Metadata

As of 2005, a total of 31 women and 25 men make up the participants of the LangAge Corpus(Fig. 1).

Among the participants, 48 interviewees are older than 70, while four men and four women are younger. For the most part, the age of the participants lies between 75–85 years old. Only one man and two women are 90 years or older.

After collecting a first core of interviews in 2005, other interviews were conducted with some of the same participants in 2012, in 2015, and in 2023.

The majority of participants (both women and men) were born in the region Centre. A few interviewees come from neighboring regions, including Île-de-France and Bourgogne.

The category “other” ('Andere' in Fig. 2) is heterogeneous. One participant was, for instance, born in the former French colony of Côte d'Ivoire, while three participants were born in Strasbourg or Alsace. Among them, two interviewees also speak German or a German dialect.

No participants come from the Midi regions: the southernmost birthplaces are in the Auvergne and Rhône-Alpes regions.

The first graph in Figure 3 shows a clear difference between the level of school education for men and women. Only eight (out of the 24 participants) with a higher school degree certificate are women.

The second graph in Figure 3 shows that the profession carried out by the participants is in line with their education graduation. By contrast, it is very rare that participants were employed in a less qualified job for their school degree.

In Figure 3, the following abbreviations are used:

• Graduation: Certificat d’études primaires (CEP), Brevet élémentaire (BE), École normale des instituteurs (ENI) and/or Baccalaureát (Bac)
• Profession: ouvriers, employe´s, cadres moyens, cadres supérieurs