ABSTRACT
In this chapter we examine the cultural construction of “old age”. How are attitudes to old age embedded in language and the symbolic structure of Western culture? To place this discussion in context it may prove helpful to sketch my own cultural background, which involves moving from working-class London to English provincial academic life, as my own cultural repertoire and cultural interpretation will play a key part in presenting the symbolic structure of old age. There are two elements to the discussion. First the cues, the signs that are taken in social life to indicate roles and age-based categories. The second theme is the structure of the categories themselves. Thus the first part of the chapter attempts an empirical description, through observation and secondary sources, of how people are able to identify who is old. People “tell” who fits into the social category “old” in a similar fashion to the way they identify, using taken-for-granted assumptions, someone’s ethnicity or class. The second objective in this chapter is to establish how “old age” is constructed in a pattern of meanings; how does the category “old” come to have meaning? Cole (1992) points out the dual meaning of “meaning”, as cosmic significance-existential meaning on the one hand, as opposed to semantic meaning-the definitions of a term on the other. This chapter will reflect that division by conducting a semantic analysis, detailing a systematic pattern of contrasts, which map out the dimensions of the meaning of the term “old” (Black 1973, Vincent 1973b, Hymes 1964). By establishing
that which the category “old” is different from, we can establish that which it is. The last part of the chapter is an attempt to assess the cultural meaning of old age in the cosmic sense; what intrinsic value, if any, is old age thought to have in our society?
