Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T21:56:59.286Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Discourse, identity and change in mid-to-late life: interdisciplinary perspectives on language and ageing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2009

JUSTINE COUPLAND
JUSTINE COUPLAND*
Affiliation:
Centre for Language and Communication Research, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK.
*
Address for correspondence: Justine Coupland, Centre for Language and Communication Research, Cardiff University, Humanities Building, Colum Drive, CardiffCF10 3EU, UK. E-mail: CouplandJ@cf.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The papers in this special issue contribute to the growing body of research on sociolinguistic and discursive interpretations of mid and later life by investigating some of the identity affordances and constraints associated with ‘being middle-aged’ or ‘being old’. The papers here offer qualitative, contextually based analyses of a broad range of data and use various methodological and theoretical perspectives: narrative theory, critical pragmatics, social theory and discursive psychology. The main focus is on the ways in which change impacts on the ageing individual, and how this change is discursively interpreted and negotiated both by and for or about individuals in diverse social frames. We examine age and change as they interact with personal and social identity in personal diary accounts, in print, on the television and web media, in conversations amongst friends and acquaintances, in interviews and during storytelling. Language and communication are examined as resources for making and interpreting the meanings of ageing, at both the macro (societal) and micro (individual and inter-personal) levels.

Keywords

meanings of ageingqualitative approachestalktextchangeidentity
Type
Research Article
Information
Ageing & Society , Volume 29 , Issue 6: Discourse, identity and change in mid-to-late life: inter-disciplinary perspectives on language and ageing , August 2009 , pp. 849 - 861
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Andrews, M. 1999. The seductiveness of agelessness. Ageing & Society, 19, 3, 301–18.Google Scholar
Archer, M. S. 2003. Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Berger, P. and Luckmann, T. 1966. The Social Construction of Reality. Penguin, Harmondsworth, UK.Google Scholar
Blommaert, J. 2005. Discourse. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Bytheway, B. 2009. Writing about age, birthdays and the passage of time. Ageing & Society, 29, 6, 881–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coupland, J. 2000. Past the ‘perfect kind of age’? Styling selves and relationships in over-fifties dating advertisements. Journal of Communication, 50, 3, 9–30.Google Scholar
Coupland, J. 2009. Time, the body and the reversibility of ageing: commodifying the decade. Ageing & Society, 29, 6, 951–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coupland, J. and Coupland, N. 2009. Attributing stance in discourses of body shape and weight loss. In Jaffe, A. (ed.), The Sociolinguistics of Stance. Oxford University Press, New York, 227–49.Google Scholar
Coupland, N., Coupland, J. and Giles, H. 1991. Language, Society and the Elderly: Discourse, Identity and Ageing. Basil Blackwell, Oxford.Google Scholar
De Fina, A.Schiffrin, D. and Bamberg, M. (eds)2006. Discourse and Identity. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Fairclough, N. and Wodak, R. 1997. Critical discourse analysis. In van Dijk, T. (ed.), Discourse as Social Interaction. Volume 2, Sage, London, 258–84.Google Scholar
Gubrium, J. 1993. Speaking of Life: Horizons of Meaning for Nursing Home Residents. Aldine de Gruyter, Hawthorne, New York.Google Scholar
Hall, K. and Bucholtz, M. (eds)1995. Gender, Articulated Language and the Socially Constructed Self. Routledge, London.Google Scholar
Harré, R. 1983. Personal Being. Basil Blackwell, Oxford.Google Scholar
Jaworski, A. and Coupland, N. (eds)2006. The Discourse Reader. Routledge, London.Google Scholar
Jefferson, G. 1984. On the organization of laughter in talk about troubles. In Atkinson, J. M. and Heritage, J. (eds), Structures of Social Action. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 346–69.Google Scholar
Lakoff, R. 1975. Language and Women's Place. Harper and Row, New York.Google Scholar
Linde, C. 1993. Life Stories. Oxford University Press, New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Linde, C. 2009. Working the Past: Narrative and Institutional Memory. Oxford University Press, Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matsumoto, Y. 2009. Dealing with change: humour in painful self disclosure by elderly Japanese women. Ageing & Society, 29, 6, 927–50.Google Scholar
Nikander, P. 2009. Doing change and continuity: age identity and the micro–macro divide. Ageing & Society, 29, 6, 861–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Norrick, N. 2009. The construction of multiple identities in elderly narrators' stories. Ageing & Society, 29, 6, 901–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rampton, B. 1995. Crossing. Longman, London.Google Scholar
Rampton, B. 2006. Late-Modern Language, Interaction and Schooling. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Vincent, J. A. 2007. Science and imagery in the ‘war on old age’. Ageing & Society, 27, 6, 941–62.Google Scholar