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Patterns In Discourse About Elderly People In New Zealand
PATTERNS IN DISCOURSE ABOUT ELDERLY PEOPLE IN NEW ZEALAND SIK HUNG NG* Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand
TIM McCREANOR University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand ABSTRACT: As the number of senior citizens continues to rise, their public profile will grow and political discussion about their future will become increasingly prominent. The present research was designed to approach such debate by providing an assay of naturally occurring data drawn from the New Zealand Royal Commission on Social Policy (1986 ± 1988). Public submissions to the Royal Commission on the specific subject of senior citizens were extracted and examined from a discourse analytic perspective. The results obtained by two independent analyses showed three patterns of discourse, namely, society's obligations to senior citizens, anti-ageism, and old age as a positive resource. This troika of discourse patterns constitute a collective voice through which senior citizens and their supporters defend and advocate the social position of senior citizens.
INTRODUCTION The Royal Commission on Social Policy, which was set by the New Zealand government in 1986, received an unprecedented number of submissions from the public on a broad range of social issues. Significant in this material was a large number of submissions on issues relating to elderly1 people. Since then, these issues have become increasingly
*Direct all correspondence to: Sik Hung Ng, School of Psychology, Victoria University, P.O. Box 600, Wellington, New Zealand. E-mail: [email protected] JOURNAL OF AGING STUDIES, Volume 13, Number 4, pages 473 ± 489. Copyright D 1999 by Elsevier Science Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISSN: 0890 - 4065.
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prominent due to the aging of the population combined with longer life expectancies both in New Zealand (Prime Ministerial Task Force on Positive Ageing 1997) and many other countries (Farrell et al. 1994; National Institute on Aging 1996). The present article is an attempt to discern discourse patterns about senior citizens as reflected in the public submissions received by the Royal Commission. Research based on the analysis of submissions is relatively rare in aging studies, although other sources of data have been used in studies carried out on age discourse (Covey 1988; Coupland and Coupland 1993; Coupland and Nussbaum 1993; Coupland, Coupland, and Giles 1991) and related topics such as age attitudes (Kite and Johnson 1988), age stereotypes (Hummert, Garstka, Shanor, and Strahm 1994), ageist information-seeking (Ng, Giles, and Moody 1992), and baby talk directed at older adults (Caporael 1981; Kemper 1994). The present research is an attempt to fill the lacuna. Importantly, the submissions were historically significant and worthy of study because of major economic and ideological changes that were occurring at the time when the Royal Commission was set up. Among the changes (see, e.g., Boston et al. 1991), the following are particularly relevant to the present study. Partly, as a result of economic pressure but also owing to the ideological influence of Reagan's America and Thatcher's Britain, New Zealand was, by the early 1980s, entering a period of socio-economic development in which the free market and the welfare state co-existed uneasily. From 1984, a monetarist economy has been progressively installed by three successive administrations as part of an effort to ``balance the books'' and make citizens ``live within their means.'' The reforms sought to reduce State expenditure by transferring work previously carried out by State agencies to private business. Social security spending on senior citizens was one of the major targets for reform. The ``problem'' of welfare spending on senior citizens has been exacerbated by an aging population and by the introduction of compulsory retirement legislation to combat the dramatic rise in unemployment that occurred since the 1970s. Over a relatively short span of years, Government policy had changed from a commitment to welfare for senior citizens to the requirement that they became more self-reliant. Paralleling this is what Foucault (1980) might have called a discursive battle for ideological control, as the various interested parties Ð the State, private enterprise, welfare, and health-care organizations for senior citizens, church groups, and individuals Ð contested the issues in the media, in Parliament, and in everyday discourse. It was in this highly politicized context that the Government set up the Royal Commission on Social Policy, in part to signal its commitment on social policy issues to an increasingly sceptical electorate. In 1987, the Royal Commission set about the business of gathering position statements, expert analyses, institutional reports, and public submissions on all aspects of social policy. The public submissions alone number more than 6,000, and represent the largest ever written outpouring of the country's views on itself, its future, and identity. Given the political ambience of the day, a major topic of concern to submission writers was the plight of senior citizens. We analyze these submissions in order to discern the main patterns of discourse, and to describe in content and function, some of the linguistic resources from which accounts of the role and position of senior citizens in society are constructed.
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DATA Two hundred and fourteen groups and individuals contributed to a pool of submissions that was deemed by the Commission to be commentaries on the position of the elderly. From the handbook of submission abstracts, all of the available contributions listed under the heading ``Elderly'' were located and photocopied, giving a pool of 93 handwritten and typed scripts varying in length from a few sentences to dissertations of 20 or more pages, and totaling some 300 pages in all. The reduction of the data pool from 214 to 93 scripts arose partly from the large number of submissions (41) that were missing from the archive. In addition, many submissions were recorded in a form that was unsuitable for discourse analysis: material gathered from radio talkback sessions (10), from oral presentations (26), and from a week-long ``free-phone for women'' service (33). These categories shared the problem of being paraphrased, usually in brief note form, by someone (usually an employee of the Commission) other than the person making the submission. The difficulty with such data is that for discourse analysis aimed at the description of interpretative repertoires and ideological resources, either verbatim transcript or original written text is necessary. The particular form of the Commission's recording style is regrettable as it has made inaccessible to this investigation data from indigenous Maori and Polynesian minority groups, most of whom made oral presentations, and from others who used the free-phone. Finally, 11 submissions were rejected as dealing only peripherally with the issue of the position of senior citizens in society Ðtypically, this consisted of a passing comment about the elderly in relation to another topic of discussion. Despite these problems, which are not unusual when working with naturally occurring archival data, the data pool of 93 scripts gives a reflection of the discursive construction of particular views of senior citizens, and insights into ways in which such resources are deployed in practice. We use the term ``particular views'' advisedly because the perceived nature of the Royal Commission was such that it probably had encouraged a particular kind of persons or groups with views that sought to protect and support senior citizens to make submissions. The emphasis which the Commission put on social policy was generally seen as an opportunity for the public to protect their social well-being against the adverse effects of economic and state sector reforms at the time. The process of classifying the public submissions under the ``elderly'' heading probably further weighted the database toward those who were keen to adopt the role of advocate for senior citizens. For such was the case. Whereas only a handful of submissions articulated views unsympathetic to senior citizens, the vast majority, in diverse ways, gave voice to a powerful and complex case that said that society should look after its elders and keep them with dignity. Some of the 93 submittants volunteered unsolicited information about their age and geographical location in their submissions. On the basis of available information, submittants were classified as either ``older'' (60 years of age and over) or ``younger'' (under 60 years of age). Thirty-seven percent of the 93 submittants did not give their age. Another 30 percent were older individuals, compared to 15 percent of older persons in the census. Thus, older persons are disproportionately represented in the present sample, even in the unlikely event that none of the age-unmarked submittants were older persons. Such a trend is not surprising given the selection criterion of thematic relatedness to the area of elderly issues.
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With respect to geographical location, submittants were deemed to be ``urban'' dwellers if they resided in New Zealand's four greater metropolitan areas (Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin), or ``rural'' dwellers if they lived outside these metropolitan areas. There was no available information on geographical location for 8 percent of the submittants. Of the remainder, 53 percent was urban and 39 percent was rural. The urban figure was close to (51%) whereas the rural figure was lower than (48%) that in the census (New Zealand Official Yearbook 1994).
PROCEDURE OF ANALYSIS The discourse analytic approach we have adopted follows the general outline given by Potter and Wetherell (1987) and elaborated by others including van Dijk (1987), Billig et al. (1989), Gavey (1989), Nairn and McCreanor (1990, 1991), and Ullah (1990) in specific projects. This style of analysis focuses on language and the role it plays in constructing and maintaining particular interpretations of social reality. Following on from this is a practice in which the researcher actively produces analyses of sample texts to highlight ways in which the discourse is constituted and how it functions to produce a viable account of the world. The basic requirement is for multiple readings of the data in which the researcher attends to all levels of the material, from the syntax and grammar to the ideas and ideologies, in order to describe the regularity and variation in the text and say how these contribute to the success or failure of the discourse. Analyses were made by two researchers independently. In each analysis, the first step was to read the entire corpus two or more times, and afterward, relevant extracts from all submissions were noted along with the reference number of the source (e.g., S1234). By the end of this stage, familiarity with the data was allowing the formulation of a series of patterns or themes in the ways writers constructed their arguments about senior citizens. With the patterns, only very loosely defined extracts were now sorted in the various categories to which they contributed. The material, numbered as in the original data set, was categorized under headings labeling each of the patterns. This stage was a very major part of the analysis entailing choices about what was selected and where to place it; in a very real sense, this shaped the later stages of analysis by determining the form of the data it worked. The process yielded several specific categories of extracts of varying length, depth, and subject matter. These were then subjected to the intensive reading process outlined above. The two analyses yielded 11 and eight categories or themes, respectively. The 11 categories in one analysis were: obligations, housing, finance, care, carers, ageism, protection, social security, independence, quality of life, and intergenerational interaction. Upon closer inspection, these categories differed from those in the second analysis mainly in terms of category specificity; other than this, the contents of the respective categories overlapped almost completely. Thus, the first eight categories corresponded very well with the eight categories in the second analysis: obligations with social justice, housing with housing, finance with income, care and carers with health care, ageism with ageism, protection with political power, and social security with alienation and retirement. Two of the three remaining categories overlapped largely with four categories in the second analysis. That is, independence overlapped largely with retirement, political power, and health care; and quality of life with retirement, income, and health care. The 11th
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category Ð intergenerational interaction Ðwas not identified in the second analysis. Other than this last category, the two independent analyses showed a high degree of concordance and collectively captured most, if not all, of the dominant themes. The extracts were read again with the view of grouping the categories into a smaller number of patterns of discourse. In the following, we present the results of this final reading in the form of three major discourse patterns. The first pattern, obligations, is found in most submissions. The remaining patterns Ð anti-ageism and positive aging Ð are evident in about 25 percent and 10 percent of the submissions, respectively. The three patterns will be presented individually. For each pattern, we will attempt to tease out its characteristic rhetorical or argumentative features, and wherever possible, to link the discourse with important social values in order to illuminate how submittants draw from values to make their case. In the discussion part of the article, we will compare the patterns and consider them as a whole.
PATTERNS OF DISCOURSE Obligations These people are being neglected and it is up to us to take care of them. . . . The elderly who have worked all their lives, paid the taxes, are being penalized because of becoming old. This is where we as a people should be seeing that they have a comfortable living until they die. (S2387)
This submission exemplifies the notion that society has certain obligations toward its elderly members Ð to take care of them, to see that they have a comfortable living, and so forth. Unlike some other submissions (see below), the present submission does not actually use the word ``obligation''; nonetheless, the sense of obligation is conveyed through the assertions that ``it is up to us to take care of them'' and that ``we as a people should be seeing that they have a comfortable living.'' Society's obligation toward senior citizens is said to be a reward for the latter's lifelong contributions to the wealth of the nation through work and tax payments. Such a construction portrays the notion of obligation as a dynamic, relational one that resembles the classic principle of social exchange in social psychology (Thibaut and Kelley 1959) and sociology (Blau 1964). More than that, the construction hints at an implicit social contract that society should fulfill when individuals become ``old'' and until they ``die.'' To renege on this contract would amount to ``mistreating'' the elderly. The phrase ``are being penalized because of becoming old'' emphasizes that the elderly are not culpable for the penalty and so highlights the injustice. That this is so can be seen from considering the impact of alternative constructions; for example, if the elderly were being penalized for being spendthrifts they would not deserve sympathy. When writing on senior citizens' work contributions, submittants do not limit themselves to traditional definitions of work as paid jobs, but include unpaid activities such as grandparenting, caregiving, and voluntary work. This theme is often linked with women. Taxes, another major contribution to the social contract, differ from work in an important way. For a long period of time, New Zealand has had a high income taxation regime as part of its social welfare deal. People paid high income tax in part to exchange for the
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provision of current services, and partly as an insurance for the future after retirement. As a result, they now expect that it would be binding on successive governments to honor their side of the contract and to ensure its certainty. A submission that exemplifies the social contract basis of obligation is the following one: Our old people . . . are not greedy as has been claimed by some. They see themselves as having paid during their working lives into social security. Now all they ask is a just return. Above all, the element of uncertainty needs to be removed from the lives of those who are past the stage of earning their own living and are in every sense dependent on the state. Minimum guarantees as to the availability of universal benefits in old age should be established; guarantees that cannot be altered or eroded at the whim of any future minister of finance or treasury official. In fact, the creation of some kind of binding ``Social Contract'' is called for. (S5252)
The basis of society's obligations toward senior citizens extend beyond social exchange, even though social exchange and the allied notion of social contract are by far the most prevalent constructions. Two other bases of obligation were discerned. One is the notion of neediness, that is, society has the obligation to assist senior citizens who do not have the resources to provide for their old age. It is an example of a particularistic concept (Parsons 1951) and applies to only those people who are in need. Social exchange, as we have seen, is also particularistic because it limits society's obligations to particular individuals Ð in this case to those who have been able to make contributions by way of tax payments and work. But whereas social exchange is linked with justice, neediness is linked with a humanitarian society. A third basis of society's obligations is the right of senior citizens to social security. ``Right'' is a universalistic ethic that transcends individual differences in their contributions or neediness; in this sense it is a very different construction from both social exchange and neediness, which are both particularistic. Reflecting this universalistic ethic, submittants who argued on the basis of citizens' right often appealed to egalitarianism, rather than justice or humanitarianism Ðas one submittant put it, ``regardless of their (elderly people's) racial, social or economic position'' (S600). These then are the main strands of the obligations pattern of discourse. The most important strand is a social contract based on senior citizens' prior contributions to the well-being of society at large. In exchange, it is incumbent upon society to maintain them at an acceptable standard of quality of life until they die. Augmenting the social contract or social exchange notion are the neediness of some senior citizens and the right of all senior citizens. These three bases of claimed obligations in turn are linked respectively to the values of justice, humanitarianism, and egalitarianism. Collectively, they form a very central plank in protecting the position of senior citizens in society, and in calling upon society to meet its obligations toward them. We move now to look at a range of frequently articulated practical aspects of upholding society's obligations towards senior citizens. For presentation purposes, they are grouped into four domains relating to accommodation, finance, care, and protection, even though in the submissions they are inter-related to some extent.
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Two patterns of discourse are discerned in accommodation submissions. One pattern consists of assertions that directly link accommodation with obligations. This is accomplished by casting accommodation either as a human right Ð``Every person has the right to have adequate and suitable accommodation at an affordable price'' (S4735) Ð or a special need Ð``I should like to see more pensioner cottages so that elderly people or couples can maintain their independence as their need and ability to maintain large dwellings diminishes'' (S380). The second pattern of accommodation discourse makes reference to obligations but, in addition, constructs an economic argument based on the notions of investment, efficiency, and such like. The following lengthy excerpt is instructive in this regard, as well as in its subtle use of language. Clusters of small, easily worked houses where the elderly can find congenial companionship and mutual support are a growing need in our community. We believe society has an obligation to provide these and that it would be a good investment since it would enable old people to stay out of rest homes and continuing care for several years longer than at present. Domiciliary care is easier and cheaper when the clients live close together; not that the clusters should be too large and form a ``ghetto'' Ð the elderly should continue living in the district that they know and to continue to interact with other age groups. The clusters need to be scattered throughout every district. (S3389)
The submission above can best be analyzed by starting at sentence two (``We believe . . . ''). It asserts the belief in a linkage between accommodation and obligations, and then strengthens the case for accommodation with an appeal to economic common-sense by evoking the notion of ``investment'' to claim that the provision of accommodation would enable elderly people to avoid institutional care for longer (note the implicit notion that institutional care is inferior). Prior to sentence two, the opening sentence already creates an idealized vision of accommodation for the elderly in an appropriate social environment that is enhanced by its location in ``our community.'' The use of the word ``clusters'' in this sentence also assists in the creation of this ambience; consider the effects of alternative constructions Ð blocks? In the third sentence, cluster is specifically contrasted with ``ghetto.'' Aside from these points is the requirement that the accommodation be tailored specifically Ð``small, easily worked'' Ð to the needs of the elderly. This sentence also elaborates the economic argument with reference to efficiency (``easier and cheaper''), to which is added a social-relational reason, namely, the facilitation of intergenerational contact. Financial support, the second major practical aspect of obligations, is seen as a key to the maintenance of senior citizens at an acceptable level of quality of life. It is, however, different from accommodation in an important way. Whereas accommodation is a non-controversial end in itself because of its direct link with the basic need for shelter, financial assistance is seen more as a means to a variety of ends: subsidized accommodation, medicine, telephone accounts, car registration, and income maintenance. Reflecting this instrumental nature of financial assistance, submittants seldom assert that society has the obligation to provide finance to senior citizens. Instead, they construct a preface showing the instrumentality of finance in everyday life and only then exhort society to come up with the money. The following excerpt is an example of an elaborately constructed preface.
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For those who cannot afford to pay from their own resources, however, finance is a major problem adding considerably to their other difficulties. Lack of finance creates other problems for the . . . elderly as they worry about needing care. They scrimp and save on food and heating: they rarely have their own transport Ð doctor's bills are kept to a minimum when their needs are greatest. . . . (S3161)
It is only after the preface has been constructed that the reasons for soliciting financial assistance are given. In this particular submission, as in some others, the major reason is based on economic rationality: ``If those in [this] group received better financial support it would cost the country less in the long term.'' Care for the elderly is another cluster of issues that submittants claim society must attend to if it is to meet its obligations to elderly people. The obligation to provide care is predominantly based on neediness. Care is given a wide range of definitions, from the generic sense of general responsibility for the well-being of the elderly to care in highly specified domains such as health or accommodation, within which various levels Ð defined by client needs Ð are described. The common denominator is that human carers are directly involved in the care of senior citizens, and this human dimension differentiates care from the provision of physical facilities (as in accommodation and finance). For this reason, discourse of the care of senior citizens easily slips into a discourse about carers. The latter in turn generates a complex set of texts on the politics of caregiving. A major issue in the politics of caregiving is over who should or should not be caregivers. Some submittants advocate that caregiving should be a family obligation: ``There is no point in providing care for the elderly whether in public institutions or private when with foresight they could be cared for in the family circle'' (S5397). This strongly worded family-first position is rare among the submissions. More often than not, submittants wrote about family care in a guarded way. One expression of guardedness is to give consideration to the particular emotional strains that family carers, more so than nonfamily carers, may come under. The particular strain arises from excessive demands that elderly parents and grandparents may place on family members that they would not otherwise do to nonfamily carers. The following highly personalized account illustrates this point, as well as the difficulty of family carers to even admit to it: It takes bravery born of desperation to admit that one's own mother drives you crazy: that you cannot cope. We have only admitted to it in the last year when her behavior was seen as inappropriate by friends. (S5379)
A few submissions, while still accepting that family members have an obligation to care for their elders, place conditions on the obligation. A common condition is to pay the caregiver ``the equivalent of the average wage'' (S5397), another is the provision of ``back-up'' support (S2506). Against the family-first stance, many submittants call for the removal of caregiving from the family. This latter position is invariably constructed on the belief, presented as a fact, that women have been the traditional caregivers without whom family care is not possible. The following excerpts illustrate this belief/fact with varying degrees of emotional overtone.
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. . . the number of women able to look after older people compared with those who need care has decreased steadily over recent years. . . . There will therefore be an increasing need for public and private institutional care for the aged. (S2925) . . . in this era of the working mother, it is very difficult, no matter how one tries, to provide satisfactory care for the dependent elderly. . . . (S5226) Stop behaving as if there is a never-ending supply of women who can be coaxed or bullied into giving up their own lives to care for the elderly. (S1004).
The politics of caregiving extends beyond the family. In fact, it is in the public arena outside the family that most of the submissions are engaged. Here, submittants draw a strong line between nonprofit- and profit-making carers. Overwhelmingly, they are against profit-making carers. As most of the submissions in this category are written by nonprofit-making agencies, a large part of their negativity against profit-making carers could simply be driven by rivalry or self-interest, although this is seldom acknowledged. The interesting question for us is: what are the wider values that submittants draw on in advancing their politics of caregiving? Two values are discerned: devotion and the mistrust of private enterprise. Devotion refers to personal qualities that distinguish good carers from less good ones: ``The proper care of the elderly . . . requires a certain sort of person to do this work and careful screening is needed to weed out who lack the patience and unselfish dedication required'' (S545). The idealized devoted carer is a nun who has taken ``the vows of poverty'' (S310). By invoking the value of devotion, submittants are able to align charitable, religious, and other nonprofit-making organizations in a moral opposition to profit-making organizations. In principle, profit-making organizations can either be publicly or privately owned. Insofar as the submissions are concerned, profit-making is identified solely with private enterprise. The latter is viewed historically as a late comer in the provision of elderly care relative to charitable, religious, and voluntary bodies (see Koopman-Boyden 1988; Saville-Smith 1993). As such, private enterprise does not have tradition on its side. While this does not exclude it from playing a useful role at a time when the population is aging and more women are entering the workforce, it is looked upon with suspicion. The following disclaimer expresses the mistrust in a relatively mild form: ``I am all for private enterprise, but not at the expense of the less fortunate'' (S2237). At the core of the mistrust of private enterprise are the beliefs that private enterprise will put profit above people and that it is not easily controllable, seeking as it always does to cut cost at the expense of quality (S3151) and to comply minimally, if at all, with statutory requirements (S3389). The negative stance against profit-making organizations that is commonly found in the submissions does not mean the submissions all speak with one united voice. On the contrary, behind the apparently united front against profit-making lies a number of divisions along both occupational and organizational lines. Occupational division, as expressed in the following excerpt, is based both on status rivalry and a need for greater and more positive psychological distinctiveness: Home Helps need help but not to be put under the nursing staff to run. They are nurses, we are home managers, two totally different jobs and should be kept as such. We are workers in our own right, not understaff to nurses. (S2825)
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Organizational division, by contrast, has less to do with status rivalry and more to do with establishing psychological distinctiveness and trying to gain separate funding for its work. This is clearly illustrated in the submission by a charitable trust that was constituted by several lay bodies within the Catholic Church. The submission (S310) first explains how the changing circumstances have brought about the Trust: The Catholic Church has played a major role in New Zealand in providing beds in the old people and rest home area, largely through the efforts of its religious orders of women. . . . However, in the last 20 years, the numbers of women entering religious life in the Catholic Church in New Zealand has declined dramatically. It was in recognition of this and the resultant increasingly restricted ability of the religious orders to continue to provide . . . care for the elderly that the Wellington Catholic Homes Trust was founded by lay people.
The submission then attempts to differentiate the Trust from the Church and to advance its call for separate funding: At present, no member of a Catholic religious order is employed by the Trust and any future involvement by members of a religious order in the work in the Trust is likely to be minimal. The consequence of this is that like other welfare organizations Wellington Catholic Homes Trust must obtain significant financial support to enable it to run its institutions.
Finally, under the section of obligations, a series of submissions call for practical steps to protect the elderly against threats to their well-being. By far, the most commonly cited culprits are rest homes, especially those run as a private enterprise, and private hospitals. The threats from these care providers include the lack of conformity to statutory requirements, inadequately trained staff, and lack of proper supervision (S3389, S2506, and S2237). Elderly abuse and asset stripping by relatives are also cited (S1980). Protection of its citizens by the State is arguably a function that no Government can withdraw from or delegate away, even though a Government may be ideologically committed to shedding its social welfare functions such as accommodation, financial support, and health care. The treatise of Hobbes (1968 [1651]) on the social contract between the State and its citizens is based on the idea that the latter surrender part of their individual freedom in exchange for State protection. As far as we can judge, none of the submissions invoke the Hobbesian treatise in their call for Government to protect its senior citizens. Instead, they make the call without explaining why the Government should protect its senior citizens, as if the underlying reason is already self-evident.
Anti-Ageism In a number of respects, the arguments and ideas gathered under the heading of anti-ageism are outside of and yet related to the theme of obligations. Here, submissions point to a range of beliefs and stereotypes about the elderly that facilitate the construction of negative or deficient images of senior citizens. To argue against
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such constructions, submittants employ a variety of rhetorical formats, the most common ones are manifesto-speak, victim-speak, and observer-speak. The following submission from an organization for senior citizens is an example of manifesto-speak. We believe . . . that often the elderly are held in low esteem, and are wrongly presumed to be emotionally fragile, easily upset, stupid, asexual and conformists; that mental decline that interferes with ordinary living and learning, is not inevitable Ð it is abnormal. (S600)
The manifesto sets out to challenge a cluster of ideas about the elderly, which while not named as ageist specifically, are easily classified as such. Its use of the plural pronoun in the opening phrase stresses that it is a group and not an individual person that owns the declaration; the alternative singular pronoun ``I'' would have reduced the impact and authority of the content. In the first sentence the use of the word ``often'' to qualify the accusation of stereotyping, protects the claims from dismissal as trivial. The second sentence categorically denies the widely held idea that aging inevitably leads to mental decline. The use of the term ``abnormal'' to describe age-related mental decline has a curious twist to it in the present context. While it clearly contradicts the accepted view, it also draws on a different but widely accepted set of resources about mental illness. Victim-speak, in contrast to manifesto-speak, makes use of first-person linguistic markers to give credence and force to the personal experience of being the victim of ageist practices or neglect. The following excerpt is an exemplar: ``Having brought up a family after being widowed in my early forties, it hurts to be neglected in my old age'' (S1843). A second feature of victim-speak is to contrast the elderly victims' personal experience with younger people's ignorance or intellectualization of the harmful effects of ageism. The excerpt below illustrates the point: It is only when one moves into the older age group that one is conscious of the loss of status accorded to older people by the rest of the community. (S646)
Observer-speak, finally, is a format where the author is portrayed as a passionate and yet impartial collective of observers, usually under the name of a ``committee.'' Observer-speak presents the submission as a view from the outside based on research Ð`` . . . we have studied a number of issues'' (S3054) Ðor on the results of deliberations Ð ``This committee is of the opinion that ageist attitudes are reflected in the structures of much health service provision'' (S2914). While anti-ageism appears to be the polar opposite of ageism that it criticizes, at the level of their ideological underpinnings the two are hard to distinguish at times. Anti-ageism submissions often show traces of an overprotective orientation to senior citizens, which risk being quite disempowering because of, paradoxically, their patronizing and overgeneralized presumptions. For example, by adopting an overprotective stance in their submissions, submittants unwittingly perpetuate stereotypes of elderly frailty, passivity, and incompetence. Second, by treating older people as a group, submittants risk sustaining the ageist stance that older people are uniformly alike. Varying degrees of either or both ageist assumptions are evident in anti-ageism
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discourse generally. Of the two, the uniformity assumption is relatively more evident and is most noticeable in anti-ageism discourse presented as observer-speak.
Old Age as a Positive Resource The last of the three major discourse patterns differs from the others in that it seems to stand alone and, while it considerably supports the others, does not rely on or interweave with them explicitly. Older adults are constructed as possessing a rich supply of valuable experience, wisdom, skill, and old-time culture that are essential to the well-being of society as a whole. In advocating the importance and value of the elderly, arguments in this pool do not have the guilt-evoking moral edge that is evident in the other patterns. Instead they cast the elderly in a positive light in their own right and emphasize the kinds of benefit that will result by keeping them integrated in society. This human resource pool will continue to grow as a percentage of the population, and this must be turned into a positive development. The elderly possess a wealth of experience that is of immeasurable cultural value. This should be keyed back into the community, particularly through the interaction between the young and the elderly. (S860)
In sentence 1, the elderly are cast as a potentially valuable asset to society. Highlighting the population growth of the elderly adds to the urgency of the problem, without undercutting the positive tone established. At the same time, the clear implication from the claim that the increase ``must be turned into'' a boon for society is that it is wasted at present. The positive tone is continued in sentence 3 through the use of the phrases ``wealth of experience'' and ``immeasurable cultural value,'' which also serve to specify what it is that the elderly can offer. These resources are to be recognized by and fed back to the community, especially to the ``young.'' The next extract is a little more circumspect. As a worker with older people (I am one myself) I am constantly impressed by the vast amount of talent and experience largely lying untapped in the lives of this group. This immense resource could be widely used in schools, community groups, in work with young unemployed people, and in numerous other imaginative ways. It would be demeaning and wasteful for older people to be given menial and unproductive tasks. They have a real and lively contribution to make as they pass on skills and wisdom where opportunities are presented to them. (S2236)
In this instance, the writer offers the personal warrants of being both an ``older'' person and a worker with such people, lending the extract considerable authority. The value of the elderly is expanded to include ``talent'' as well as experience. Multiple avenues for the mutually beneficial application of the skills and experience of the elderly are canvassed and contrasted with possible undesirable and wasteful applications. The role of the elderly in the broader education of the young is also raised and advocated. As before, the emphasis is on the positive, and is further enhanced by the use of terms such as ``real'' and ``lively,'' which act to break, somewhat, the negative images toward the elderly.
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The above two extracts make particularly clear use of the resource theme in their coverage of the position of senior citizens. This theme is especially important in the clash of ideologies over old age as it represents a strongly positive account that, without evoking guilt (as in the obligations theme) or condemning ageist prejudice (as in the anti-ageism theme), counteracts the central notion of an opposing ideology that senior citizens are an unaffordable burden on society.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION A brief examination of the discourse patterns and their relationship to each other is now possible. Without necessarily suggesting a hierarchical structure in these relationships, we note that the cluster of ideas relating to obligations recurs throughout the submissions both overtly and covertly. In the words of many submittants, what society ``must'' or ``should'' do in respect to its senior citizens is to provide them with security and quality of life by attending to their housing, financial, health, and other needs as well as by protecting them from exploitation or abuse. Put simply, ``all they ask is a just return'' of comfort and security as their due for a lifetime of work and taxation (S5252). In many aspects, this is in direct opposition to the emergent ``new right'' ideology that promotes the withdrawal of State from fulfilling its obligations to its senior citizens. The obligations pattern of discourse is supplemented by two others that operate in different ways. Firstly, there is anti-ageism, which counters prejudices with arguments, some of which are drawn from the obligations theme. The second one, which is from a completely separate base to the notion of obligations, argues for the value and importance of older adults as a positive resource for the well-being of society as a whole. It is interesting that despite the apparent complementarity between the themes of anti-ageism and positive aging, they are rarely deployed together or in concert. A partial explanation may be that in as much as the anti-ageism theme amounts to an accusation of unjustifiable prejudice against senior citizens, it is a defensive or complaining position. The theme of positive aging, on the other hand, is constructive and action-oriented. Perhaps the constructive theme has an element of political empowerment insofar as those who articulate it are often people who are directly involved with successful, innovative schemes with the elderly, whereas those who attempt to counter negative ageism are frequently members of political pressure groups who construct themselves and their cohort as embattled victims of an uncaring society. In this vein, submittants may choose rhetorically to construct their argument in one mode but not both; in particular, if they have adopted the affirmative style they may try to preserve the positive frame it relies on by not mixing it with accusation or retreating to a grievance mode. Another point of interest is the relative frequency in the use of the obligations pattern compared to the other two. The pattern of obligations is used in some form in most submissions, whereas the patterns of anti-ageism and positive aging are only used in about a quarter and a 10th of the submissions, respectively. These numerical indicators are fairly reflected in the degree of extension and elaboration revealed by the detailed analysis of extracts. There can be little doubt that the obligations pattern offers submittants a vast array of ideological resources for the justification, explanation, or
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instantiation of claims on behalf of senior citizens. By comparison, the ideological potential of the other two discourse patterns is rather constricted, at least as deployed in the present sample. Following on from this, there is also some differentiation in the general form of argumentation used in the various patterns. We will discuss these differences beginning with anti-ageism. As noted above, anti-ageism is characterized by an oppositional style that not only assumes the existence of competing alternative accounts of the position of senior citizens but often goes further to constitute these as the subject of criticism. In this discourse process, it can be noted that the form of those given positions is rhetorically constructed to make them amenable to the attack that the submittant wishes to bring to bear through manifesto-speak, victim-speak, or observer-speak. At a deeper level, however, many of the anti-ageism discourses reproduce the ageist assumptions by being over-protective of senior citizens to the point of patronizing, and by talking about seniors citizens as if they were all alike. The internal contradictions observed in text here parallel the phenomenon of ``over-accommodation'' observed in intergenerational conversations, where younger speakers stereotypically use overpolite and patronizing styles of talk when addressing the old, despite of (and because of) good intentions (Ryan, Hummert, and Boich 1995). It is apparent that the submittants, like the well-meaning but over-accommodating speakers in everyday conversation, have considerable difficulty in steering clear of some of the very same assumptions of ageism that give rise to prejudices and stereotypes that they wish to condemn. As Coupland and Coupland (1993) have pointed out, anti-ageism often recreates ageism, and the resultant competing discourses of ageism can lead to highly confused policies and practices. The main discourse style in positive aging is assertion. The claims made herein about the value of senior citizens, though rhetorically eloquent, lack specific details and also tend to gloss over potential difficulties in intergenerational communication. In this vein, two or three submittants reproduce variations on this idea in which they relate their experiences of the stresses and difficulties they have had with elderly relatives. Such contradictions cannot be adequately dealt with in the present paper but should provide fruitful data for further investigation (see Ng et al. 1997). In the obligations pattern, possibly because the database is so extensive, most of the tactics discussed so far are in evidence. Rhetorical constructions, open assertions, and oppositional arguments are all used extensively to build and sustain this theme. Despite differences in approach and context, we feel that the work reported here has implications for quantitative-oriented research on ageist beliefs and communication, if only in drawing attention to the wider discourse in which these topics are located. The overlap with the latter will increase. A recent study by Wood and Ryan (1991), for example, has argued that actual discourse in everyday environments is an important topic of study in its own right and for those interested in the position of senior citizens. In conclusion, the present work gives an assay of how submittants construct a particular working ideology of the position of senior citizens in a society that undergoes rapid social change due to population aging as well as economic and public sector reforms. Because of the close alignment of the submittants to the well-being of senior citizens, their submissions taken together constitute a collective voice for the latter. Contrary views that
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are critical of older people are underrepresented and awaiting future research (see, e.g., Thomson 1991). Since the completion of the present study, the Prime Ministerial Task Force on Positive Ageing (1997) has produced a report in which it reviews current issues, proposes a vision for positive aging, and suggests ways of promoting that vision. As the title of the Task Force suggests, the theme of positive aging is central to the report. In addition, the other two themes that we have identified in the present study are also represented therein. Thus, there is some evidence of external validity for our analysis. Apart from identifying broad discourse patterns, the present study also provides a micro-analysis that highlights the constitution and functions of some of the widely used discursive tools available to those who enter the political and ideological arena on behalf of senior citizens. These tools draw on the values of justice, humanitarianism, egalitarianism, opposition to prejudice, and human resources, and are often combined with other arguments based on economic rationality and personal experiences. As issues of old age are related to issues of gender and social services, the latter issues are constituted as major discourse topics in many of the submissions dealing with the politics of care giving, where feminist values, occupational rivalry, organizational distinctiveness, and self-interests come to the fore. Finally, the fact that supporters of senior citizens often reproduce ageist assumptions is a sober reminder of human beings' limited ability to transcend prevailing stereotypes of the time. In drawing out these elements and showing their interlinkages, the present work will make a definite contribution to the understanding of how senior citizens and their supporters formulate their own voice in an ideologically harsh environment (Sampson 1993). ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: Completion of this article was facilitated by a grant from the Founda-
tion of Research, Science and Technology (VIC 505). The authors acknowledge the assistance of John Bretherton in compiling information on the demographic background of the submittants, and the constructive comments made on earlier versions by Nik Coupland, Mike Lloyd, and two anonymous reviewers.
NOTE 1. The word ``elderly,'' as used by the Royal Commission and by most of the submittants, will be retained in the present article where this would preserve its original reference and force; otherwise, our preferred term is senior citizens or older adults.
REFERENCES Billig, M., S. Condor, D. Edwards, M. Gane, D. Middleton, and A. Radley. 1989. Ideological Dilemmas. London: Sage. Blau, P. M. 1964. Exchange and Power in Social Life. New York: Wiley. Boston, J., J. Martin, J. Pallot, and P. Walsh, eds. 1991. Reshaping the State: New Zealand's Bureaucratic Revolution. Auckland, New Zealand: Oxford University Press. Caporael, L. R. 1981. ``The Paralanguage of Caregiving: Baby Talk to the Institutionalized Aged.'' Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 40: 876 ± 884.
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Coupland, N. and J. Coupland. 1993. ``Discourse of Ageism and Anti-Ageism.'' Journal of Aging Studies 7: 279 ± 301. Coupland, N., J. Coupland, and H. Giles. 1991. Language, Society and the Elderly. Oxford: Blackwell. Coupland, N. and J. F. Nussbaum. (Eds.). 1993. Discourse and Lifespan Identity. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Covey, H. C. 1988. ``Historical Terminology Used to Represent Older People.'' The Gerontologist 28: 291 ± 297. Farrell, C., A. T. Palmer, S. Atchison, and B. Andelman. 1994. ``The Economics of Aging: Why the Growing Number of Elderly Won't Bankrupt America.'' Business Week (12 September): 60 ± 68. Foucault, M. 1980. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Writings, edited by C. Gordon. New York: Pantheon. Gavey, N. 1989. ``Feminist Post-Structuralism and Discourse Analysis: Contributions to Feminist Psychology.'' Psychology of Women Quarterly 13: 459 ± 475. Hobbes, T. 1968. Leviathan. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin. Hummert, M. L., T. A. Gartska, J. L. Shanor, and S. Strahm. 1994. ``Stereotypes of the Elderly Held by Young, Middle-Aged, and Elderly Adults.'' Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences 49: 240 ± 249. Kemper, S. 1994. ``Elderspeak: Speech Accommodations to Older Adults.'' Aging and Cognition 1: 17 ± 28. Kite, M. and B. Johnson. 1988. ``Attitudes toward Older and Younger Adults: A Meta-Analysis.'' Psychology and Aging 3: 233 ± 244. Koopman-Boyden, P. G. 1988. ``Perspectives on the Elderly in New Zealand.'' Pp. 631 ± 710 in April Report, Vol. 4, edited by The Royal Commission on Social Policy. Wellington: Government Printer. Nairn, R. and T. McCreanor. 1990. `` Insensitivity and Hypersensitivity: An Imbalance in Pakeha Accounts of Racial Conflict.'' Journal of Language and Social Psychology 9: 293 ± 308. Nairn, R. and T. McCreanor. 1991. ``Race Talk and Commonsense: Ideological Patterns in Pakeha Talk about Maori/Pakeha Relations.'' Journal of Language and Social Psychology 10: 245 ± 262. National Institute on Aging. 1996. Global Aging into the 21st Century. USA: National Institute on Aging. New Zealand Official Yearbook. 1994. Wellington, New Zealand: Department of Statistics. Ng, S. H., H. Giles, and J. Moody. 1992. ``Information-Seeking Triggered by Age.'' Aging and Human Development 33: 269 ± 277. Ng, S. H., J. H. Liu, A. Weatherall, and C. S. F. Loong. 1997. `` Younger Adults' Communication Experiences Contact with Elders and Peers.'' Human Communication Research 24: 82 ± 108. Parsons, T. 1951. The Social System. New York: Free Press. Potter, J. and M. Wetherell. 1987. Discourse and Social Psychology. London: Sage. Prime Ministerial Task Force on Positive Ageing. 1997. Facing the Future: A Strategic Plan (The Final Report). Wellington, NZ: Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. Ryan, E. B., M. L. Hummert, and L. H. Boich. 1995. ``Communication Predicaments of Aging: Patronizing Behavior toward Older Adults.'' Journal of Language and Social Psychology 14: 144 ± 166. Sampson, E. E. 1993. ``Identity Politics: Challenges to Psychology's Understanding.'' American Psychologist 48: 1219 ± 1230. Saville-Smith, K. 1993. ``The State and the Social Construction of Ageing.'' Pp. 76 ± 94 in New Zealand's Ageing Society: The Implications, edited by P. G. Koopman-Boyden. Wellington: Daphne Brassel.
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Thibaut, J. W. and H. H. Kelley. 1959. The Social Psychology of Groups. New York: Wiley. Thomson, D. 1991. Selfish Generations? The Ageing of New Zealand's Welfare State. Wellington, New Zealand: Bridget Williams Books. Ullah, P. 1990. ``Rhetoric and Ideology in Social Identification: The Case of Second Generation Irish Youths.'' Discourse and Society 1: 167 ± 188. van Dijk, T. A. 1987. Communication Racism. Newbury Park: Sage. Wood, L. and E. Ryan. 1991. ``Talk to Elders: Social Structures, Attitudes and Forms of Address.'' Ageing and Society 11: 167 ± 188.
TIM McCREANOR University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand ABSTRACT: As the number of senior citizens continues to rise, their public profile will grow and political discussion about their future will become increasingly prominent. The present research was designed to approach such debate by providing an assay of naturally occurring data drawn from the New Zealand Royal Commission on Social Policy (1986 ± 1988). Public submissions to the Royal Commission on the specific subject of senior citizens were extracted and examined from a discourse analytic perspective. The results obtained by two independent analyses showed three patterns of discourse, namely, society's obligations to senior citizens, anti-ageism, and old age as a positive resource. This troika of discourse patterns constitute a collective voice through which senior citizens and their supporters defend and advocate the social position of senior citizens.
INTRODUCTION The Royal Commission on Social Policy, which was set by the New Zealand government in 1986, received an unprecedented number of submissions from the public on a broad range of social issues. Significant in this material was a large number of submissions on issues relating to elderly1 people. Since then, these issues have become increasingly
*Direct all correspondence to: Sik Hung Ng, School of Psychology, Victoria University, P.O. Box 600, Wellington, New Zealand. E-mail: [email protected] JOURNAL OF AGING STUDIES, Volume 13, Number 4, pages 473 ± 489. Copyright D 1999 by Elsevier Science Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISSN: 0890 - 4065.
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prominent due to the aging of the population combined with longer life expectancies both in New Zealand (Prime Ministerial Task Force on Positive Ageing 1997) and many other countries (Farrell et al. 1994; National Institute on Aging 1996). The present article is an attempt to discern discourse patterns about senior citizens as reflected in the public submissions received by the Royal Commission. Research based on the analysis of submissions is relatively rare in aging studies, although other sources of data have been used in studies carried out on age discourse (Covey 1988; Coupland and Coupland 1993; Coupland and Nussbaum 1993; Coupland, Coupland, and Giles 1991) and related topics such as age attitudes (Kite and Johnson 1988), age stereotypes (Hummert, Garstka, Shanor, and Strahm 1994), ageist information-seeking (Ng, Giles, and Moody 1992), and baby talk directed at older adults (Caporael 1981; Kemper 1994). The present research is an attempt to fill the lacuna. Importantly, the submissions were historically significant and worthy of study because of major economic and ideological changes that were occurring at the time when the Royal Commission was set up. Among the changes (see, e.g., Boston et al. 1991), the following are particularly relevant to the present study. Partly, as a result of economic pressure but also owing to the ideological influence of Reagan's America and Thatcher's Britain, New Zealand was, by the early 1980s, entering a period of socio-economic development in which the free market and the welfare state co-existed uneasily. From 1984, a monetarist economy has been progressively installed by three successive administrations as part of an effort to ``balance the books'' and make citizens ``live within their means.'' The reforms sought to reduce State expenditure by transferring work previously carried out by State agencies to private business. Social security spending on senior citizens was one of the major targets for reform. The ``problem'' of welfare spending on senior citizens has been exacerbated by an aging population and by the introduction of compulsory retirement legislation to combat the dramatic rise in unemployment that occurred since the 1970s. Over a relatively short span of years, Government policy had changed from a commitment to welfare for senior citizens to the requirement that they became more self-reliant. Paralleling this is what Foucault (1980) might have called a discursive battle for ideological control, as the various interested parties Ð the State, private enterprise, welfare, and health-care organizations for senior citizens, church groups, and individuals Ð contested the issues in the media, in Parliament, and in everyday discourse. It was in this highly politicized context that the Government set up the Royal Commission on Social Policy, in part to signal its commitment on social policy issues to an increasingly sceptical electorate. In 1987, the Royal Commission set about the business of gathering position statements, expert analyses, institutional reports, and public submissions on all aspects of social policy. The public submissions alone number more than 6,000, and represent the largest ever written outpouring of the country's views on itself, its future, and identity. Given the political ambience of the day, a major topic of concern to submission writers was the plight of senior citizens. We analyze these submissions in order to discern the main patterns of discourse, and to describe in content and function, some of the linguistic resources from which accounts of the role and position of senior citizens in society are constructed.
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DATA Two hundred and fourteen groups and individuals contributed to a pool of submissions that was deemed by the Commission to be commentaries on the position of the elderly. From the handbook of submission abstracts, all of the available contributions listed under the heading ``Elderly'' were located and photocopied, giving a pool of 93 handwritten and typed scripts varying in length from a few sentences to dissertations of 20 or more pages, and totaling some 300 pages in all. The reduction of the data pool from 214 to 93 scripts arose partly from the large number of submissions (41) that were missing from the archive. In addition, many submissions were recorded in a form that was unsuitable for discourse analysis: material gathered from radio talkback sessions (10), from oral presentations (26), and from a week-long ``free-phone for women'' service (33). These categories shared the problem of being paraphrased, usually in brief note form, by someone (usually an employee of the Commission) other than the person making the submission. The difficulty with such data is that for discourse analysis aimed at the description of interpretative repertoires and ideological resources, either verbatim transcript or original written text is necessary. The particular form of the Commission's recording style is regrettable as it has made inaccessible to this investigation data from indigenous Maori and Polynesian minority groups, most of whom made oral presentations, and from others who used the free-phone. Finally, 11 submissions were rejected as dealing only peripherally with the issue of the position of senior citizens in society Ðtypically, this consisted of a passing comment about the elderly in relation to another topic of discussion. Despite these problems, which are not unusual when working with naturally occurring archival data, the data pool of 93 scripts gives a reflection of the discursive construction of particular views of senior citizens, and insights into ways in which such resources are deployed in practice. We use the term ``particular views'' advisedly because the perceived nature of the Royal Commission was such that it probably had encouraged a particular kind of persons or groups with views that sought to protect and support senior citizens to make submissions. The emphasis which the Commission put on social policy was generally seen as an opportunity for the public to protect their social well-being against the adverse effects of economic and state sector reforms at the time. The process of classifying the public submissions under the ``elderly'' heading probably further weighted the database toward those who were keen to adopt the role of advocate for senior citizens. For such was the case. Whereas only a handful of submissions articulated views unsympathetic to senior citizens, the vast majority, in diverse ways, gave voice to a powerful and complex case that said that society should look after its elders and keep them with dignity. Some of the 93 submittants volunteered unsolicited information about their age and geographical location in their submissions. On the basis of available information, submittants were classified as either ``older'' (60 years of age and over) or ``younger'' (under 60 years of age). Thirty-seven percent of the 93 submittants did not give their age. Another 30 percent were older individuals, compared to 15 percent of older persons in the census. Thus, older persons are disproportionately represented in the present sample, even in the unlikely event that none of the age-unmarked submittants were older persons. Such a trend is not surprising given the selection criterion of thematic relatedness to the area of elderly issues.
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With respect to geographical location, submittants were deemed to be ``urban'' dwellers if they resided in New Zealand's four greater metropolitan areas (Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin), or ``rural'' dwellers if they lived outside these metropolitan areas. There was no available information on geographical location for 8 percent of the submittants. Of the remainder, 53 percent was urban and 39 percent was rural. The urban figure was close to (51%) whereas the rural figure was lower than (48%) that in the census (New Zealand Official Yearbook 1994).
PROCEDURE OF ANALYSIS The discourse analytic approach we have adopted follows the general outline given by Potter and Wetherell (1987) and elaborated by others including van Dijk (1987), Billig et al. (1989), Gavey (1989), Nairn and McCreanor (1990, 1991), and Ullah (1990) in specific projects. This style of analysis focuses on language and the role it plays in constructing and maintaining particular interpretations of social reality. Following on from this is a practice in which the researcher actively produces analyses of sample texts to highlight ways in which the discourse is constituted and how it functions to produce a viable account of the world. The basic requirement is for multiple readings of the data in which the researcher attends to all levels of the material, from the syntax and grammar to the ideas and ideologies, in order to describe the regularity and variation in the text and say how these contribute to the success or failure of the discourse. Analyses were made by two researchers independently. In each analysis, the first step was to read the entire corpus two or more times, and afterward, relevant extracts from all submissions were noted along with the reference number of the source (e.g., S1234). By the end of this stage, familiarity with the data was allowing the formulation of a series of patterns or themes in the ways writers constructed their arguments about senior citizens. With the patterns, only very loosely defined extracts were now sorted in the various categories to which they contributed. The material, numbered as in the original data set, was categorized under headings labeling each of the patterns. This stage was a very major part of the analysis entailing choices about what was selected and where to place it; in a very real sense, this shaped the later stages of analysis by determining the form of the data it worked. The process yielded several specific categories of extracts of varying length, depth, and subject matter. These were then subjected to the intensive reading process outlined above. The two analyses yielded 11 and eight categories or themes, respectively. The 11 categories in one analysis were: obligations, housing, finance, care, carers, ageism, protection, social security, independence, quality of life, and intergenerational interaction. Upon closer inspection, these categories differed from those in the second analysis mainly in terms of category specificity; other than this, the contents of the respective categories overlapped almost completely. Thus, the first eight categories corresponded very well with the eight categories in the second analysis: obligations with social justice, housing with housing, finance with income, care and carers with health care, ageism with ageism, protection with political power, and social security with alienation and retirement. Two of the three remaining categories overlapped largely with four categories in the second analysis. That is, independence overlapped largely with retirement, political power, and health care; and quality of life with retirement, income, and health care. The 11th
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category Ð intergenerational interaction Ðwas not identified in the second analysis. Other than this last category, the two independent analyses showed a high degree of concordance and collectively captured most, if not all, of the dominant themes. The extracts were read again with the view of grouping the categories into a smaller number of patterns of discourse. In the following, we present the results of this final reading in the form of three major discourse patterns. The first pattern, obligations, is found in most submissions. The remaining patterns Ð anti-ageism and positive aging Ð are evident in about 25 percent and 10 percent of the submissions, respectively. The three patterns will be presented individually. For each pattern, we will attempt to tease out its characteristic rhetorical or argumentative features, and wherever possible, to link the discourse with important social values in order to illuminate how submittants draw from values to make their case. In the discussion part of the article, we will compare the patterns and consider them as a whole.
PATTERNS OF DISCOURSE Obligations These people are being neglected and it is up to us to take care of them. . . . The elderly who have worked all their lives, paid the taxes, are being penalized because of becoming old. This is where we as a people should be seeing that they have a comfortable living until they die. (S2387)
This submission exemplifies the notion that society has certain obligations toward its elderly members Ð to take care of them, to see that they have a comfortable living, and so forth. Unlike some other submissions (see below), the present submission does not actually use the word ``obligation''; nonetheless, the sense of obligation is conveyed through the assertions that ``it is up to us to take care of them'' and that ``we as a people should be seeing that they have a comfortable living.'' Society's obligation toward senior citizens is said to be a reward for the latter's lifelong contributions to the wealth of the nation through work and tax payments. Such a construction portrays the notion of obligation as a dynamic, relational one that resembles the classic principle of social exchange in social psychology (Thibaut and Kelley 1959) and sociology (Blau 1964). More than that, the construction hints at an implicit social contract that society should fulfill when individuals become ``old'' and until they ``die.'' To renege on this contract would amount to ``mistreating'' the elderly. The phrase ``are being penalized because of becoming old'' emphasizes that the elderly are not culpable for the penalty and so highlights the injustice. That this is so can be seen from considering the impact of alternative constructions; for example, if the elderly were being penalized for being spendthrifts they would not deserve sympathy. When writing on senior citizens' work contributions, submittants do not limit themselves to traditional definitions of work as paid jobs, but include unpaid activities such as grandparenting, caregiving, and voluntary work. This theme is often linked with women. Taxes, another major contribution to the social contract, differ from work in an important way. For a long period of time, New Zealand has had a high income taxation regime as part of its social welfare deal. People paid high income tax in part to exchange for the
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provision of current services, and partly as an insurance for the future after retirement. As a result, they now expect that it would be binding on successive governments to honor their side of the contract and to ensure its certainty. A submission that exemplifies the social contract basis of obligation is the following one: Our old people . . . are not greedy as has been claimed by some. They see themselves as having paid during their working lives into social security. Now all they ask is a just return. Above all, the element of uncertainty needs to be removed from the lives of those who are past the stage of earning their own living and are in every sense dependent on the state. Minimum guarantees as to the availability of universal benefits in old age should be established; guarantees that cannot be altered or eroded at the whim of any future minister of finance or treasury official. In fact, the creation of some kind of binding ``Social Contract'' is called for. (S5252)
The basis of society's obligations toward senior citizens extend beyond social exchange, even though social exchange and the allied notion of social contract are by far the most prevalent constructions. Two other bases of obligation were discerned. One is the notion of neediness, that is, society has the obligation to assist senior citizens who do not have the resources to provide for their old age. It is an example of a particularistic concept (Parsons 1951) and applies to only those people who are in need. Social exchange, as we have seen, is also particularistic because it limits society's obligations to particular individuals Ð in this case to those who have been able to make contributions by way of tax payments and work. But whereas social exchange is linked with justice, neediness is linked with a humanitarian society. A third basis of society's obligations is the right of senior citizens to social security. ``Right'' is a universalistic ethic that transcends individual differences in their contributions or neediness; in this sense it is a very different construction from both social exchange and neediness, which are both particularistic. Reflecting this universalistic ethic, submittants who argued on the basis of citizens' right often appealed to egalitarianism, rather than justice or humanitarianism Ðas one submittant put it, ``regardless of their (elderly people's) racial, social or economic position'' (S600). These then are the main strands of the obligations pattern of discourse. The most important strand is a social contract based on senior citizens' prior contributions to the well-being of society at large. In exchange, it is incumbent upon society to maintain them at an acceptable standard of quality of life until they die. Augmenting the social contract or social exchange notion are the neediness of some senior citizens and the right of all senior citizens. These three bases of claimed obligations in turn are linked respectively to the values of justice, humanitarianism, and egalitarianism. Collectively, they form a very central plank in protecting the position of senior citizens in society, and in calling upon society to meet its obligations toward them. We move now to look at a range of frequently articulated practical aspects of upholding society's obligations towards senior citizens. For presentation purposes, they are grouped into four domains relating to accommodation, finance, care, and protection, even though in the submissions they are inter-related to some extent.
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Two patterns of discourse are discerned in accommodation submissions. One pattern consists of assertions that directly link accommodation with obligations. This is accomplished by casting accommodation either as a human right Ð``Every person has the right to have adequate and suitable accommodation at an affordable price'' (S4735) Ð or a special need Ð``I should like to see more pensioner cottages so that elderly people or couples can maintain their independence as their need and ability to maintain large dwellings diminishes'' (S380). The second pattern of accommodation discourse makes reference to obligations but, in addition, constructs an economic argument based on the notions of investment, efficiency, and such like. The following lengthy excerpt is instructive in this regard, as well as in its subtle use of language. Clusters of small, easily worked houses where the elderly can find congenial companionship and mutual support are a growing need in our community. We believe society has an obligation to provide these and that it would be a good investment since it would enable old people to stay out of rest homes and continuing care for several years longer than at present. Domiciliary care is easier and cheaper when the clients live close together; not that the clusters should be too large and form a ``ghetto'' Ð the elderly should continue living in the district that they know and to continue to interact with other age groups. The clusters need to be scattered throughout every district. (S3389)
The submission above can best be analyzed by starting at sentence two (``We believe . . . ''). It asserts the belief in a linkage between accommodation and obligations, and then strengthens the case for accommodation with an appeal to economic common-sense by evoking the notion of ``investment'' to claim that the provision of accommodation would enable elderly people to avoid institutional care for longer (note the implicit notion that institutional care is inferior). Prior to sentence two, the opening sentence already creates an idealized vision of accommodation for the elderly in an appropriate social environment that is enhanced by its location in ``our community.'' The use of the word ``clusters'' in this sentence also assists in the creation of this ambience; consider the effects of alternative constructions Ð blocks? In the third sentence, cluster is specifically contrasted with ``ghetto.'' Aside from these points is the requirement that the accommodation be tailored specifically Ð``small, easily worked'' Ð to the needs of the elderly. This sentence also elaborates the economic argument with reference to efficiency (``easier and cheaper''), to which is added a social-relational reason, namely, the facilitation of intergenerational contact. Financial support, the second major practical aspect of obligations, is seen as a key to the maintenance of senior citizens at an acceptable level of quality of life. It is, however, different from accommodation in an important way. Whereas accommodation is a non-controversial end in itself because of its direct link with the basic need for shelter, financial assistance is seen more as a means to a variety of ends: subsidized accommodation, medicine, telephone accounts, car registration, and income maintenance. Reflecting this instrumental nature of financial assistance, submittants seldom assert that society has the obligation to provide finance to senior citizens. Instead, they construct a preface showing the instrumentality of finance in everyday life and only then exhort society to come up with the money. The following excerpt is an example of an elaborately constructed preface.
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For those who cannot afford to pay from their own resources, however, finance is a major problem adding considerably to their other difficulties. Lack of finance creates other problems for the . . . elderly as they worry about needing care. They scrimp and save on food and heating: they rarely have their own transport Ð doctor's bills are kept to a minimum when their needs are greatest. . . . (S3161)
It is only after the preface has been constructed that the reasons for soliciting financial assistance are given. In this particular submission, as in some others, the major reason is based on economic rationality: ``If those in [this] group received better financial support it would cost the country less in the long term.'' Care for the elderly is another cluster of issues that submittants claim society must attend to if it is to meet its obligations to elderly people. The obligation to provide care is predominantly based on neediness. Care is given a wide range of definitions, from the generic sense of general responsibility for the well-being of the elderly to care in highly specified domains such as health or accommodation, within which various levels Ð defined by client needs Ð are described. The common denominator is that human carers are directly involved in the care of senior citizens, and this human dimension differentiates care from the provision of physical facilities (as in accommodation and finance). For this reason, discourse of the care of senior citizens easily slips into a discourse about carers. The latter in turn generates a complex set of texts on the politics of caregiving. A major issue in the politics of caregiving is over who should or should not be caregivers. Some submittants advocate that caregiving should be a family obligation: ``There is no point in providing care for the elderly whether in public institutions or private when with foresight they could be cared for in the family circle'' (S5397). This strongly worded family-first position is rare among the submissions. More often than not, submittants wrote about family care in a guarded way. One expression of guardedness is to give consideration to the particular emotional strains that family carers, more so than nonfamily carers, may come under. The particular strain arises from excessive demands that elderly parents and grandparents may place on family members that they would not otherwise do to nonfamily carers. The following highly personalized account illustrates this point, as well as the difficulty of family carers to even admit to it: It takes bravery born of desperation to admit that one's own mother drives you crazy: that you cannot cope. We have only admitted to it in the last year when her behavior was seen as inappropriate by friends. (S5379)
A few submissions, while still accepting that family members have an obligation to care for their elders, place conditions on the obligation. A common condition is to pay the caregiver ``the equivalent of the average wage'' (S5397), another is the provision of ``back-up'' support (S2506). Against the family-first stance, many submittants call for the removal of caregiving from the family. This latter position is invariably constructed on the belief, presented as a fact, that women have been the traditional caregivers without whom family care is not possible. The following excerpts illustrate this belief/fact with varying degrees of emotional overtone.
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. . . the number of women able to look after older people compared with those who need care has decreased steadily over recent years. . . . There will therefore be an increasing need for public and private institutional care for the aged. (S2925) . . . in this era of the working mother, it is very difficult, no matter how one tries, to provide satisfactory care for the dependent elderly. . . . (S5226) Stop behaving as if there is a never-ending supply of women who can be coaxed or bullied into giving up their own lives to care for the elderly. (S1004).
The politics of caregiving extends beyond the family. In fact, it is in the public arena outside the family that most of the submissions are engaged. Here, submittants draw a strong line between nonprofit- and profit-making carers. Overwhelmingly, they are against profit-making carers. As most of the submissions in this category are written by nonprofit-making agencies, a large part of their negativity against profit-making carers could simply be driven by rivalry or self-interest, although this is seldom acknowledged. The interesting question for us is: what are the wider values that submittants draw on in advancing their politics of caregiving? Two values are discerned: devotion and the mistrust of private enterprise. Devotion refers to personal qualities that distinguish good carers from less good ones: ``The proper care of the elderly . . . requires a certain sort of person to do this work and careful screening is needed to weed out who lack the patience and unselfish dedication required'' (S545). The idealized devoted carer is a nun who has taken ``the vows of poverty'' (S310). By invoking the value of devotion, submittants are able to align charitable, religious, and other nonprofit-making organizations in a moral opposition to profit-making organizations. In principle, profit-making organizations can either be publicly or privately owned. Insofar as the submissions are concerned, profit-making is identified solely with private enterprise. The latter is viewed historically as a late comer in the provision of elderly care relative to charitable, religious, and voluntary bodies (see Koopman-Boyden 1988; Saville-Smith 1993). As such, private enterprise does not have tradition on its side. While this does not exclude it from playing a useful role at a time when the population is aging and more women are entering the workforce, it is looked upon with suspicion. The following disclaimer expresses the mistrust in a relatively mild form: ``I am all for private enterprise, but not at the expense of the less fortunate'' (S2237). At the core of the mistrust of private enterprise are the beliefs that private enterprise will put profit above people and that it is not easily controllable, seeking as it always does to cut cost at the expense of quality (S3151) and to comply minimally, if at all, with statutory requirements (S3389). The negative stance against profit-making organizations that is commonly found in the submissions does not mean the submissions all speak with one united voice. On the contrary, behind the apparently united front against profit-making lies a number of divisions along both occupational and organizational lines. Occupational division, as expressed in the following excerpt, is based both on status rivalry and a need for greater and more positive psychological distinctiveness: Home Helps need help but not to be put under the nursing staff to run. They are nurses, we are home managers, two totally different jobs and should be kept as such. We are workers in our own right, not understaff to nurses. (S2825)
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Organizational division, by contrast, has less to do with status rivalry and more to do with establishing psychological distinctiveness and trying to gain separate funding for its work. This is clearly illustrated in the submission by a charitable trust that was constituted by several lay bodies within the Catholic Church. The submission (S310) first explains how the changing circumstances have brought about the Trust: The Catholic Church has played a major role in New Zealand in providing beds in the old people and rest home area, largely through the efforts of its religious orders of women. . . . However, in the last 20 years, the numbers of women entering religious life in the Catholic Church in New Zealand has declined dramatically. It was in recognition of this and the resultant increasingly restricted ability of the religious orders to continue to provide . . . care for the elderly that the Wellington Catholic Homes Trust was founded by lay people.
The submission then attempts to differentiate the Trust from the Church and to advance its call for separate funding: At present, no member of a Catholic religious order is employed by the Trust and any future involvement by members of a religious order in the work in the Trust is likely to be minimal. The consequence of this is that like other welfare organizations Wellington Catholic Homes Trust must obtain significant financial support to enable it to run its institutions.
Finally, under the section of obligations, a series of submissions call for practical steps to protect the elderly against threats to their well-being. By far, the most commonly cited culprits are rest homes, especially those run as a private enterprise, and private hospitals. The threats from these care providers include the lack of conformity to statutory requirements, inadequately trained staff, and lack of proper supervision (S3389, S2506, and S2237). Elderly abuse and asset stripping by relatives are also cited (S1980). Protection of its citizens by the State is arguably a function that no Government can withdraw from or delegate away, even though a Government may be ideologically committed to shedding its social welfare functions such as accommodation, financial support, and health care. The treatise of Hobbes (1968 [1651]) on the social contract between the State and its citizens is based on the idea that the latter surrender part of their individual freedom in exchange for State protection. As far as we can judge, none of the submissions invoke the Hobbesian treatise in their call for Government to protect its senior citizens. Instead, they make the call without explaining why the Government should protect its senior citizens, as if the underlying reason is already self-evident.
Anti-Ageism In a number of respects, the arguments and ideas gathered under the heading of anti-ageism are outside of and yet related to the theme of obligations. Here, submissions point to a range of beliefs and stereotypes about the elderly that facilitate the construction of negative or deficient images of senior citizens. To argue against
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such constructions, submittants employ a variety of rhetorical formats, the most common ones are manifesto-speak, victim-speak, and observer-speak. The following submission from an organization for senior citizens is an example of manifesto-speak. We believe . . . that often the elderly are held in low esteem, and are wrongly presumed to be emotionally fragile, easily upset, stupid, asexual and conformists; that mental decline that interferes with ordinary living and learning, is not inevitable Ð it is abnormal. (S600)
The manifesto sets out to challenge a cluster of ideas about the elderly, which while not named as ageist specifically, are easily classified as such. Its use of the plural pronoun in the opening phrase stresses that it is a group and not an individual person that owns the declaration; the alternative singular pronoun ``I'' would have reduced the impact and authority of the content. In the first sentence the use of the word ``often'' to qualify the accusation of stereotyping, protects the claims from dismissal as trivial. The second sentence categorically denies the widely held idea that aging inevitably leads to mental decline. The use of the term ``abnormal'' to describe age-related mental decline has a curious twist to it in the present context. While it clearly contradicts the accepted view, it also draws on a different but widely accepted set of resources about mental illness. Victim-speak, in contrast to manifesto-speak, makes use of first-person linguistic markers to give credence and force to the personal experience of being the victim of ageist practices or neglect. The following excerpt is an exemplar: ``Having brought up a family after being widowed in my early forties, it hurts to be neglected in my old age'' (S1843). A second feature of victim-speak is to contrast the elderly victims' personal experience with younger people's ignorance or intellectualization of the harmful effects of ageism. The excerpt below illustrates the point: It is only when one moves into the older age group that one is conscious of the loss of status accorded to older people by the rest of the community. (S646)
Observer-speak, finally, is a format where the author is portrayed as a passionate and yet impartial collective of observers, usually under the name of a ``committee.'' Observer-speak presents the submission as a view from the outside based on research Ð`` . . . we have studied a number of issues'' (S3054) Ðor on the results of deliberations Ð ``This committee is of the opinion that ageist attitudes are reflected in the structures of much health service provision'' (S2914). While anti-ageism appears to be the polar opposite of ageism that it criticizes, at the level of their ideological underpinnings the two are hard to distinguish at times. Anti-ageism submissions often show traces of an overprotective orientation to senior citizens, which risk being quite disempowering because of, paradoxically, their patronizing and overgeneralized presumptions. For example, by adopting an overprotective stance in their submissions, submittants unwittingly perpetuate stereotypes of elderly frailty, passivity, and incompetence. Second, by treating older people as a group, submittants risk sustaining the ageist stance that older people are uniformly alike. Varying degrees of either or both ageist assumptions are evident in anti-ageism
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discourse generally. Of the two, the uniformity assumption is relatively more evident and is most noticeable in anti-ageism discourse presented as observer-speak.
Old Age as a Positive Resource The last of the three major discourse patterns differs from the others in that it seems to stand alone and, while it considerably supports the others, does not rely on or interweave with them explicitly. Older adults are constructed as possessing a rich supply of valuable experience, wisdom, skill, and old-time culture that are essential to the well-being of society as a whole. In advocating the importance and value of the elderly, arguments in this pool do not have the guilt-evoking moral edge that is evident in the other patterns. Instead they cast the elderly in a positive light in their own right and emphasize the kinds of benefit that will result by keeping them integrated in society. This human resource pool will continue to grow as a percentage of the population, and this must be turned into a positive development. The elderly possess a wealth of experience that is of immeasurable cultural value. This should be keyed back into the community, particularly through the interaction between the young and the elderly. (S860)
In sentence 1, the elderly are cast as a potentially valuable asset to society. Highlighting the population growth of the elderly adds to the urgency of the problem, without undercutting the positive tone established. At the same time, the clear implication from the claim that the increase ``must be turned into'' a boon for society is that it is wasted at present. The positive tone is continued in sentence 3 through the use of the phrases ``wealth of experience'' and ``immeasurable cultural value,'' which also serve to specify what it is that the elderly can offer. These resources are to be recognized by and fed back to the community, especially to the ``young.'' The next extract is a little more circumspect. As a worker with older people (I am one myself) I am constantly impressed by the vast amount of talent and experience largely lying untapped in the lives of this group. This immense resource could be widely used in schools, community groups, in work with young unemployed people, and in numerous other imaginative ways. It would be demeaning and wasteful for older people to be given menial and unproductive tasks. They have a real and lively contribution to make as they pass on skills and wisdom where opportunities are presented to them. (S2236)
In this instance, the writer offers the personal warrants of being both an ``older'' person and a worker with such people, lending the extract considerable authority. The value of the elderly is expanded to include ``talent'' as well as experience. Multiple avenues for the mutually beneficial application of the skills and experience of the elderly are canvassed and contrasted with possible undesirable and wasteful applications. The role of the elderly in the broader education of the young is also raised and advocated. As before, the emphasis is on the positive, and is further enhanced by the use of terms such as ``real'' and ``lively,'' which act to break, somewhat, the negative images toward the elderly.
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The above two extracts make particularly clear use of the resource theme in their coverage of the position of senior citizens. This theme is especially important in the clash of ideologies over old age as it represents a strongly positive account that, without evoking guilt (as in the obligations theme) or condemning ageist prejudice (as in the anti-ageism theme), counteracts the central notion of an opposing ideology that senior citizens are an unaffordable burden on society.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION A brief examination of the discourse patterns and their relationship to each other is now possible. Without necessarily suggesting a hierarchical structure in these relationships, we note that the cluster of ideas relating to obligations recurs throughout the submissions both overtly and covertly. In the words of many submittants, what society ``must'' or ``should'' do in respect to its senior citizens is to provide them with security and quality of life by attending to their housing, financial, health, and other needs as well as by protecting them from exploitation or abuse. Put simply, ``all they ask is a just return'' of comfort and security as their due for a lifetime of work and taxation (S5252). In many aspects, this is in direct opposition to the emergent ``new right'' ideology that promotes the withdrawal of State from fulfilling its obligations to its senior citizens. The obligations pattern of discourse is supplemented by two others that operate in different ways. Firstly, there is anti-ageism, which counters prejudices with arguments, some of which are drawn from the obligations theme. The second one, which is from a completely separate base to the notion of obligations, argues for the value and importance of older adults as a positive resource for the well-being of society as a whole. It is interesting that despite the apparent complementarity between the themes of anti-ageism and positive aging, they are rarely deployed together or in concert. A partial explanation may be that in as much as the anti-ageism theme amounts to an accusation of unjustifiable prejudice against senior citizens, it is a defensive or complaining position. The theme of positive aging, on the other hand, is constructive and action-oriented. Perhaps the constructive theme has an element of political empowerment insofar as those who articulate it are often people who are directly involved with successful, innovative schemes with the elderly, whereas those who attempt to counter negative ageism are frequently members of political pressure groups who construct themselves and their cohort as embattled victims of an uncaring society. In this vein, submittants may choose rhetorically to construct their argument in one mode but not both; in particular, if they have adopted the affirmative style they may try to preserve the positive frame it relies on by not mixing it with accusation or retreating to a grievance mode. Another point of interest is the relative frequency in the use of the obligations pattern compared to the other two. The pattern of obligations is used in some form in most submissions, whereas the patterns of anti-ageism and positive aging are only used in about a quarter and a 10th of the submissions, respectively. These numerical indicators are fairly reflected in the degree of extension and elaboration revealed by the detailed analysis of extracts. There can be little doubt that the obligations pattern offers submittants a vast array of ideological resources for the justification, explanation, or
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instantiation of claims on behalf of senior citizens. By comparison, the ideological potential of the other two discourse patterns is rather constricted, at least as deployed in the present sample. Following on from this, there is also some differentiation in the general form of argumentation used in the various patterns. We will discuss these differences beginning with anti-ageism. As noted above, anti-ageism is characterized by an oppositional style that not only assumes the existence of competing alternative accounts of the position of senior citizens but often goes further to constitute these as the subject of criticism. In this discourse process, it can be noted that the form of those given positions is rhetorically constructed to make them amenable to the attack that the submittant wishes to bring to bear through manifesto-speak, victim-speak, or observer-speak. At a deeper level, however, many of the anti-ageism discourses reproduce the ageist assumptions by being over-protective of senior citizens to the point of patronizing, and by talking about seniors citizens as if they were all alike. The internal contradictions observed in text here parallel the phenomenon of ``over-accommodation'' observed in intergenerational conversations, where younger speakers stereotypically use overpolite and patronizing styles of talk when addressing the old, despite of (and because of) good intentions (Ryan, Hummert, and Boich 1995). It is apparent that the submittants, like the well-meaning but over-accommodating speakers in everyday conversation, have considerable difficulty in steering clear of some of the very same assumptions of ageism that give rise to prejudices and stereotypes that they wish to condemn. As Coupland and Coupland (1993) have pointed out, anti-ageism often recreates ageism, and the resultant competing discourses of ageism can lead to highly confused policies and practices. The main discourse style in positive aging is assertion. The claims made herein about the value of senior citizens, though rhetorically eloquent, lack specific details and also tend to gloss over potential difficulties in intergenerational communication. In this vein, two or three submittants reproduce variations on this idea in which they relate their experiences of the stresses and difficulties they have had with elderly relatives. Such contradictions cannot be adequately dealt with in the present paper but should provide fruitful data for further investigation (see Ng et al. 1997). In the obligations pattern, possibly because the database is so extensive, most of the tactics discussed so far are in evidence. Rhetorical constructions, open assertions, and oppositional arguments are all used extensively to build and sustain this theme. Despite differences in approach and context, we feel that the work reported here has implications for quantitative-oriented research on ageist beliefs and communication, if only in drawing attention to the wider discourse in which these topics are located. The overlap with the latter will increase. A recent study by Wood and Ryan (1991), for example, has argued that actual discourse in everyday environments is an important topic of study in its own right and for those interested in the position of senior citizens. In conclusion, the present work gives an assay of how submittants construct a particular working ideology of the position of senior citizens in a society that undergoes rapid social change due to population aging as well as economic and public sector reforms. Because of the close alignment of the submittants to the well-being of senior citizens, their submissions taken together constitute a collective voice for the latter. Contrary views that
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are critical of older people are underrepresented and awaiting future research (see, e.g., Thomson 1991). Since the completion of the present study, the Prime Ministerial Task Force on Positive Ageing (1997) has produced a report in which it reviews current issues, proposes a vision for positive aging, and suggests ways of promoting that vision. As the title of the Task Force suggests, the theme of positive aging is central to the report. In addition, the other two themes that we have identified in the present study are also represented therein. Thus, there is some evidence of external validity for our analysis. Apart from identifying broad discourse patterns, the present study also provides a micro-analysis that highlights the constitution and functions of some of the widely used discursive tools available to those who enter the political and ideological arena on behalf of senior citizens. These tools draw on the values of justice, humanitarianism, egalitarianism, opposition to prejudice, and human resources, and are often combined with other arguments based on economic rationality and personal experiences. As issues of old age are related to issues of gender and social services, the latter issues are constituted as major discourse topics in many of the submissions dealing with the politics of care giving, where feminist values, occupational rivalry, organizational distinctiveness, and self-interests come to the fore. Finally, the fact that supporters of senior citizens often reproduce ageist assumptions is a sober reminder of human beings' limited ability to transcend prevailing stereotypes of the time. In drawing out these elements and showing their interlinkages, the present work will make a definite contribution to the understanding of how senior citizens and their supporters formulate their own voice in an ideologically harsh environment (Sampson 1993). ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: Completion of this article was facilitated by a grant from the Founda-
tion of Research, Science and Technology (VIC 505). The authors acknowledge the assistance of John Bretherton in compiling information on the demographic background of the submittants, and the constructive comments made on earlier versions by Nik Coupland, Mike Lloyd, and two anonymous reviewers.
NOTE 1. The word ``elderly,'' as used by the Royal Commission and by most of the submittants, will be retained in the present article where this would preserve its original reference and force; otherwise, our preferred term is senior citizens or older adults.
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