ABSTRACT
The majority of the chapters in this book are concerned with intergenerational communication in various social and relational contexts. Of primary interest is what happens when people of vastly different ages and with diverse life experiences meet and talk. Accordingly, some chapters focus at a microlevel to examine, for example, particular conversational strategies characteristic of intergenerational talk. Other chapters, such as this one, focus more at macro-levels to look at the wider contexts in which such microinteractions take place. In the spirit of Giddens’ theory of structuration, the issues and questions we consider include historical precedent, as a backdrop to the changing structure and patterns of intergenerational contact, in modern societies across time and space.
