Linguistic insecurity among the elderly
Date
1985
Authors
Fowler-Graham, Dawn
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Abstract
From a gerontological perspective, it is important to study linguistic insecurity among older respondents as there is an ongoing debate involving two competing notions. The first notion assumes that the "old" are linguistically insecure because of their age and generally low levels of education. The second notion assumes the "old" are not insecure as they are less concerned with what is thought to be "correct".
Since Labov's (1966) original study on linguistic insecurity there has been relatively little research conducted addressing this issue. Owens and Baker (1984) developed a Canadian version of Labov's "Index of Linguistic Insecurity" . The research presented here, is a replication of Owens and Baker's study, in which they validated a Canadian Index of Linguistic Insecurity, as a measure of linguistic insecurity. Because Owens and Baker concluded that age might have a strong influence on s cores of linguistic insecurity, a convenience sample of 201 older respondents were tested for this research .
Data were gathered by administering the Canadian Index of Linguistic Insecurity and also questions concerned with respondents' demographic characteristics in face to face interviews. The age of the respondents ranged from 45 to 92 years of age. Statistical analysis was performed by conducting comparisons of frequencies, T-tests, or one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) on the mean scores of Owens and Baker's results and the various groups tested in this study. The findings of this study did not produce results that were similar to the results found by Owens and Baker. The older respondents studied here, showed little or no sign of linguistic insecurity. Approximately 68 percent of the sample had scores of zero, indicating no linguistic insecurity.
Contrary to what was predicted, the characteristics of age, sex, socio-economic class, and feelings of educational inadequacy were not related to scores on the index of linguistic insecurity. It was concluded that any one of four very diverse explanations might be responsible for the results found in this study. The first explanation for the low scores might be that the older respondents have outgrown any linguistic insecurity they once felt. A second possible explanation for the low scores might be due to a cohort or generational effect. The third explanation centers around some methodological problems encountered with the index some methodological problems encountered with the index during the research process. 12 insecurity as discussed by Labov and Owens and Baker.