Q2e Listening & Speaking 5: Unit 1 Video Transcript

Elderspeak Transcript

Couric: Now to the health of older people. A new study says the way we talk to
them could affect their well-being. Nancy Cortas has the story.

Granic: So, we start from the very beginning.

Cortas: We are taught that older means wiser, and yet scientists say the older we
get, the more likely we are to be spoken to like children.

Speaker 4: I think it's demeaning.1

Speaker 5: I think we're still here. I think we can still think.

Cortas: The technical term for it is elderspeak, a grown-up version of baby talk.

Speaker 6: We did such a good job.

Cortas: Studies show it can be physically and mentally harmful.

Williams: Older adults who receive this message may suffer injury to their
self-esteem. If they're depressed, they could become more depressed,
and there is some thought that they may actually start to act like a frail
little old person who can't do for themselves.

Cortas: Researchers at the University of Kansas studied nursing-home residents

with dementia.2 When staffers used demeaning phrases like “Good girl”
or “Are we lost?” the residents were twice as likely to resist care.

Williams: They're really trying to convey a message that they care to these older
adults, and what they just don't realize is that they're also giving this
message of incompetence3 or talking down to them.

Granic: What I'm going to do is minimize it.

Cortas: Seventy-six-year-old Lois Granic, who trains seniors to use computers,

says it's a mistake people only make with her once.

Speaker 8: Because you tell them, “No, thank you”?

1
demeaning: insulting or disrespectful
2
dementia: serious mental disorder caused by brain disease or injury that affects the ability to think,
remember, and behave normally
3
incompetence: lack of skill or ability to do your job or a task as it should be done

©Oxford University Press. Permission granted to reproduce for classroom use.

Q2e Listening & Speaking 5: Unit 1 Video Transcript

Granic: Do I know you? Why do you use my first name? I am Mrs. Granic. I am
not, you know, your buddy.

Cortas: Maybe, she says, it's the young dogs who need to learn some new
tricks.4

4
young dogs … new tricks: younger people may be the ones who need to change their behavior (a
variation of the idiom “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks”)

©Oxford University Press. Permission granted to reproduce for classroom use.