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The article begins by exploring briefly the role of the elderly in sociolinguistic theory and research. After an outline of the parameters of speech accommodation theory together with a new schematic model, it is argued that speech accommodation theory is a profitable framework for elucidating the sociolinguistic mechanics of, and the social psychological processes underlying, intergenerational encounters. A recent conceptual foray in this direction, which highlights young-to-elderly language strategies, is then overviewed with some illustrations. Contrastive data from a case study are then introduced, a discourse analysis of which allows us to conceptualize various elderly-to-young language strategies. This interpretive analysis suggests important avenues for extending speech accommodation theory itself. A revised, more sociolinguistically elaborated version of this framework is then presented which highlights strategies beyond those of convergence, maintenance, and divergence and leads to the conceptualization of over- and underaccommodation. Finally, and on the basis of the foregoing, a new model of intergenerational communication is proposed and Ryan et al.'s (1986) “communicative predicament” framework duly revised. (Accommodation theory, elderly, overaccommodation, case studies, discourse management, stereotypes, underaccommodation, interdisciplinary)

Since its introduction by Malinowski in the 1920s, “phatic communion” has often been appealed to as a concept in sociolinguistics, semantics, stylistics, and communication, typically taken to designate a conventionalized and desemanticized discourse mode or “type.” But a negotiation perspective, following the conversation analysis tradition of research on greetings and troubles telling, fits the discursive realities better. Phaticity is a multidimensional potential for talk in many social settings, where speakers' relational goals supercede their commitment to factuality and instrumentality. We then analyze phatic processes in elderly people's responses to a scripted how are you? opening in interviews about their medical experiences. Discourse analyses of phatic communion can raise important issues for gerontological and medical research. (Phatic communion, small talk, greetings, elderly talk, medical talk, preference structure)

Dating advertisements are the textual products of a discourse of commodification and marketization. They are certainly a prime site for witnessing the textual construction of self- and other-identities in the service of developing new relationships. Furthermore, close examination of a corpus of written and spoken dating advertisements reveals advertisers' resources for resisting full-blown self-commodification. Individuals can, to some extent, extricate themselves from the constraints of the media in which they operate. The analyses suggest that the moral case against `pernicious commodification', as a recurrent contemporary discursive formation and as a threat to late-modern self-identities and relationships, is overstated.

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Institutional discourse typically involves a dialectic between institutional (e.g. medical) frames and socio-relational frames for talk. The paper draws on audio-recorded data from a geriatric outpatients clinic in the UK to show how doctors and elderly patients collaborate in and negotiate the work of entering an apparently medical frame of talk. Particular attention is paid to sequences involving how are you?-type elicitations. Social and medical framings of talk are established and blended in complex discourse patterns. This blending may have a special salience in contexts, such as geriatrics, where holistic care has an explicit priority.

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