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The age of the participants of this study ranges from 15-99 and the adjusted sample for this study ranges from 22-78. The more traditional approach is to categorise speakers in age cohorts, usually according to life stages (e.g. Trudgill 1974; Hall 2008). Fewer, but not less convincing studies (e.g. Hall-Lew 2009 and to a certain extent Baranowski 2007) use age as a consecutive variable. In this study, the vowel and consonant variables are statistically analysed taking speaker age into account as a continuous predictor. The figures for the consonantal variables are still presented with age categories in order to make the results more accessible. The age cohorts are 22-39 (young), 40-59 (middle), 60-78 (old).

Age is not only important on the individual level but also on the speech community level. In sociolinguistics, age is represented in real-time and apparent-time studies as tool to investigate language change. Labov (1963) introduced a set of methods in order to tackle the problem of analysing language change in his Martha’s Vineyard study and later in his New York study (Labov 2006). His approach of combining diachronic and synchronic approaches in order to study language change is a paradigm shift away from structuralism where language change is believed to only be observed diachronically but not synchronically.

Sankoff (2006: 113) describes how sociolinguists benefit from the apparent-time approach:

The most important implication […] is that apparent time is a truly powerful concept in locating the presence of change. […] a researcher who locates a gradient age distribution in a new community under study is virtually assured of having identified change, whether or not age grading is also involved.

Di Paolo and Yaeger-Dror (2010: 9) stress that “the speakers’ age at the time of the interview is primarily important because it marks their life-stage […], and their progression through the linguistic market” (their emphasis). Thus, the speaker’s behaviour and attitude towards socially loaded variants can change over the course of a life, i.e. the importance a speaker gives to the use of certain variants varies.