Ageing Identities and Women's Everyday Talk in a Hair Salon

Rachel Heinrichsmeier

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000029888
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The ageing of the world's populations, particularly in Western developed countries, is a well-documented phenomenon; and despite many positive images of later life, in the media and public discourse later life is frequently depicted as a time of inevitable physical and cognitive decline. Against this background, Heinrichsmeier presents the results of her two-year sociolinguistic study examining how a group of older women of different ages negotiated their way through their own and others' expectations of ageing and constructed different kinds of older – and other – identities for themselves. Through vivid and nuanced analysis of their chat and practices in a small village hair salon, Heinrichsmeier reveals these women's subtle and skilful manipulation of stereotypes of ageing and the impact of the evolving talk on their identity constructions. Her study, which provides numerous short extracts of talk in both the hair salon and interview along with more detailed case studies, highlights the importance of such apparently 'trivial' sites – for both studying older people's identity work and as loci for positive identity constructions and well-being in later life. This book will be of particular interest to graduate students and scholars working in sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, conversation analysis, and gerontological studies, as well as those interested in approaches integrating ethnography and language.

1 Ageing in Society and in Interaction

This first chapter sets the scene for the rest of the book: we examine what is meant, in this book, by ‘identity’, and the settings, issues and approaches to researching it. Our ideas about ageing are shaped in particular social environments, so the first section presents a very broad-brush overview of two Discourses of ageing circulating in many Western societies. This is the background against which the study as a whole is set. I then present the notion of ‘identity-in-interaction’, the way in which identities (plural) are co-constructed through talk and other practices in interaction with others. I illustrate this through discussion of two extracts from conversations in Joellen’s Hair Palace. The subsequent two sections first examine the kinds of settings in which interactions with older people have been studied and then focus in on the hair-salon setting of this book. As I argue, such everyday settings are possibly very typical of many older people’s – particularly older women’s – experiences of ageing, and yet such studies are thin on the ground and risk being belittled as ‘trivial’.

Discourses of Ageing

In much of the Western world there are, very broadly speaking, two sets of ideologies or value systems about ageing. These Discourses of ageing, which coexist and indeed intermingle, lead to some ways of talking, acting and being in later life being seen as ‘normal’; others are seen as unthinkable or deviant.

The first and perhaps still most prevalent of these Discourses (Coupland and Gwyn, 2003; Hepworth, 2003: 99) conceptualizes the changes associated with ageing as inevitable decline (Bytheway et al., 2007; Hepworth, 2003; Westerhof and Tulle, 2007: 236). This Discourse is sustained through negative stereotypes of older people in much mainstream media and elsewhere. These media conceive of ‘the old’ as, variously, inevitably physically incapacitated; mentally deficient; moody, lonely and depressed; weak, complaining and ill-tempered; frail and vulnerable; unable to change; and with restricted social interactions (Bytheway, 1995: 65ff; Coupland, 2014 [2001]; N. Coupland et al., 1991c: 35; Furman, 1997: 94; Hummert et al., 2004; Sneed and Whitbourne, 2005; Uotila et al., 2010). Part of this portrayal, argue Fealy et al. (2012), is achieved through the positioning of older people in institutional spaces like care homes and geriatric wards.

Despite more positive images of ageing circulating over the last 30 years, the decline Discourse continues to inform lay views of ageing, infusing and shaping the talk of both younger and older people and potentially shaping their view of later life (Jolanki, 2004: 500; Phoenix and Orr, 2017; Pike, 2012; RSPH, 2018: 15; Ylänne, 2015). This matters. The conviction that older people are unable to change or learn new things, for example, can disadvantage older employees in the labour market; beliefs related to the inevitability of declining health in later life can shape medical diagnoses; and the prevalence of decline conceptualizations of later life may affect older people’s well-being (e.g., Chrisler et al., 2016; Kroon et al., 2016; Leonard et al., 2017; RSPH, 2018).

Decline is not, though, the only story of ageing. Coexisting with the notion of ageing as decline is a theoretically more celebratory Discourse of ageing. This, the Discourse of ‘successful ageing’ (Rowe and Kahn, 2015), depicts ageing as a time of renewal and invigoration. ‘Old age’ is the ‘Third Age’, a time of enrichment, political and social engagement, when older people can be active and healthy, both physically and mentally (Brooks, 2010). This Discourse is visible especially in publications specifically orientated to older people (Featherstone and Hepworth, 1993; Lumme-Sandt, 2011), but also in mainstream media (Rozanova, 2010).

This Discourse, argues Rozanova (2010), embodies neo-liberal principles of shifting responsibilities from the public to the private sphere. It understands ageing as something that can be combated or at least deferred through the use of medical advances and knowledge, with individuals taking personal responsibility for their health through remaining involved in life, and keeping busy and active (Calasanti and Slevin, 2001: 182; Hurd Clarke et al., 2008; Katz, 2000; Katz and Calasanti, 2015: 28; Westerhof and Tulle, 2007: 238ff). Ageing is treated as a disease that can be ‘cured’, with the appearance of ageing seen as a problem and not taking action as morally reprehensible (Brown and Knight, 2015; Coupland, 2003, 2009b; Furman, 1997: 116; Rozanova, 2010: 220).

The Discourse of Successful Ageing may counter some of the negative perceptions of ageing, but the pleasures and self-positioning of the ‘third age’ may be limited to those with wealth, good health and other resources (Katz and Calasanti, 2015: 29; Rozanova, 2010: 221; Westerhof and Tulle, 2007: 240; Ylänne, 2015). Also, the notion of decline remains, pushed back to a new ‘old old’ or group of ‘fourth agers’, defined by their relative frailty and dependence, perceived to be just as vulnerable, dependent and burdensome as the ‘old’ previously were, and potentially even more marginalized and devalued (Bytheway, 2011: 30; Featherstone and Hepworth, 1993; Hurd Clarke et al., 2008; Westerhof and Tulle, 2007). The plethora of ‘anti-ageing’ products stacked high in supermarket shelves draw implicitly on both these Discourses: the notion of decline is embedded in the term ‘anti-ageing’; and through the use of such products, people are promised that they can ‘age well’ by deferring at least the look of such ‘decline’ (Coupland, 2009b).

If physical and mental decline and the look of age are regarded as avoidable or at least deferrable through keeping busy and active and using appropriate products, we might expect to see older people, where they can, taking steps to both look after their appearance and remain busy and active. We might also expect to see them distancing themselves from the more negative associations with ageing to avoid constructing what Nikolas Coupland calls ‘spoiled’ identities (2004: 85). As we shall see, this distancing is indeed visible in participants’ talk; they do attend to their appearance; and they do display themselves as active and busy. However, it is not always clear that distancing from the negative associations of older age is all that is at issue; nor that in their appearance practices, participants are necessarily seeking to defer the look of ageing. As Jolanki (2004: 484) stresses, ‘Cultural images or discourses do not determine people’s thinking, but offer a “vocabulary” of concepts and images with which to think about ageing and health.’ People may also more or less consciously subvert such wider social Discourses and norms. As Rampton et al. observe, calling on Erickson’s (2014 [2001]) notion of ‘wiggle room’, there is always ‘just a little bit of space for innovation within what’s otherwise experienced as the compelling weight of social expectation’ (Rampton et al., 2014: 11). The extent to which such expectations are shaping individuals’ identity constructions is then a matter for analysis. This brings us to a consideration of what is understood here by ‘identity’.

Older Identities-in-Interaction

The popular view of identity is undoubtedly one that sees it as an essential, relatively stable, phenomenon, whereby an ‘authentic me/you’ lurks behind or is the cause of how we dress, talk, or otherwise conduct ourselves (Benwell and Stokoe, 2006: 3). So an older person (or a woman or a man or a person of a particular nationality or ethnicity or class, and so on) is seen as dressing or talking or acting in a particular way because they are old (or a man, woman, etc.). The understanding of identity in this book is rather different: rather than being seen as a stable, essential phenomenon that causes and can explain the way we speak and act, identity is understood as constructed through a range of situated practices including talk, both our own and others (Benwell and Stokoe, 2006: 4; Bucholtz and Hall, 2005: 588; Cameron, 1996: 45; Deppermann, 2015: 370; Kitzinger, 2000a: 170). That is, identity is seen as something we do – something we achieve in interaction.

But how can identity be done in interaction? Well, one way is through making explicit claims to be members of particular categories of people, or through casting others into such categories: I’m a working woman, he’s a keep-fitter, they’re elderly. These categories of people, though, as the American sociologist Harvey Sacks (1995a, 1995b) showed, are like storehouses of socio-cultural knowledge about the kinds of activities incumbents of such categories (stereotypically) do, the kinds of attributes we can expect them to display, and so on. For example, stereotypically, older people don’t engage with new technology (they are supposed to have difficulty learning new things). Data from organizations like the Office for National Statistics, which shows that more than half of those who have never used the internet are adults aged 75 or older (ONS, 2018: 6), support such stereotypes. So if we see someone we categorize as ‘older’ sitting at a computer and not doing anything, we might assume that this is because they’re struggling with the technology (our thinking might be something like, ‘person at computer is old, probably can’t cope with it’). We might be less likely to make such an assumption if the person at the computer looked to be in their teens (other associations would come into play instead). So we make links from people we categorize in a particular way to the kinds of stereotypical activities and attributes associated with those categories. We can also make reverse inferences, from the stereotypical activities and attributes to the associated categories. For example, we observe someone struggling with a payment card and we put it down to their ‘being old’ (see, for example, Bytheway et al., 2007: 26ff).

This inferencing work is always tentative: people can be described in numerous ways (they are members of numerous categories); each category may be associated with numerous activities and attributes; and those activities and attributes may, in turn, also be associated with a number of different categories, including more fleeting created-for-the-moment categories. Older people may, for example, stereotypically engage in troubles-telling (N. Coupland et al., 1991c). But so, stereotypically, do other categories of people, like clients (of all ages) in a hair salon (Lee et al., 2007) or people propping up a bar (Cowen, 1982). Importantly, even if one party in an interaction seems to be orientating to themselves (or to someone else) as older (or a keep-fitter or a working woman or some other category), the person they are speaking with may deny outright, or, more usually in my data, resist or modify that claim in some way. That is, the identity claims people make are co-constructed. A couple of examples will help illustrate some of these points. (The transcription notation for these and other extracts in this book draws on the Conversation Analytic (CA) notation devised by Jefferson (2004): see p. XV. An overview of CA can be found on pp. 34–36.)

In the exchange below, Mrs Sargent has been talking to Joellen about online fraud and computer problems. She then launches a related topic, l.1 below.

Extract 1.1 Mrs Sargent (Appt1) (Taken from R. Heinrichsmeier, Micro-analysis of spoken interaction (reproduced with permission of the Licensor through PLclear). © R. Heinrichsmeier 2020.)

 12:06 1. Mrs Sargent my husband would like an i-pad 2. ′cos you′ve got an i-pad haven′t [you 3. Joellen [°I′ve 4. got an i-pad [yeah° 5. Mrs Sargent [he′d love one of those 6. but (.) 7. ↑we′re not up to 8. [technology that′s the trouble] 9. Joellen [(they′re) easy to use though] 12:14 

Having first reported her husband’s enthusiasm for an iPad (“would like” (l.1), “love” (l.5)), Mrs Sargent then dismisses the idea, characterizing herself and her husband (“↑we”, l.7), as being “not up to technology” (ll.7–8). What does Joellen do, faced with Mrs Sargent’s claim? As we can see, she comes in with a modification (l.9), in overlap with Mrs Sargent. Joellen’s contribution does not deny Mrs Sargent’s self-characterization (for example, she doesn’t say something like “of course you are!”). However, by characterizing iPads as “easy to use” she effectively claims that Mrs Sargent would be ‘up to’ this kind of not-too-difficult technology. And this, in turn, modifies Mrs Sargent’s claim: she’s ‘up to’ at least some technology.

The modification of Mrs Sargent’s claim by Joellen, and so the co-construction of her identity as someone ‘up to’ at least some technology, is clearer if we compare it with a technology-disclaimer made by another of my participants, Lesley. Lesley and Joellen have been talking about the difficulty of carrying heavy shopping home, when in ll.1–2, Rachel comes in with her own contribution (see pp. 33–34 for an account of my use of self-references).

Extract 1.2 Lesley (Appt1)

 44:04 1. Rachel do online shopping 2. and get it all delivered every week 3. (.) 4. Joellen ts Lesley doesn′t do online 5. Rachel you don′t do online 6. Lesley no (.) 7. no dear (.) 8. I′m old-fashioned (.) 9. I haven′t got those so(h)rt of 10. thi(h)ngs he [he 11. Rachel [.h he he 12. Joellen [he 13. Lesley [he he he my FRIEND (.) 14. Joellen [he he 15. Lesley yes (.) she′s a whi:::↑zz at it (.) 16. but (.) not me 17. (0.5) 18. too old in the tooth dear 19. Joellen he [he he 20. Rachel [he he he 21. Lesley [that′s the £trouble£ too old in the 22. tooth 23. Rachel um this is a (.) blank copy ((shifts talk to aspects of research process) 44:28 

As we can see, Rachel suggests that Lesley moves to online shopping, but this is discounted by Joellen (l.4), not Lesley. Lesley then seems to confirm it. First she claims to be “old-fashioned” (l.8); and then a little later, she claims to be “too old in the tooth” (l.18, l.21). Rachel’s initial proposal that Lesley ‘shop online’ was not in any obvious way making associations between Lesley’s possible oldness and any lack of technological ability. Lesley, though, does make some sort of link with age to explain her non-online use, even if it’s not absolutely clear that she’s trying to construct herself as ‘old’. However, as we see, Lesley’s assertions, that she is “old-fashioned” and is “too old in the tooth”, are accepted by both Joellen and Rachel without denial.

Now a body of Conversation Analytic research shows that, normally, assessments such as ‘what a beautiful day’ expect or prefer agreement (Pomerantz, 1984a). However, arguably, in this sequence, Lesley’s assertions, coupled as they are with an admission of a lack, are a special kind of assessment: they are negative self-assessments or self-deprecations, much as was Mrs Sargent’s claim to be ‘not up to technology’; and self-deprecations are a kind of assessment that normally prefer disagreement. We saw such disagreement (in the form of a modification) in Joellen’s response to Mrs Sargent (Extract 1.1, l.9). With Lesley, though, no such modification is forthcoming. Pomerantz (1984a: 93) comments, ‘When no overt disagreement is made, the self-deprecating party tends to treat the self-deprecation as impli...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Transcription Notation
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: Talking about Getting Older
• 1 Ageing in Society and in Interaction
• 2 Researching Identities in a Hair Salon
• 3 Ageing: Manoeuvring Around Decline
• 4 Not Only Old: Negotiating Ageing in Salon Talk
• 5 First Impressions
• 6 Negotiating Stances to Appearance
• 7 Ageing Well in Stories of Daily Life
• 8 Being More Than ‘Older Women’
• 9 Looking Back, Looking Forward
• References
• Index