Speech and Rhetorical Studies Commons^™

A Comparison Of The Cohesion In The Expository Discourse Of The Optimally-Healthy Young-Old And The Optimally-Healthy Oldest-Old, Penni Gay Siemens

Dissertations and Theses

The group of people aged 85 years and older is the fastest growing chronological population on the United States (Neal et al., 1993), and while a considerable amount of research has focused on the language of the elderly (those over 65 years), relatively little study has focused specifically on those aged 85 and older. This study is valuable in that it includes a large sample of optimally healthy people aged 85 and older. This sample of the optimally-healthy oldest-old will help define what changes, if any, are a function of age alone and what changes are clinical (associated with some …