Tracking stylistic variation over a very long lifespan

Abstract

Few lifespan studies capture their speaker using more than one style, despite the potential benefits of doing so. Multi-style longitudinal data can help disentangle lifespan change from style-shifting, it can shed light on how older speakers use socially meaningful variants, and it can tell us about whether and how a speaker’s stylistic range can change over the lifespan. In this chapter, I address these points through a longitudinal study of /ɹ/-tapping in a 60-year corpus of David Attenborough’s televised nature documentaries. Focusing on /ɹ/-tapping in word-internal position (e.g., very, squirrel, forest), I use generalized additive mixed models to track Attenborough’s /ɹ/-tapping in two styles: pre-recorded narration and (semi-) extemporaneous on-screen speech. I find that Attenborough remains a stylistically dynamic speaker across his lifespan, though he taps less in narration style after the first two decades of his career have passed, causing his stylistic range to diminish. I discuss possible explanations for this finding, including changes in television broadcasting norms since the 1950s, sensitivity on Attenborough’s part to community change away from /ɹ/-tapping, and the reduced social pressure to use high-formality variants in later life, particularly after having achieved great success in one’s career.

Publication
In Connecting the Individual and the Community in Sociolinguistic Panel Research, ed. Isabelle Buchstaller and Karen V. Beaman, 107–138