Katarina Jacobsson
Head of Department | Professor | PhD | Reader in Sociology
“And how old are you?”: Age reference as an interpretative device in radio counselling
Author
Summary, in English
Method and data: We draw upon ethnomethodology, and particularly on conversation analysis and membership categorisation analysis, to describe how age identities can be invoked in reasoning about explanations and solutions of psychological problems. The data consist of telephone conversations between a psychotherapist and people seeking help for their life difficulties on a Swedish radio programme.
Results: Our analysis shows how references to callers' age were used to position the callers as members of stage-of-life categories, in order to invoke expectations tied to the categories. The callers' positions in the life course served as an interpretative resource for negotiating understanding of the callers' troubles, and suggesting a normative description of their life situations.
Conclusion: This study explicates in interactional detail the interpretative use of cultural common-sense knowledge about the life course in the context of the specific institutional tasks of radio counselling.
Department/s
- School of Social Work
Publishing year
2016
Language
English
Pages
31-43
Publication/Series
Journal of Aging Studies
Volume
39
Full text
- Available as PDF - 391 kB
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Document type
Journal article
Publisher
Elsevier
Topic
- Social Work
Keywords
- Radio counselling
- Age reference
- Life course
- Ethnomethodology
- Conversation analysis
- Membership categorisation
Status
Published
Project
- Negotiating problems and solutions in radio counselling
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 0890-4065