AGE-GRADED

VARIATION
Anis Nabilah Binti Mohd Zainul Arifien
P85447

WHAT IS AGE-GRADED
VARIATION?
In linguistics, age graded variation is known as differences

in speech habit within a community that are associated with

age.
Or according to Llamas (2007), age grading is the change in

the individual speakers as it progresses through time.

DIFFERENT AGE GROUPS

Child
Adolescents
Adults
Elderly

AGE-GRADING IN DIFFERENT
AGE GROUPS

Children/Adolescents

Child-directed speech (either both to adult or child to child) cont.

(Roberts, 1993; Ro- 160 Penelope Eckert berts and Labov, 1992) has shown that

children's language at this early age is inherently variable, much the same as the speech
of the older people that serve as their models.

Birth-6
months:
Cooing
(production of
a, e, i, o, u.

6-10 months:
babbling
(practice
vowels more
precisely and
picks up
some
consonants
such as /m/
and /b/

C. George Boeree (2003)

12-18
months: the
beginning of
two word
sentences
such as:
- Gimme ball
- Daddy shoe
- More cookie

After 24
months:
adding
grammatical
constructions
such as:
- I walking
- in basket,
on floor

ADOLESCENTS
Adolescents is a transitional period when children become adults.
An increased of vernacular and linguistic variables.

CDS

Agesegregated
networks
form

Vernacular
reorganizatio
n

They come up with new terms for evaluation and social types (dweeb, homie)

as well as for emphasis (hella, totally).

To differentiate themselves from adult population and peer pressure

ADULTS
Conservative in their use of linguistic variables.
Workplace environment

They drop some of adolescents linguistic features as they become adult

(known as sociolectal retrenchment)

OLDER ADULTS/ELDERLY
The elderly constitute a heterogeneous group, but also a group whose

numbers progressively diminish.

Labov (1972), based on some evidence that older men's speech is less

conservative than the immediately younger age group because:

Lose concern with power relationships
Disengagement from the linguistic marketplace

However, as they age,

Having problems
with vocabulary
and cannot think
of expressions

In search of
words

Use less
subordinate
clause,
preferring to use
series of main
clauses

Having to
concentrate
more on the
content and
form of what
they are saying

Decrease in
grammatical
complexity

Slower
speech rate

CONCLUSION
Age is never static; it is constantly moving forward.
Age groups are not necessarily uniform across or between communities as

different cultural and material conditions make different life trajectories.

REFERENCES
C. George Boeree (2003), Language Development. Retrieved from

webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/langdev.html

http://

Eckert, P. (1984) Age as sociolinguistic variable, in F. Coulmas (ed.) The

Handbook

of Sociolinguistics, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 151-67

Holmes, J. (2001) An introduction to sociolinguistics. 2nd. Edition. Harlow,

England: Pearson Education Limited.

Labov, W. (1972) Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia: University of

Pennsylvania Press