This doctoral project investigates how Polish-speaking adults aged 60 and above, often referred to as digital immigrants, engage with and adapt to language use in social media environments. Titled Digital Immigrants Aged 60+ in the World of Social Media: Sociolinguistic Aspects of Communication Among Older Adults and the Language of the Internet – A Comparative Study of Facebook Users and Non-Users, the study explores both linguistic behavior and media socialization processes within this underrepresented age group. The project responds to the demographic reality of Europe’s aging societies and draws on the tradition of language socialization research. Language socialization is understood here not only as the acquisition of linguistic competence, but also as a lifelong process tied to changing social roles and technological environments. In this context, the project addresses an observation by Penelope Eckert that age is a sociolinguistic variable and as individuals age, they often become less receptive to systemic linguistic change. Dominant approaches in the study of older adults’ language tend to emphasize physiological decline and cognitive limitations. Instead, this research explores secondary and reverse socialization processes: how older users adapt linguistically to digital platforms, and how their communicative behaviors reflect the norms of online environments dominated by younger generations. The project builds two corpora: one composed of Polish Facebook posts authored by users aged 60+, and a second consisting of offline Polish texts written by users and non-users. Using both quantitative and qualitative analysis, the study investigates syntactic, morphological, and pragmatic features of these texts, while also examining broader sociocultural implications. The findings contribute to our understanding of how language, age, and media intersect in an era of demographic aging and ongoing technological transformation, highlighting the role of social media in today's communication and ongoing language socialization process.

Digital Immigrants Aged 60+ in the World of Social Media: Sociolinguistic Aspects of Communication Among Polish-speaking Older Adults and the Language of the Internet
Aleksandra Miaskowska

Donnerstag, 12. Juni 2025, 14:00 Uhr
SR 306, Ernst-Abbe-Platz 8, 07743 Jena