Language use evolves throughout one’s entire life. Ageing-related problems can affect one’s ability to express oneself and complicate communication with others. At UCL, a researcher at the Valibel Speech and Variation Research Centre (Centre de recherche Valibel – Discours et variation) carries out a project devoted to the study of language evolution among seniors.
Failing memory and hearing, a stroke’s aftermath, Alzheimer’s—many factors, past a certain age, can strongly influence one’s capacity to understand and/or make oneself understood. ‘When communication becomes difficult,’ sociolinguist Catherine T. Bolly says, ‘the elderly, and their loved ones and caregivers, are often bereft. This can have negative consequences on the elderly’s morale and quality of life, but also on their health. How do you treat someone when you don’t know what’s going on behind their silences or stammering or averted eyes? Communication is essential to a good therapeutic relationship—to any relationship!’
Seniors’ compensatory strategies
Even when linguistic ability becomes impaired, humans continue to try to communicate. Dr Bolly explains, ‘The hypothesis is as follows: when you lose access to words or your motor fitness declines, you compensate with other words, gestures or facial expressions. By studying these compensatory strategies, I hope to eventually be able to develop tools that improve communication with seniors.’
To do so, she works with an audiovisual corpus and analyses a series of interviews with elderly persons. ‘The first step is to identify and classify the different pragmatic strategies, whether verbal or non-verbal. Because when we speak, we don’t just say words. We also try to convey emotion, position ourselves relative to the other person or make sure the other person understands what we want to say.’
Verbal and non-verbal communication
On the non-verbal level, Dr Bolly studies body language: pragmatic gestures (shrugs, nods, pointing fingers, etc.), eye and facial expressions (blank stares, raising eyebrows, wide open eyes, smiles, etc.).
On the verbal level, she’s particularly interested in discursive markers. ‘These are words or groups of words that don’t change the fundamental message but embellish it with additional information.’ There are three types of discursive markers:
- Structural markers prioritise, order, punctuate or conclude the remark. Examples: ‘Firstly…, secondly…’; ‘First of all…next…finally’; ‘So’; ‘There you go!’, etc.
- Expressive markers accentuate our points of view or emotions. Examples: ‘Really’, ‘Oh dear’, ‘Frankly, (you’re getting on my nerves)!’, ‘No kidding!’, etc.
- Interactive markers aim to maintain the conversation flow or seek assurance that what we want to express is in fact being conveyed: ‘You see (what I mean)?’, ‘Mmhmm’, ‘You know (what I mean)?’, ‘Eh?’, etc.
Tell me how you talk, I’ll tell you who you are
Dr Bolly wants to draw up communication profiles of speakers using genuine conversations. ‘Certain gestures, facial expressions and discursive markers are combined in a similar way (or not) among certain individuals or groups of individuals. It’s a question of understanding how and why there are differences and what causes them. Certainly, a reduction in physical and cognitive functions (hearing, memory, attention span, etc.) influence speech. But they aren’t the only influencers. Other factors—emotional, intellectual, social or cultural—come into play regarding how one expresses oneself. The same goes for the listener: we don’t address our loved ones, a stranger, a doctor all in the same way, for example.’
Eventually, she hopes to create a map of the ways to express oneself and the communication strategies used by seniors as a function of their history, psychological state and even type of interaction. This could help those who communicate with seniors (loved ones, doctors, nurses, caregivers, etc.) to decipher their verbal and non-verbal language.
Expert networks
In 2014, Dr Bolly confounded an international network, the Corpora for Language and Aging Research (CLARe). She used it to organise a first international workshop on the subject at UCL. A second edition will take place 6-8 March 2017 in Berlin. The goal is to exchange at the international level best practices, data and knowledge related to language among seniors.
Dr Bolly is also the first linguist to have joined Louvain4Ageing, the UCL network dedicated to healthy ageing. Louvain4Ageing assembles some 50 researchers from UCL’s three sectors—health, the humanities and technology—and aims to encourage interdisciplinary collaboration toward concrete responses to the ageing of the population.
Candice Leblanc
Catherine T. Bolly’s research is or has been funded mainly by the University of Cologne (Sociolinguistic Lab), the Fonds Marie-Thérèse De Lava, the FNRS and a Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship (European Commission).
