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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Old age as a choice and as a necessity
— two interpretative repertoires | | Author(s) | Outi Jolanki, Marja Jylhä, Antti Hervonen |
| Journal title | Journal of Aging Studies, vol 14, no 4, December 2000 |
| Pages | pp 359-372 |
| Keywords | Nonagenarians ; Ageing process ; Attitude ; Finland. |
| Annotation | The method of discourse analysis is applied to look at how older people talk about age and getting older. The data comes from biographical interviews with Finnish over 90s. The pictures that emerge from these interviewees is one of ambivalence: old age is constructed through two contrasting repertoires: choice and necessity. Talk about old age as a necessity produces it as a self-evident fact that the essence of old age is deterioration. Talk about old age as a choice, is used to undermine the necessity repertoire and to argue for various and more positive definitions of old age among which one can make a choice. It is important to note that the contrast is not between cultural views and individual experience, but the ambivalence is rooted in people's minds. Both repertoires are reasonable and justifiable, which turns old age into a dilemma. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-010131209 B |
| Classmark | BBR: BG: DP: 76L |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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