ABSTRACT
Research on the discourse of the elderly often tends to focus on either the discourse of the elderly who are cognitively impaired or on discourse produced in contexts in which old age is at issue. For example, studies focus on intergenerational talk and talk within caregiving institutions. In both types of talk, age difference is often viewed as causing a problem in communication. While these studies contribute to our knowledge of the problems faced by the elderly in communicating, there is still relatively little research which focuses on elderly discourse in which 'problems' do not seem to arise. The implicit assumption is that discourse of the elderly in which there is no obvious problem nor obvious avoidance of a problem is the same as the discourse of younger people. Thus, while these studies often seek to avoid viewing aging as a process of decrement, they support a decrement perspective by primarily focusing on problematic discourse specific to the elderly segment of the population.
