Age and speaker skills in receding languages: how far do community evaluations and linguists' evaluations agree?

The assumption that age will show a correlation with proficiency in the verbal performance of receding-language speakers often has a general validity where group profiles are considered, but exceptions on the individual level can be striking. Individual speaker profiles offered by Aikhenvald for a c...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of the sociology of language 2009-11, Vol.2009 (200), p.11-25
Main Author: Dorian, Nancy C
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Age
Aging
Correlation
Evaluation
Gaelic language
Language Usage
Language use
Local communities
Scotland
Skills
United Kingdom
Verbal communication
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Summary:The assumption that age will show a correlation with proficiency in the verbal performance of receding-language speakers often has a general validity where group profiles are considered, but exceptions on the individual level can be striking. Individual speaker profiles offered by Aikhenvald for a contemporary Tariana-speaking community and by Bloomfield for the Menomini-speaking community of his time are reviewed in this light and compared with several speaker profiles representing a contracting Gaelic-speaking community in Scotland. Community evaluations of speakers' abilities are shown to reflect local conceptions of speaking well and do not always accord with linguists' assessment of speaker skills. Linguists may need to be more cautious when attaching importance to the role of age as a correlate of proficiency.
ISSN:0165-2516
1613-3668
DOI:10.1515/IJSL.2009.042