Shune Samantha, Duff Melissa Collins
Communication Disorders and Sciences, The University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA.
Departments of Communication Sciences and Disorders & Neurology, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA.
J Interact Res Commun Disord. 2014;5(2):193-216. doi: 10.1558/jircd.v5i2.193.
Verbal play, or the playful manipulation of elements of language, is a pervasive component of social interaction, serving important interpersonal functions. We analyzed verbal play in the interactional discourse of ten healthy younger pairs and ten healthy older pairs as they completed a collaborative referencing task. A total of 1,893 verbal play episodes were coded. While there were no group differences in verbal play frequency, age-related differences in the quality and function of these episodes emerged. While older participants engaged in more complex, extended, and reciprocal episodes that supported the social nature of communicative interactions (e.g., teasing), younger participants were more likely to engage in verbal play episodes for the purpose of successful task completion. Despite these age-related variations in the deployment of verbal play, verbal play is a robust interactional discourse resource in healthy aging, highlighting an element of human cognition that does not appear to decline with age.
言语游戏，即对语言元素进行趣味性的运用，是社会互动中普遍存在的组成部分，发挥着重要的人际功能。我们分析了十对健康年轻伴侣和十对健康老年伴侣在完成一项协作指称任务时的互动话语中的言语游戏。总共对1893个言语游戏片段进行了编码。虽然在言语游戏频率上没有组间差异，但这些片段在质量和功能上出现了与年龄相关的差异。老年参与者进行的言语游戏片段更复杂、更持久且更具互动性，有助于交流互动的社会性（例如，打趣），而年轻参与者更倾向于为成功完成任务而进行言语游戏。尽管在言语游戏的运用上存在这些与年龄相关的差异，但言语游戏在健康老龄化过程中是一种强大的互动话语资源，凸显了人类认知中一个似乎不会随年龄增长而衰退的元素。
