ABSTRACT
The last 30 years have seen an impressive growth in interest in the study of ageing. Enthusiasm has been kindled across the whole range of academic disciplines, particularly in biology, sociology and psychology but increasingly also in geography, anthropology and economics, and especially within the humanities (Cole et al., 1992). This broadening of interest has led to new questions. We can see better now that the experience of ageing is the product not only of inevitable biological and psychological processes, nor even of the individual’s particular life history and present circumstances, but also of the attitudes, expectations, prejudices and ideals of the societies and cultures in which people develop and grow old. Some present-day investigators have been led to explore how certain images, models and assumptions about the nature of ageing lie behind everyday speech, and how the very language we use may restrict and inhibit older people, and even promote their decline (Coupland and Coupland, 2003).
