Overview

This collection engages with key questions in panel study research by exploring more deeply the interrelationship between the individual and the community and the impact on language change across the lifespan. The book is organized around four broad themes, each followed by a forward-looking commentary that ties together the key findings from the individual chapters. The first section examines style and socio-indexicality with the goal of disentangling short-term style-shifting from long-term language change. The second section continues with a focus on style, examining audience design and socially meaningful variation in professional settings as an integral component of age- and role-appropriate behavior. The third section considers different language/dialect contact scenarios and the impact on changing social identities and behavioural norms, which can fluctuate across the lifespan for different settings and life-stages and for different types of variables. The final section explores a computational, agent-based model of lifespan and community change, targeting the practical challenges often encountered in panel research, such as data sparsity and the short duration of the human lifespan. A postscript underscores the importance of considering style and setting as integral aspects of panel research rather than as afterthoughts and of leveraging computational modeling to expand our understanding of the interdependencies between lifespan and community change. This book will appeal to scholars interested in language variation and change, sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, and computational linguistics.

Full Product Details

Author:   Isabelle Buchstaller ,  Karen V. Beaman (Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany)
Publisher:   Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint:   Routledge
Weight:   0.810kg
ISBN:  

9781032413082

ISBN 10:   1032413085
Pages:   326
Publication Date:   31 October 2025
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Not yet available  
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Table of Contents

List of Figures List of Contributors Acknowledgements Towards an understanding of stylistic choices in change across the lifespan Isabelle Buchstaller and Karen V. Beaman PART I. Style and Socioindexicality Ageing in style: Towards disentangling style-shifting and lifespan change James Grama, Isabelle Buchstaller, Anne-Marie Moelders, Lea Bauernfeind and Mirjam Eiswith Investigating age effects in the perception of (ing): A study on professionalism ratings from the North East of England Johanna Mechler Change in language attitudes in real-time: Results from the Ulrichsberg project in Austria Lars Bülow, Philip C. Vergeiner, and Dominik Wallner Commentary – Style and social meaning across the lifespan Suzanne Evans Wagner PART II. Style and Audience Design Tracking stylistic variation over a very long lifespan Laurel MacKenzie Stability, change and reversal in public speech: A longitudinal case study Josiane Riverin-Coutlée and Jonathan Harrington Commentary – Exploring Stylistic Repertoires Across the Lifespan Silvina Bongiovanni, Betsy Sneller, and Chantal Tetreault PART III. Language Contact Change and Stability: Intra- and inter-individual coherence across the linguistic architecture Karen V. Beaman Lifespan change and intragenerational norms in a diverse speech community: Australian English diphthongs Elena Sheard A panel study of language obsolescence: The fate of (ɡ) in a Pacific Japanese colonial koiné Kazuko Matsumoto and David Britain Commentary – Complex contact scenarios in the context of individual lifespan change Devyani Sharma PART IV. Computational Modeling Structured heterogeneity in language change as a result of inter-speaker heterogeneity Gareth J. Baxter, Richard A. Blythe, and William Croft Commentary – The past, present and future of language and aging research David Bowie Index

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Author Information

Isabelle Buchstaller is Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany. Karen V. Beaman is Lecturer in the Quantitative Linguistics department at the University of Tübingen, Germany.

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