Intergenerational communication: evaluations and analyses of talk exchanged between older adults and younger adults.

This special journal issue focuses on potential barriers and facilitators of successful intergenerational encounters. Communication Accommodation Theory has provided a useful and broad-based conceptual framework for understanding the nature of both appropriate and inappropriate modifications made in intergenerational communication. The first three articles concern the nature, eliciting conditions, and interpretations of patronizing speech. The last three articles shift from the manner of communication to an examination of the content of communication between young and older adults through discourse analysis.