ABSTRACT
In Chapter 5 we move away from treating the patients as a collective mass and instead begin to consider differences between them based upon socio-demographic aspects of their identity. Focussing on age this chapter seeks to answer a series of inter-related questions, including: How do different age groups experience the NHS? What issues are distinctive to different age groups and are certain groups more likely to evaluate the NHS more positively or negatively than others? In addition, when people refer to aspects of their age in their feedback, how do they orient to it? Do they draw on discourses relating to age in order to explain how they were treated or how they should have been treated? And finally, are there any distinctive linguistic features that are associated with the language used by different age groups when providing feedback? And do those features reveal anything about the concerns that people have, the ways they engage in evaluation or how they justify or legitimate their feedback?
