Heinrichsmeier2019
| Heinrichsmeier2019 | |
|---|---|
| BibType | ARTICLE |
| Key | Heinrichsmeier2019 |
| Author(s) | Rachel Heinrichsmeier |
| Title | Ageism and Interactional (Mis)Alignment: Using Micro-Discourse Analysis in the Interpretation of Everyday Talk in a Hair-Salon |
| Editor(s) | |
| Tag(s) | EMCA, alignment, ageism, hair salon |
| Publisher | |
| Year | 2019 |
| Language | |
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| Month | |
| Journal | Linguistics Vanguard |
| Volume | 5 |
| Number | s2 |
| Pages | e20180031 |
| URL | Link |
| DOI | 10.1515/lingvan-2018-0031 |
| ISBN | |
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| Howpublished | |
| Book title | |
| Chapter | Linguistics Vanguard |
Abstract
Notes
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.
