My paper with Betsy Sneller and Chantal Tetreault . “Commentary - Exploring Stylistic Repertoires Across the Lifespan” is out! This paper is a chapter in Isabelle Buchstaller and Karen Beaman’s edited volume Connecting the Individual and the Community in Sociolinguistic Panel Research</i>.
Our chapter comments on two papers examining stylistic variation across the lifespan of two public figures: David Attenborough and Michaëlle Jean. The two papers – by Laurel MacKenzie, and by Josiane Riverin-Coutlée and Jonathan Harrington – illustrate innovative and robust ways to push forward a sociolinguistics of change over the lifespan that effectively accounts for style. And, each, in their own way, provides cutting-edge, robust, and meticulous scholarship about a highly complex topic and remarkably conclusive evidence for the relative stability of speaker style over the lifespan.