第七届国际语言与老龄化研究会议（预通知）
2026年5月13日至15日，中国上海，同济大学
Call for Papers (1st round)
The 7th Conference on Corpora for Language and Aging Research
Negotiating Age-related Changes
May 13th – 15th, Shanghai, 2026
CLARe conferences bring together scholars engaged in the study of language and aging, with a focus on fostering interdisciplinary collaboration. The Seventh Conference on Corpora for Language and Aging Research (CLARe7) invites submissions under the theme Negotiating Age-related Changes. Contributions are welcome from corpus linguistics, multimodal communication, discourse studies, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and applied linguistics, including emerging AI tools. The conference seeks to advance dialogue on how language use changes in later life and how linguistic, cognitive, and interactional challenges related to aging are managed across diverse communicative settings.
We welcome proposals for presentations and posters dealing with issues related to language and aging. For CLARe7, submissions may address, but are not limited to, the following thematic areas:
l Corpus Linguistics and AI-enhanced Approaches to Lifespan Language Change
Corpus-based and AI-driven approaches provide powerful tools to examine language variation and change across the lifespan. Although language shifts in older adults have been studied using small-scale data, large corpora and machine learning offer new insights into linguistic trajectories related to aging, cognitive decline, or social positioning. This strand invites research on methodological advances, large-scale corpus analyses, or AI-assisted modeling of age-related language change. Emphasis is placed on ethical design, cross-linguistic comparisons, and the visibility of older speakers in language datasets.
l Multimodal and Technology-mediated Communication in Aging
The increasing prominence of multimodal and digitally mediated interaction raises important questions about how aging individuals engage with non-verbal and technological resources. While much research has focused on verbal decline in later life, less is known about how gestures, gaze, prosody, and digital tools contribute to communicative adaptation in older age. This strand invites studies from linguistics, communication studies, Human Computer Interaction, and aging research that explore how older adults navigate multimodal environments, including technology-mediated platforms, and how such practices support or constrain communicative participation in everyday and institutional contexts.
l Cognitive Aging, Psycholinguistics, and Compensatory Strategies
While cognitive changes in aging have been linked to alterations in language production and comprehension, the evidence remains mixed and inconclusive. This strand focuses on the psycholinguistic aspects of language and aging, especially the interaction between cognitive processing and linguistic behavior. Research is encouraged that investigates lexical retrieval, syntactic complexity, and fluency, along with the compensatory strategies employed by older speakers. Contributions drawing on experimental, longitudinal, and corpus-based approaches are welcome, particularly those that consider implications for diagnosis, resilience, and communicative well-being.
l Intergenerational Communication and the Construction of Age
Intergenerational communication provides a dynamic site where linguistic interaction both reflects and shapes changing perceptions of age. This strand explores how speakers across age groups co-construct age-related identities by managing communicative expectations and adapting to evolving social roles. Focus areas include interactional patterns of alignment and divergence, the negotiation of age-based norms in discourse, and the influence of institutional, familial, and digital environments on the ways age is understood and performed in everyday interaction.
l Pragmatic Adaptation and Discourse Management in Older Adults
While much research has examined sentence-level change in aging, discourse-level phenomena such as turn-taking, politeness, and topic management remain under-investigated. This strand focuses on the pragmatic skills older adults draw on to manage conversation in everyday, institutional, and digital settings. Studies may explore how older speakers adapt to changing communicative demands, maintain social relationships, and cope with breakdowns or misunderstandings. Interactional, pragmatic, and discourse-analytic approaches are especially welcome, with a view to understanding aging not only as a site of decline but also of adaptation and continuity.
l Negotiating Multilingualism in Later Life
Multilingual speakers navigate age-related changes through shifting language practices, proficiencies, and identities over time. This strand examines how language use, dominance, and repertoire evolve in bilingual and multilingual contexts as individuals age, with particular attention to the communicative roles and strategies of older multilingual speakers in familial, community, and transnational settings. Topics include trajectories of language maintenance and attrition, cross-generational transmission, code-switching, and pragmatic adaptation in later life, alongside the sociocultural, migratory, and institutional factors that shape multilingual experiences across the lifespan.
Submission Guidelines
The working language of the conference is English. Abstracts should be submitted anonymously with a maximum of 500 English words (not including references). A second page may be used to present relevant figures and tables. The abstract should clearly state how the paper will contribute to the themes of the conference. It should also provide a clear statement of the aims of the research, including the research question(s), some details about the methods used, and an overview of the results.
Abstracts should be submitted via EasyChair by the deadline.
Submission page:
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=clare7
Important Dates
· Deadline for abstract submission: September 30, 2025 (by 12:00 PM, Beijing Time)
· Notification of acceptance: 1 November, 2025
· Conference dates: 13-15 May, 2026
Venue
Tongji University, No. 1239 Siping Road, Shanghai, China (The conference will be held in hybrid format: onsite and online.)
Contact Information
For inquiries, further information will be available on the conference website:
https://ageing.tongji.edu.cn/info/1043/2681.htm
(More information coming soon.)
Conference contact email address:
ageing@tongji.edu.cn
Organizing Committee
Prof. Dr. Lihe Huang, Tongji University, China
Prof. Dr. Annette Gerstenberg, University of Potsdam, Germany
Prof. Dr. David Bowie, University of Alaska, USA