Heinrichsmeier2019

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Heinrichsmeier2019
BibType ARTICLE
Key Heinrichsmeier2019
Author(s) Rachel Heinrichsmeier
Title Ageism and Interactional (Mis)Alignment: Using Micro-Discourse Analysis in the Interpretation of Everyday Talk in a Hair-Salon
Editor(s)
Tag(s) EMCA, alignment, ageism, hair salon
Publisher
Year 2019
Language
City
Month
Journal Linguistics Vanguard
Volume 5
Number s2
Pages e20180031
URL Link
DOI 10.1515/lingvan-2018-0031
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter Linguistics Vanguard

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Abstract


Notes

In the fifty years since Robert Butler coined the term, ageism remains one of the most widely-experienced forms of discrimination in Europe. Some forms of ageism seem overt and easy-to-identify; in many cases, though, it is invisible and deeply rooted in everyday life. This applies, too, to ageism-in-interaction, which, as I argue in this paper, can be very subtle, deeply embedded in a web of routines and expectations generated over a longer interactional history.

I illustrate this embeddedness of ageism-in-interaction by focussing, as a case-study, on an encounter in a hair-salon between an 83-year-old woman and her stylist, aspects of which we might initially be tempted to attribute to the stylist’s orientations to the client’s (older) age. However, as I show, closer scrutiny of the emergent interaction, combined with progressive widening of the analysis to encompass data outside this focal exchange, suggests more nuanced understandings of what is going on. As I also aim to show, the nose-to-data attention to the emergent interactions in this case-study, informed by conversation analysis and combined with wider ethnographic knowledge, is the tool-kit we need to reveal the less visible instances of ageism-in-interaction.