Reducing the Effects of Loneliness in the Elderly: Enacting the “Principle of Linguistic Gratuity”

Across the ages, poets, writers, musicians, and other artists have alertedlinguistic gratuity us to the agonies of loneliness and the acute human need to be social. That some, requisite level of contact with others is needed, and when that need is not met, the individual suffers. To illustrate, the incredibly poignant circumstances of individuals who make us the lonely masses in the first few lines of Dionisio D. Martínez’s Flood: Years of Solitude (1995):