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Constructing ageing and age identities: a case study of newspaper discourses

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 March 2011

GERARD FEALY ,
MARTIN McNAMARA ,
MARGARET PEARL TREACY  and
IMOGEN LYONS
GERARD FEALY*
Affiliation:
School of Nursing, Midwifery & Health Systems, Health Sciences Centre, University College Dublin, Ireland.
MARTIN McNAMARA
Affiliation:
School of Nursing, Midwifery & Health Systems, Health Sciences Centre, University College Dublin, Ireland.
MARGARET PEARL TREACY
Affiliation:
School of Nursing, Midwifery & Health Systems, Health Sciences Centre, University College Dublin, Ireland.
IMOGEN LYONS
Affiliation:
School of Nursing, Midwifery & Health Systems, Health Sciences Centre, University College Dublin, Ireland.
*
Address for correspondence: Gerard Fealy, School of Nursing, Midwifery & Health Systems, Health Sciences Centre, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin, Ireland. E-mail: Gerard.Fealy@ucd.ie
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Abstract

Public discourses concerning older people are available in a variety of texts, including popular media, and these discourses position older people with particular age identities. This study examined discursive formations of ageing and age identities in print media in Ireland. Constituting a single media event, newspaper texts concerned with revised welfare provision for older people were subjected to critical discourse analysis and revealed particular ways of naming and referencing older people and distinct constructions of ageing and age identities. The use of nouns and phrases to name and reference older people positioned them as a distinct demographic group and a latent ageism was discernible in texts that deployed collective names like ‘grannies and grandads’ and ‘little old ladies’. Five distinct identity types were available in the texts, variously constructing older people as ‘victims’; ‘frail, infirm and vulnerable’; ‘radicalised citizens’; ‘deserving old’ and ‘undeserving old’. The discourses made available subject positions that collectively produced identities of implied dependency and otherness, thereby placing older people outside mainstream Irish society. The proposition that older people might be healthy, self-reliant and capable of autonomous living was largely absent in the discourses. Newspaper discourses betray taken-for-granted assumptions and reveal dominant social constructions of ageing and age identity that have consequences for older people's behaviour and for the way that society behaves towards them.

Keywords

ageingageidentitydiscoursesmedianewspaperIreland
Type
Articles
Information
Ageing & Society , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , January 2012 , pp. 85 - 102
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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