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Online in later life: Age as a chronological fact and a dynamic social category in an Internet class for retirees[Note 1. This article was initially presented in a much shorter ...]
Author(s) -
Divita David
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
journal of sociolinguistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1
H-Index - 51
eISSN - 1467-9841
pISSN - 1360-6441
DOI - 10.1111/josl.12000
Subject(s) - indexicality , meaning (existential) , sociology , perspective (graphical) , the internet , social class , ethnic group , psychology , social category , social psychology , identity (music) , social identity theory , linguistics , social group , anthropology , aesthetics , artificial intelligence , world wide web , computer science , political science , law , psychotherapist , philosophy
In recent years, sociolinguistic research that has taken an indexical perspective on the construction of social meaning has focused on certain dimensions of identity, such as gender and ethnicity; age, on the other hand, has not received as much attention. More often than not, it has been understood as a fixed chronological fact rather than a socially meaningful resource. The present study, which draws from data collected in an Internet course at a social center for senior citizens, illustrates how age‐related social meanings are recruited in interaction in more complex ways than generally thought. Discourse analysis of interactions between students and their younger instructor show how age informs the construction of social meaning as both a chronological fact and a dynamic social category; students and instructor alike create stances and assume interactional positions in part by indexing age‐related social categories that align with or subvert communicative expectations based on their chronological age.