chap.4 Age, Apparent Time and Generational Change
Age, Apparent Time and Generational Change
Every language changes all the time, and this chapter covers how sociolinguists catch change while it is happening. Real-time studies return to a community later, either re-recording the same speakers in a panel study or sampling similar people in a trend study. Apparent-time studies compare age groups recorded at one moment, on the assumption that people keep the patterns they acquired young.
That assumption can fail: age grading, lifespan change and community-wide change all produce age differences that are not generational change, and the Queen's broadcasts and Attenborough's documentaries show individuals changing or not changing over decades.
The Week 3 tutorial task, comparing quotatives such as SAY, GO and BE like across age groups, is rebuilt here on invented numbers so that you can practise the percentages and the study label.
It also introduces corpora that make real-time comparison possible, from the Origins of New Zealand English collections to Sydney Speaks, which combines recordings from the 1970s and 1980s with new interviews and re-interviews of earlier speakers.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Panel studies and trend studies
- 02
Apparent time and the critical period
- 03
Age grading and peak-and-retreat patterns
- 04
Lifespan, generational and community change
- 05
Quotatives across age groups
- 06
The Golden Age principle
Worked example · free
Classify three ways to study change over time
- 1Project 1 holds the speakers constant across two recordings, so it is a real-time panel study.
- 1Project 2 samples similar but different people at a later time, so it is a real-time trend study.
- 1Project 3 compares age groups at a single time, so it is an apparent-time study.
- 1Apparent time assumes the variant is stable across each speaker's lifespan.
Key terms
- Panel study
- A panel study is a real-time design that records the same speakers at different points in time.
- Trend study
- A trend study is a real-time design that records comparable but different speakers at different times.
- Lifespan change
- Lifespan change is change in an individual's speech after the critical period of acquisition.
- Golden Age principle
- The Golden Age principle is Labov's observation that any change reaching public awareness meets a uniformly negative reaction.
Age, Apparent Time and Generational Change FAQ
Why can apparent time underestimate the rate of change?
If individuals keep changing in the same direction as the community during their lives, older speakers no longer sound like they did when young. The age gap then shrinks, so apparent time can understate how fast the change really moved.
What is a peak-and-retreat pattern?
Some variants peak at one life stage and then fade. Standard variants tend to peak in working age, when symbolic power in the job market rewards them, while covert prestige variants tend to peak in the teenage years.
What did the quotatives tutorial ask students to do?
Students identified quotative variants such as SAY, GO and BE like in transcripts, counted them for each speaker, grouped speakers by age, converted counts to percentages and named the design. Grouping by age at one recording time makes it an apparent-time study.
What is a trend study good for?
A trend study shows how a community's speech changes when it is too hard to find the same people again. Because new but comparable speakers are sampled, it tracks the community rather than individuals, which makes it more practical than a panel study.
Assessment move
Memorise the three designs as a small grid of people and time, then attach one lecture study to each: Montreal for panel and trend work, the Pitjantjatjara birth decades for apparent time. Next, learn the four kinds of age pattern with one example each, because a question can describe a pattern and ask for its name.
Practise the percentage routine on any small table: add the row total, divide each cell, check the row sums to about 100, and describe the trend before explaining it. Finally, rehearse the caveat sentence you would add to any apparent-time claim, naming age grading and the value of real-time data, so that it comes easily in a discussion section.
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