The Sydney Speaks Lifespan Corpus

Abstract

At the core of research on language change over the lifespan is the panel study, a methodology that involves recording the same speakers at more than one point in time. This article provides an overview of the Sydney Speaks Lifespan Corpus (SSLC), a unique panel study of five Greek-background and five Italian-background Australians who were first recorded as teenagers between 1977 and 1981 and recorded again in 2019 as middle-aged adults. With its representation of ethnic minority speakers and expansion to conversational speech, the SSLC represents an important development in the availability and scope of panel corpora based in Australia. It also enhances the diversification of lifespan research, an area where speakers from ethnic minority backgrounds in diverse communities are underrepresented. This article describes each stage of the corpus’ compilation, situates the corpus in its social context and discusses the key finding that panellists’ movements over the lifespan are tied to their earlier positions relative to change.

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