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Metadata

The LangAge Corpora draws on various partial corpora, which can be combined from the different series according to criteria such as longitudinal section or couples.

Age and sex

Participants of the LangAge Corpus 2005 by age and sex
Photo: Gerstenberg (2011: 89)
Fig. 1: Participants by age and sex (2005)

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 and 2015.

Participants of the LangAge Corpus 2005 by age and sex
Photo: Gerstenberg (2011: 89)
Fig. 1: Participants by age and sex (2005)

Place of birth

Participants' place of birth (LangAge corpus 2005)
Photo: Gerstenberg (2011: 91)
Fig. 2: Participants' place of birth

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.

Participants' place of birth (LangAge corpus 2005)
Photo: Gerstenberg (2011: 91)
Fig. 2: Participants' place of birth

Education degree and profession

Participants by education degree and profession (LangAge 2005)
Photo: Gerstenberg (2011: 92)
Fig. 3: Participants by education degree and profession

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
Participants by education degree and profession (LangAge 2005)
Photo: Gerstenberg (2011: 92)
Fig. 3: Participants by education degree and profession

For more information about the metadata of the LangAge Corpus, please access the corpus here or see

El Sherbiny Ismail, Eman, Annette Gerstenberg, Marta Lupica Spagnolo, Friederike Schulz & Anne Vandenbroucke. 2022. L’âge avancé en perspective longitudinale et ses outils : LangAge, un corpus au pluriel. SHS Web Conf. (SHS Web of Conferences) - 8e Congrès Mondial de Linguistique Française 138. 10003 [1-14]. 10.1051/shsconf/202213810003.
Gerstenberg, Annette. 2011. Generation und Sprachprofile im höheren Lebensalter: Untersuchungen zum Französischen auf der Basis eines Korpus biographischer Interviews (Analecta Romanica 76). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7315875