What language can tell us about the elderly and their behaviour: an analysis of three language features subject to age-related change

Abstract

One of the priorities in a society with an ageing population is to support senior citizens in their aging process. An analysis of their language use can shed light on their behavior and needs. By means of a corpus of Dutch Twitter posts, that has been collected within the European project Grage, the language use of a group of elderly people over 67 will be compared with that of a group aged under 55. The analysis is carried out on the basis of three language features presumed to be subject to age-related change: pronouns, prepositions and hashtags. I will investigate the use of these features within each age group, as well as compare the uses of the groups with help of a statistical metric. Results indicate that pronoun and preposition use of the subjects is highly similar: differences in use are limited contrary to previous literature. Hashtags appear to be more informative. Contrasts in topic choice show distinct motives for using social media: the older group for leisure, the younger one to gain work-related exposure. In the discussion, I will point out the strenghts and weaknesses of this exploratory study and suggest a new variable for further research: 'membership age'.