Ageism and interactional (mis)alignment: Using micro-discourse analysis in the interpretation of everyday talk in a hair-salon
Abstract
In the fifty years since Robert Butler coined the term, ageism remains one of the most widely-experienced forms of discrimination in Europe. Some forms of ageism seem overt and easy-to-identify; in many cases, though, it is invisible and deeply rooted in everyday life. This applies, too, to ageism-in-interaction, which, as I argue in this paper, can be very subtle, deeply embedded in a web of routines and expectations generated over a longer interactional history.
I illustrate this embeddedness of ageism-in-interaction by focussing, as a case-study, on an encounter in a hair-salon between an 83-year-old woman and her stylist, aspects of which we might initially be tempted to attribute to the stylist’s orientations to the client’s (older) age. However, as I show, closer scrutiny of the emergent interaction, combined with progressive widening of the analysis to encompass data outside this focal exchange, suggests more nuanced understandings of what is going on. As I also aim to show, the nose-to-data attention to the emergent interactions in this case-study, informed by conversation analysis and combined with wider ethnographic knowledge, is the tool-kit we need to reveal the less visible instances of ageism-in-interaction.
Acknowledgements
The support of an Arts and Humanities Research Council doctoral studentship for the research for this paper is gratefully acknowledged. The paper has also greatly benefitted from helpful comments on an earlier version by Ben Rampton, Camilla Lindholm, Annette Gerstenberg and an anonymous reviewer.
References
Age UK. 2011. Grey matters – a survey of ageism across Europe (EU briefing and policy recommendations, 11). London: Age UK.Search in Google Scholar
Andrews, Molly. 1999. The seductivess of agelessness. Ageing & Society 19(3). 301–318.10.1017/S0144686X99007369Search in Google Scholar
Antaki, Charles. 2012. What actions mean, to whom, and when. Discourse Studies 14(4). 493–498.10.1177/1461445611433959Search in Google Scholar
Arminen, Ilkka. 2000. On the context sensitivity of institutional interaction. Discourse & Society 11(4). 435–458.10.1177/0957926500011004001Search in Google Scholar
Auer, Peter. 2005. Projection in interaction and projection in grammar. In Text – Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Discourse 25(1). 7–36.10.1515/text.2005.25.1.7Search in Google Scholar
Benwell, Bethan & Elizabeth Stokoe. 2006. Discourse and identity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.10.1515/9780748626533Search in Google Scholar
Bolden, Galina B. 2006. Little words that matter: Discourse markers “so” and “oh” and the doing of other-attentiveness in social interaction. Journal of Communication 56. 661–688.10.1111/j.1460-2466.2006.00314.xSearch in Google Scholar
Briggs, Charles. 1998. Notes on a ‘confession’: On the construction of gender, sexuality, and violence in an infanticide case’. Pragmatics 7(4). 519–546.10.1075/prag.7.4.04briSearch in Google Scholar
Butler, Robert N. 1975. Why survive? Being old in America. Baltimore, USA: The John Hopkins University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Bytheway, Bill, Richard Ward, Caroline Holland & Sheila Peace. 2007. Too old. Older people’s accounts of discrimination, exclusion and rejection. A report from the research on age discrimination project (road) to help the aged. London: Open University and Help the Aged.Search in Google Scholar
Coupland, Nikolas. 2014 [2001]. Age in social and sociolinguistic theory. In N. Coupland, S. Sarangi & C. Candlin (eds.), 185–212. Sociolinguistics and social theory (language in social life). London: Taylor and Francis.10.4324/9781315839967Search in Google Scholar
Coupland, Nikolas & Justine Coupland. 1993. Discourses of ageism and anti-ageism. Journal of Aging Studies 7(3). 279–301.10.1016/0890-4065(93)90016-DSearch in Google Scholar
De Fina, Anna. 2003. Identity in narrative. A study of immigrant discourse. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.10.1075/sin.3Search in Google Scholar
De Fina, Anna. 2013. Positioning level 3. Connecting local identity displays to macro social processes. Narrative Inquiry 23(1). 40–61.10.1075/ni.23.1.03deSearch in Google Scholar
Essed, Philomena. 1991. Understanding everyday racism: An interdisciplinary theory. London, England: Sage Publications.10.4135/9781483345239Search in Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1959. The presentation of self in everyday life. London: Penguin.Search in Google Scholar
Grainger, Karen. 2004. Communication and the institutionalized elderly. In J.F. Nussbaum & J. Coupland (eds.), Handbook of communication and aging research, 479–497. Mahwah, New Jersey, London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Search in Google Scholar
Holland, Caroline & Richard Ward. 2012. On going grey. In V. Ylänne (ed.), Representing ageing. Images and identities, 115–131. Basingstoke UK, New York USA: Palgrave Macmillan UK.10.1057/9781137009340_8Search in Google Scholar
Jansson, Gunilla. 2016. ‘You’re doing everything just fine’: Praise in residential care settings. Discourse Studies 18(1). 64–86.10.1177/1461445615613186Search in Google Scholar
Jefferson, Gail. 1978. Sequential aspects of story-telling in conversation. In J. Schenkein (ed.), Studies in the organisation of conversational interaction, 219–248. New York: Academic Press.10.1016/B978-0-12-623550-0.50016-1Search in Google Scholar
Jefferson, Gail. 2004. Glossary of transcript symbols with an introduction. In G.H. Lerner (ed.), Conversation analysis: Studies from the first generation, 13–31. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.10.1075/pbns.125.02jefSearch in Google Scholar
Jolanki, Outi Hannele. 2004. Moral argumentation in talk about health and old age. Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine 8(4). 483–503.10.1177/1363459304045700Search in Google Scholar
McCarthy, Michael. 2000. Mutually captive audiences: Small talk and the genre of close-contact service encounters. In J. Coupland (ed.), Small talk, 84–109. Harlow, Essex: Pearson Education Limited.10.4324/9781315838328-5Search in Google Scholar
Nikander, Pirjo. 2009. Doing change and continuity: Age identity and the micro–macro divide. Ageing & Society 29(Special Issue 06). 863–881.10.1017/S0144686X09008873Search in Google Scholar
Peräkylä, Anssi & Sanna Vehviläinen. 2003. Conversation analysis and the professional stocks of interactional knowledge. Discourse & Society 14(6). 727–750.10.1177/09579265030146003Search in Google Scholar
Rampton, Ben. 2006. Language in late modernity. Interaction in an urban school. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511486722Search in Google Scholar
Raymond, Geoffrey. 2003. Grammar and social organization: Yes/no interrogatives and the structure of responding. American Sociological Review 68(6). 939–967.10.2307/1519752Search in Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey. 1995. Lectures on conversation. Malden, MA, Oxford UK and Carlton, Victoria: Blackwell Publishing.10.1002/9781444328301Search in Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey, A. Emanuel Schegloff & Gail Jefferson. 1974. A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language 50(4.1). 696–735.10.1353/lan.1974.0010Search in Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A. 2005. On complainability. Social Problems 52(4). 449–476.10.1525/sp.2005.52.4.449Search in Google Scholar
Sidnell, Jack & Tanya Stivers (eds.). 2013. The handbook of conversation analysis. Malden MA, Oxford, Chichester: Wiley Blackwell Publishing Ltd.10.1002/9781118325001Search in Google Scholar
Sophieh. 2007. The art of salon small talk. In Hairdressers Journal interactive (online): Reed Business Information.Search in Google Scholar
Stivers, Tanya. 2008. Stance, alignment, and affiliation during storytelling: When nodding is a token of affiliation. Research on Language and Social Interaction 41(1). 31–57.10.1080/08351810701691123Search in Google Scholar
Stivers, Tanya. 2013. Sequence organization. In J. Sidnell & T. Stivers (eds.), The handbook of conversation analysis, 191–209. Malden MA, Oxford, Chichester: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.10.1002/9781118325001.ch10Search in Google Scholar
Appendix A: Transcription notation
Based on Jefferson (2004).
| (.) | micro-pause |
| washing | emphasis on underlined part of word |
| >I've been I< | spoken faster/ |
| <days go> | slower than surrounding talk |
| ni:ce | vowel stretched out |
| ↑yes, whe↓els | pitch shift up/down in following syllable |
| °yeh° FLASHED | talk softer/louder than surrounding talk |
| £dog walking £ | “smile voice” |
| ye(h)h | laughter in word |
| he he he | laughter particles |
| [it's | overlapping talk starts |
Appendix B: Supplementary data: additional busy stories
Extract 7 Lesley
Extract 8 Joanna
©2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Research articles
- Language and aging research: new insights and perspectives
- Grammaticalization and the linguistic individual: new avenues in lifespan research
- Individual variation in the development of the Western Vowel System of Utah
- [In]stability in the use of a stable variable
- Implicit Causality in younger and older adults
- Processing gender stereotypes in dementia patients and older healthy adults: a self-paced reading study
- Perplexity – a new predictor of cognitive changes in spoken language? – results of the Interdisciplinary Longitudinal Study on Adult Development and Aging (ILSE)
- Repairs and old-age categorisations: interactional and categorisation analysis
- Ageism and interactional (mis)alignment: Using micro-discourse analysis in the interpretation of everyday talk in a hair-salon
- Taking the stance of quotidian in talking about pains: resilience and defiance
- No time to care? Interactional hurriedness in a Japanese nursing home
- Agency and epistemic authority in question-answer sequences between art museum guides and visitors diagnosed with dementia
- Accounting for forgetfulness in dementia interaction
- Embodied care: affective touch as a facilitating resource for interaction between caregivers and residents in a care home for older adults
Articles in the same Issue
- Research articles
- Language and aging research: new insights and perspectives
- Grammaticalization and the linguistic individual: new avenues in lifespan research
- Individual variation in the development of the Western Vowel System of Utah
- [In]stability in the use of a stable variable
- Implicit Causality in younger and older adults
- Processing gender stereotypes in dementia patients and older healthy adults: a self-paced reading study
- Perplexity – a new predictor of cognitive changes in spoken language? – results of the Interdisciplinary Longitudinal Study on Adult Development and Aging (ILSE)
- Repairs and old-age categorisations: interactional and categorisation analysis
- Ageism and interactional (mis)alignment: Using micro-discourse analysis in the interpretation of everyday talk in a hair-salon
- Taking the stance of quotidian in talking about pains: resilience and defiance
- No time to care? Interactional hurriedness in a Japanese nursing home
- Agency and epistemic authority in question-answer sequences between art museum guides and visitors diagnosed with dementia
- Accounting for forgetfulness in dementia interaction
- Embodied care: affective touch as a facilitating resource for interaction between caregivers and residents in a care home for older adults
