Language and Aging in Multilingual Contexts: 53 (Bilingual Education & Bilingualism) - Softcover

De Bot, Kees; Makoni, Sinfree

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1853598402 ISBN 13: 9781853598401

Verlag: Multilingual Matters, 2005

Inhaltsangabe

In this book different aspects of language and aging are discussed. While language spoken by and language spoken with elderly people have been treated as different areas of research, it is argued here that from a dynamical system perspective the two are closely interrelated.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Kees de Bot got his PhD from the University of Nijmegen. He was chair of Applied Linguistics and is now an emeritus professor from the University of Groningen and full professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Pannonia in Vészprem in Hungary. His research interests include the application of Complex Dynamic Systems Theory in second language development and multilingualism, multilingual processing, language attrition and the history of Applied Linguistics. More recently he got interested in ethical issues and truth in science. He is one of the organisers of the 2020 World Congress of the International Association of Applied Linguistics in Groningen.

Sinfree Makoni is Director of African Studies, Liberal Arts Professor of African Studies and Applied Linguistics, The Pennsylvania State University, USA.

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Language and Aging in Multilingual Contexts

By Kees de Bot, Sinfree Makoni

Multilingual Matters

Copyright © 2005 Kees de Bot and Sinfree Makoni
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-85359-840-1

Contents

Preface, vi, 
1 Introduction: Language, Aging and Multilingualism, 1, 
2 Language and Aging: A Dynamic Perspective, 5, 
3 Language and Communication with the Elderly, 16, 
4 Language Use and Language Skills in Healthy and Pathological Aging, 27, 
5 Resources in Language and Aging, 44, 
6 Multilingualism, Aging and Dementia, 60, 
7 Bilingual Aging in Older African-Americans, 78, 
8 The Effects of Age and Education on Narrative Complexity in Older Chinese in the USA (Sinfree Makoni with Hwei-Bin Lin and Robert Schrauf), 97, 
9 Language in an Epidemiological Study: The North Manhattan Aging Study in New York City, 118, 
10 Old and New Perspectives on Language and Aging, 133, 
Bibliography, 145, 

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Language, Aging and Multilingualism

While not all of us may be second language learners, or have participated in bilingual education or have lost a foreign language we once knew, we all become old, provided we don't die prematurely. And most of us at some stage in our life are confronted with the fact that our parents, or even our brothers and sisters, become old and with the fact that not all of our relatives and friends remain completely healthy mentally and physically until they die. In this book we want to focus on one aspect: language in aging.

Before going into the relation between language and aging, we need for a moment to stop and think what aging actually is. If we look at pictures of our own great-grandparents, we are likely to see pictures of very old people, the way they look, the way they dress. If we happen to have information on their real age, we will probably find out that those very old people are actually in their late 50s or early 60s. Even your own parents probably looked old when they were that age. In a sense they were older than we are, because in many ways, our healthcare system has led to increased life expectancies and more years in good health. Our attitudes towards aging have changed. There is still respect for old age, but we try to avoid being old, being seen as old or feeling old, as long as we can.

So what is aging? It is a generally accepted position in gerontology nowadays that age is an index variable that doesn't explain anything. It is probably best to define aging as a change on three interacting dimensions: biological, psychological and social. No one is denying that there are physical changes in our body over time, but they have their impact in different ways in different individuals. The risk of mental and physical decline increases more or less with age in the larger population, but strictly speaking grouping of individuals on the basis of age in order to learn more about aging is inappropriate. As we will argue later on, the effects of aging result from an interaction between these three dimensions, and only a part of the changes in one of these three dimensions can actually be compensated for by interventions in the other two dimensions.

Related to these issues is the problem of defining what constitutes normal healthy aging and pathological aging. As will be clarified in various chapters, no instrument is able to make a clear-cut distinction between the two. We take the position that pathology/non-pathology is a scale and that individuals have a position on that scale. As in most research on aging and dementia, we will look mainly at 'clear' cases and avoid the twilight zone in the middle up to a point. Maybe there is a place for language and assessment in that zone: maybe language can serve as an indicator of early dementia. We will present some research that suggests that this may be the case. A particularly difficult area is what has been called depressive dementia, i.e. syndromes that on the behavioral level are similar to degenerative dementia of the Alzheimer type but that are caused by depression and generally reversible. A treatment of that type is beyond the scope of the present book. An overview of research on language from this perspective can be found in Emery (1999).

There are other ways of looking at old age, not as a stage in life in which almost everything is worse than in earlier stages and the emphasis is on decline and on what is missing, but as a stage in its own right, just as childhood is not an incomplete version of adulthood. In this stage other matters become important; there is a different perception of time, work, maybe religion, certainly meaning of life. We can study this stage in itself and look at its inherent characteristics without reference to norms from an earlier stage. The two perspectives, aging as decline and aging as acceptance and fulfillment, lead to totally different questions we may want to answer in our research. While most of the research has been done from the decline perspective, we will argue for a perspective that looks at language and aging from the life-span development. In this perspective language development (or any development) does not stop at age 16 or 18 or whatever ages have been proposed for full language acquisition, but continues to develop over the life span. Due to changes in life, education, jobs, relationships or hobbies, people continue to learn new aspects of their languages. In such a perspective development includes not only growth, but also decline as part of the normal process.

Equally fundamental questions can be asked with respect to what, in this specific context, 'language' is. There is little point in going into this deep philosophical question in the context of the present book, but one needs to take a position on a number of issues in order to discuss the relation between language and aging. Here, language use is seen as very advanced and complex skilled behavior. Skills develop with use, and decline with non-use. The basic skills may be quite resistant to decline, like our abilities to ride a bicycle or swim. Once we've learned them we don't forget the basics. But for doing more advanced things quickly and properly, a lot of exercise is needed. In a way using language is like top sports: it is complex, extremely fast and calls for integration of many different skills. The complex parts of that skill need to be trained regularly to maintain them, otherwise they atrophy and fade, and are difficult to reactivate.

Language is not seen as a separate skill or capacity in our cognitive system. It is linked to and interacts with other subsystems, such as perception, memory and emotion. In the chapters that follow we will try to show how different components of language change over time with aging. Throughout this book, language will be presented as a complex dynamic system, and notions from dynamic systems theory will be used to show how language development across the life span fits in more general theories on development. The main thrust of this approach is that the language system is always changing and that it is always in interaction with other systems and dependent on input and use for maintenance.

The third main issue in the introductory chapters will be the role of memory in language use. Different types of memory play specific roles in language use. Many things have to be remembered in speaking and listening: the setting, the goal of the conversation, characteristics of the interlocutors, the topic, who said what and when. In the production and perception processes, there is temporary storage of outcomes of subprocesses. In particular working memory is crucial in language processing. The role of working memory is one of the most hotly debated issues in psycholinguistics at the moment, and though we will try to clarify the many functions of memory systems, a full treatment of this complex issue is beyond the scope of the present book.

The fourth issue has to do with multilingualism. As in the rest of the population, the majority of the world's elderly people are bilingual or multilingual. Multilingualism is defined here as being proficient to a certain degree in more than one language. In some definitions only people who grow up speaking more than one language qualify, but this definition has been discarded for a while now. There is no absolute measure for being bilingual. It does not amount to a given number of words or grammar rules in another language or the ability to carry out certain communicative activities in that language. In his definition of bilingual aphasia, Paradis (1987) takes 400 hours of formal instruction as the lower limit. How that translates to non-instructed acquisition is not really clear but participating in a foreign society and language for more than a few weeks should be enough. To what extent having more than one language is an asset or a problem in aging is unclear. On the one hand, the language system is more complex, and there are more languages that use mental resources; on the other hand, the other languages may be useful as an additional path or tool. Recent work by Bialystok and her colleagues (Bialystok et al. 2004) suggests that cognitive functioning in later life may actually be affected by life-long experiences in handling two or more languages. Second language learning by elderly people has not been studied at all so far. This is remarkable since many multilingualism settings are settings in which migrants of different ages move to other countries where they have to deal with other languages. In many western-European countries there is now almost forced enculturation, including learning the national language for adult migrants irrespective of their age.

The structure of this book is as follows. In the first part we will discuss Dynamic Systems Theory briefly and show how it applies to language and language development. This leads us to a model of language and aging that appears to fit very well with general notions about development in general. We will discuss the state of the art with respect to language and aging from psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic perspectives. Historically, old age emerged as a distinct stage in life after the onset of industrialization when the continuous flow from adulthood to old age was institutionally disrupted by mandatory retirement. The notions of old age were reinforced by biomedicine which is one of the most powerful forces in framing notions about aging in contemporary society. Biomedicine, like psycholinguistics, tends to treat ageing as inherently problematic. Sociolinguistics tends to treat ageing as inherently unproblematic with the crisis in ageing being attributed to mediating factors like culture and language and the nature of the social cultural factors. The integrative approach we are adopting here tries to avoid the ageing as inherently problematic stance of psycholinguistics and the ageing as free from problems of sociolinguistics. The idea that ageing is inherently problematic is false positive, while the idea that ageing is free from problems is false negative. We will also discuss issues of language and dementia in multilingual settings. Both the assessment and treatment of dementia type disorders will be high on the agenda in many countries in the years to come, and few countries have made adequate provisions to take care of elderly multilinguals, both highly educated speakers of many foreign languages and lowly educated and illiterate speakers of many second languages in migrant settings. In the second part of the book we will discuss findings from ongoing studies on Afro-Americans, Hispanics and Chinese in the USA. Data from these projects will be related to the various theoretical notions discussed in the first part of the book.

CHAPTER 2

Language and Aging: A Dynamic Perspective

In this chapter we want to present a general framework by linking research on language and aging with ideas on the development of complex systems. We will first discuss some of the basic notions in Dynamic Systems Theory (DST) and then show how these may be applied to language development. DST is primarily a branch of mathematics concerned with abstract structures. For this a whole range of concepts and tools have been developed that now find applications in a wide range of disciplines – from marine biology to demographics and aerodynamics. DST was adopted readily by the sciences, but it took a while for cognitive science to make the link. In the last decade major steps have been made in many aspects of cognition such as visual perception, sensorimotor activity and more recently also language and language development (see Port & van Gelder, 1995 for an overview). Over the years DST has emerged as a new perspective on development of systems. Its full mathematical application is problematic in many areas of research, primarily because there is simply not enough information for the formulation of the complex mathematical equations DST is based on, but in many areas ideas based on DST have been applied successfully to describe and explain development without the full mathematical modeling.

The most simple definition of a dynamic system is: a system of interacting variables that is constantly changing due to interaction with its environment and self reorganization. In such a system the variables it consists of interact with each other. Other variables that do not interact with all these variables are not part of the system, though they will be part of a larger system in which subsystems are the variables that make up the system. Dynamic systems are constantly changing but development is not typically linear, it goes in leaps and bounds and it tends to settle in what are called attractor states. These are states the system converges to in preference over other possible states. The definition of 'environment' is very broad: it entails everything from the physical environment to the social environment, including peer groups, teaching and so on.

For the implementation of Dynamic systems, connectionist network models have been found to work best. In such models there are nodes and connections between them. As a result of activation of connections by input and output, such connections get stronger. When connections are not strengthened regularly, they deteriorate. One of the consequences of the use of connectionist models is that traditional ideas on storage and retrieval come under attack.

The starting point of Dynamic Systems Theory is that a developing system is maintained by a flux of energy. Every developing cognitive system is constrained by limited resources, such as memory, attention, motivation and other aspects. The system is in constant complex interaction with its environment and internal sources. Its multiple interacting components produce one or many self-organized equilibrium points, whose form and stability depend on the system's constraints. Growth is conceived of as an iterative process, which means that the present level of development depends critically on the previous level of development (van Geert, 1994).

Several researchers have looked at language as a dynamic system (van Geert 1994, 1998; Elman, 1995; Larsen-Freeman, 1997; Herdina & Jessner, 2002; de Bot et al., 2005). A full treatment of all the ins and outs of this are well beyond the scope of the present book. Therefore the main aspects of the DST approach as far as they are relevant for this book can be summarized here:

• The aim of DST is to describe and explain development over time of complex systems.

• Systems consist of subsystems that interact.

• Changes in one of the subsystems have an impact on all other subsystems.

• Systems never completely settle as long as there are sufficient resources.

• Systems show variation over time.

• Systems develop through input from the environment and self-reorganization and have no in-built goal.

• Development can be growth or decline, and it is typically non-linear.

• Systems tend to settle temporarily in attractor states while they avoid other states, but when and how the system will settle cannot be predicted.

• Complexity emerges as a result of the interaction of variables, and the development of complex systems is unpredictable.

• Development is an iterative process: in each next step all the information of the previous steps is included.

The Application of DST in Cognition and Language Development

Language shows all the characteristics of a dynamic system, and accordingly language development can be viewed from a DST perspective: it is a system consisting of many subprocesses (e.g. pragmatic, syntactic, lexical, phonological) that interact (e.g. the syntactic and the pragmatic level), it shows variation over time, it develops through interaction and self-reorganization, it depends on internal and external resources, it shows growth and decline depending on the setting it is in, and it never settles completely. In development the system will temporarily settle in some states and not others (e.g. developmental stages in L1 and L2 development, fossilization as attractor states). Language use in the form of overt language production, but also subvocal use and inner speech probably play a role on the self-reorganization of the system: through use of elements in production, the position of those elements in the networks is strengthened. It could also be argued that output also acts as input for the system and that output in that way has an impact on the system.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Language and Aging in Multilingual Contexts by Kees de Bot, Sinfree Makoni. Copyright © 2005 Kees de Bot and Sinfree Makoni. Excerpted by permission of Multilingual Matters.
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Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Multilingual Matters
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2005
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1853598402
• ISBN 13: 9781853598401
• Einband: Tapa blanda
• Anzahl der Seiten: 170
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar