The key objectives of our activities are to answer these questions:

Why do older Tyneside adults not all speak the same?

Do they pronounce words differently (e.g., walking vs. walkin’) because they had different educational opportunities or career pathways in early and mid-life? Do they choose different words (e.g., he was very strict vs. he was dead strict) because they experience later life in different ways – for example, some feeling older and others younger than they actually are?

Why do some older Tyneside adults change the way they speak over time?

Do they change their choice of grammatical structures (e.g., I got spoilt vs. I was spoilt) because of changes in their social worlds – for example, who they regularly communicate with and how often? Do they change their pronunciations (e.g., better vs. be’er) because their muscles gradually weaken as they get older?

To answer these questions and create a lasting record of the traditional Tyneside dialect, we have interviewed over fifty Tyneside adults aged 70+ about their experiences of growing up and growing old in post-war and post-millennium Tyneside. The recorded interviews form the basis of our linguistic analyses; the lived experiences shared by project participants help us interpret our findings.

The project champions older adults as creative and entertaining language users, and develops a better understanding of how age and ageing affect human behaviours such as language use.

If you would like to find out more about this research or be interviewed for the project in the future, please email us.