Discourse in aging: Narrative and Persuasive

The growth in the elderly population has posed a social, economic and health challenge for the twenty-first century. OBJECTIVE: Aging is often characterized by changes in cognitive functions which affect the receptive and expressive capabilities of language. Since language plays a significant role in human life, we evaluate the existence of age-related differences in narrative and persuasive discourses. METHODS: The narrative discourse of 91 adults and persuasive discourse of 92 adults,aged from 19 to 75 years and stratified into four age groups,were examined. RESULTS: There was a statistically significant difference between coherence in the elderly group and each of the other three age groups for both types of discourse. There was also a significant difference for the cohesion variable between the elderly and the first age group for narrative discourse only. CONCLUSION: The results of this study demonstrate that discourse is influenced by aging and type (genre) of discourse task. Therefore, it is essential for clinicians to take into account the linguistic needs of elderly and incorporate these into their clinical programs. Also, this finding can help clinicians to distinguish between discourses of normal aging and other neurologic disorders (for example dementia, right hemisphere damage, aphasia).